So, in the event you have been living under a rock and not been aware, there has been, over the past few months, a massive backlash against YouTube and its content ID system, known as “Where’s the Fair Use” ( #WTFU).
Any search on that tag shows video after video, post after post, tweet after tweet describing people’s frustrations with the “guilty until proven innocent” attitude that the YouTube Content ID system works under. You have to prove fair use on any content claimed, with the risk of it going to court. All the copyright claimant has to do is constantly reject the claim and, considering the massive pockets of media corporations, such would be a trivial thing to fight.
Of course, this system is also abused by people who file false claims to censor or otherwise disrupt someone else channel. One of the many, many problems with a Content ID claim is that, in one form of claim, the person making the claim gets all the advertising revenue of the video claimed, rather than the uploader, while the claim is being disputed.
Today, YouTube announced they were changing how they handled the monetary aspects of a claim. Basically, instead of money immediately changing to the claimant, it will be stored until the dispute is resolved. I don’t know why it took what looks like 400 words to explain this, but YouTube made their post today on the subject.
http://youtubecreator.blogspot.com/2016/04/improving-content-id-for-creators.html?m=1
Forgive me, I don’t honestly intend to complain every single time YouTube or Google are brought up, it just happens that they time and time again, as a group, seem to constantly do something stupid that I just have to discuss.
This is the best you could do? In the wake of all this #WTFU slamming against the completely broken YouTube Content ID system, this is the what you come up with as an “improvement to content ID [that] will make a real difference”?
Sure, yeah, it will at least solve the monetary losses while disputes are resolved, which can take weeks at a time, potentially, but this does absolutely nothing to fix the broken Content ID system that exists within YouTube itself. This does not change the potential abuse of; no, the proven abuse of; the existing system.
I’m just amazed at the empty gesture this is. Clearly, it’s just a tactic to try to take some of the heat off of the #WTFU movement.
Google seems to think it’s about the money, which of course, is the only language they speak.
It isn’t. The Where’s The Fair Use movement is about the right, and law, of Fair Use, and the fact that it is ignored time and time again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Content_ID
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#YouTube