Support NeoGAF

[munchie64]

A Youtube gaming channel I follow farfromsubtle has recently been hit with a number of false Copyright claims by a distribution company known as The Orchard, a subsidiary of Sony.

These are not claims made falsely by a content ID system or content protected under fair use, but a company 100% lying about owning content in videos. Here is a video by farfromsubtle describing what happened in more detail. The video includes a previous example of something like this happening as well as links to all the claimed videos.
And tweets from farfromsubtle's twitter:

With a simple Google search, I've found that the exact problem has happened with a number of people as seen in this vlog and this Google group. As far as I can tell, The Orchard has not really responded to any of these appeals.
I wanted to bring this concerning topic to Neogaf and perhaps gain more insight into the workings of corporations in issues like this.

I wasn't sure whether this topic would've been best for Gaming or Off-Topic, but since it concerns a gaming channel, I put it here. If it needs to be moved that's cool.

 

[Acorn]

Hmm what do they gain from this? Does google give the company making the complaint the video's ad revenue or something?

 

[munchie64]

Hmm what do they gain from this? Does google give the company making the complaint the video's ad revenue or something?

During the period of the claim, I believe so.

 

[BeatnikGunsoo]

Hmm what do they gain from this? Does google give the company making the complaint the video's ad revenue or something?

yes

 

[Bigmac1910]

Hmm what do they gain from this? Does google give the company making the complaint the video's ad revenue or something?

Yup, that is correct.

 

[Syriel]

File a DMCA counter notice (assuming you have the rights to keep the piece up) and then the content should get put back up after 14 days.

You also have the option of suing someone for making a false DMCA report.

 

[Acorn]

During the period of the claim, I believe so.

yes

Yup, that is correct.

That's fucked up and just begging to be abused.

 

[ATXAlchemy]

Yup, that is correct.

Doesn't Google have a system to avoid people from abusing this?

I'm not sure if it was the Orchard (prob. not), but I do remember something similar, someone was spraying copyright claims on Youtube on contents they don't own a year or three ago.

 

[Anfang]

Doesn't Google have a system to avoid people from abusing this?

I'm not sure if it was the Orchard (prob. not), but I do remember something similar, someone was spraying copyright claims on Youtube on contents they don't own a year or three ago.

A Russian chick made dmca claims against persona music. prolly what yer thinking of.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=80690897

 

[SerTapTap]

This happens all the time and yes it's disgusting, illegal and, ironically, blatant copyright infringement!

I just dispute the claim; the first round, called a dispute, is "free" and basically has no penalty to your account, the second round, "appeal" is where youtube gets involved and you can be banned for failing the appeal.

Usually I make loud, true statements in the dispute about the fact they are committing an illegal act and are in violation of not only Youtube's terms of service but of US copyright law as well, and that they should have their rights to claim videos removed immediately and permanently (the last part is just in case some google drone reads it--I seriously doubt a single account has had privileges revoked despite the ~2 dozen false claims I've disputed).

To repeat, this happens all the damn time on all sorts of royalty free or public domain music, even stuff used in indie games. Content ID is fucking disgusting. Please do fight the good fight and dispute when you can, but appeals are scary shit and I don't blame you if you chicken out on them.

 

[Mesoian]

Doesn't Google have a system to avoid people from abusing this?

Pfft, no.

When I was doing regular let's plays, I was getting DMCA takedowns from some shell company working out of Dubai.

Google don't care.

 

[LaserBuddha]

Isnt there some program companies can use that crawls youtube videos and looks for audio signatures of their copyrighted material? Maybe they are blindly filing a complaint for everything it detects.

 

[Fotheringay]

A Russian chick made dmca claims against persona music. prolly what yer thinking of.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=80690897

That was the most bizarre damn thing. I wonder if she faced any penalty for that.

 

[Barkley's Justice]

The Orchard is a massive (mostly music) digital distributor. They represent a grip of indie artists as well as many of the big boys and gals. Not too long ago they bought Ioda.

Is it possible the Destiny soundtrack is part of the Orchard catalogue?

 

[Barkley's Justice]

PS - Anytime you release an album or single or piece of music through The Orchard, it automatically Content Id's it and sends it to YouTube. As far as I know, The Orchard defaults to just ad revenue during matched content. I could be totally wrong, but it's possible the content owner (Activision??) has requested DMCA takedowns on any matching content. Purely speculation on my part.

 

[Zomba13]

The Orchard is a massive (mostly music) digital distributor. They represent a grip of indie artists as well as many of the big boys and gals. Not too long ago they bought Ioda.

Is it possible the Destiny soundtrack is part of the Orchard catalogue?

Probably not as the Destiny bit they claimed was Dinklebot talking.

 

[munchie64]

File a DMCA counter notice (assuming you have the rights to keep the piece up) and then the content should get put back up after 14 days.

You also have the option of suing someone for making a false DMCA report.

I wonder how many people would actually go that far?

 

[SerTapTap]

The Orchard is a massive (mostly music) digital distributor. They represent a grip of indie artists as well as many of the big boys and gals. Not too long ago they bought Ioda.

Is it possible the Destiny soundtrack is part of the Orchard catalogue?

Even if true they technically can't Content ID claim it--Content ID is only for things you exclusively have the rights to. Since Destiny music was obviously licensed to Bungie, either Bungie has the exclusive rights or there are no exclusive rights holders as it's been licensed.

Sounds like it's just not actually the right music anyway and the monkey they have reviewing the claims just rejects them. And I mean...Google seems to make it basically free for companies to do this at their leisure, I'm honestly surprised so many have retracted claims for my video since they basically win by default

 

[munchie64]

The Orchard is a massive (mostly music) digital distributor. They represent a grip of indie artists as well as many of the big boys and gals. Not too long ago they bought Ioda.

Is it possible the Destiny soundtrack is part of the Orchard catalogue?

If they're as big as they sound, it's certainly possible, but is it common for content ID to match say, music where none appears or over dialogue etc.

 

[Clin]

I wonder how many people would actually go that far?

Practically none of them. The cost is too great and these companies are basically legal machines.

Like fartoosubtle[?] said, he's not part of a network (like Maker Studios) so he has no support network to fall back on and would be litigating out of his own wallet.

 

[Dryk]

The Orchard is a massive (mostly music) digital distributor. They represent a grip of indie artists as well as many of the big boys and gals. Not too long ago they bought Ioda.

Is it possible the Destiny soundtrack is part of the Orchard catalogue?

They didn't claim for the Destiny soundtrack. They claimed that a completely different piece of music they own was in the trailer and issued a takedown. This is common behaviour from Orchard who have, in the past, issued takedowns on footage of the moon landings.

 

[Harpuea]

Youtube is getting really cancerous these days with big companies treating content creator like dirt to be pushed around. It affects all forms of video contents, not just games.

Recently, I saw a video about a wave of Copyright Strikes against people who made criticism of Windows 8.1 by MS in order to silence them. Funny thing is you can't pirate Windows 8.1 using a youtube video. Those people can't do shit against MS thus they get a Strike on their account and disables long form videos. That means they can't post video longer than 15 mins anymore as long as the strike remain. That is sure to kill anyone's youtube career. "Get a real job"? For many youtuber, it is their job. Making quality content that is able to compete for views on youtube isn't easy.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA4LIRxICPg

 

[Karak]

Ya youtube is messed up for sure. I have had maybe 30 total claims all dropped over time however what the companies, or people, do is to claim high ranking videos during their bump and the big problem has been when a game gets released and reviews hit.. I had a 100,000+ view Destiny review that was claimed then revoked then claimed again by the same company. So many problems happened that I just reuploaded again under a slightly different name and they never caught on. Sadly the other company got everything. That has happened to 5 of my largest and most popular reviews. It is pretty much something I expect these days.

Google made it clear both in the forums and in the one single response I got from them in 30+ attempts at pointing out the issue that they flatly do not care. The response was, "we don't take responsibility for the usage of our claims tools." Or some such drivel.

FYI my reviews almost never have any game music in them for fear of REAL copyrights and those claimed were actually games with 0 musical content. Just the game being reviewed. They basically claimed my voice.

 

[munchie64]

Practically none of them. The cost is too great and these companies are basically legal machines.

Like fartoosubtle[?] said, he's not part of a network (like Maker Studios) so he has no support network to fall back on and would be litigating out of his own wallet.

I assume networks try and stop this from happening in the first place?

Spoiler

And it's farfromsubtle

 

[Karak]

I assume networks try and stop this from happening in the first place?

Spoiler

And it's farfromsubtle

Networks don't assist with that anymore. The umbrella of protection ceased last year.

 

[Syriel]

I wonder how many people would actually go that far?

You could always try small claims court if you didn't want to file a standard lawsuit.

 

[munchie64]

Networks don't assist with that anymore. The umbrella of protection ceased last year.

Really? Then I guess there's little hope against big companies that push as hard as these guys have then.

You could always try small claims court if you didn't want to file a standard lawsuit.

That's true.

 

[Karak]

Really? Then I guess there's little hope against big companies that push as hard as these guys have then.

That's true.

Ya sadly about 1 year ago youtube contacted all the partners and told them that the umbrella protection that partners got from networks was effectively eliminated. Networks now are for...networking, higher CPM(if possible) and various other undertakings.

 

[mrklaw]

Do google really divert ad revenues to the company issuing the complaint? Surely they could hold onto it for eg 30 days to allow for any dispute/appeal and then release it to the correct party? Otherwise if you dispute successfully you are still losing money

And why do companies get to do that just for audio copyright? They shouldn't be able to pull a video or get all revenue as half is the video.

 

[munchie64]

Do google really divert ad revenues to the company issuing the complaint? Surely they could hold onto it for eg 30 days to allow for any dispute/appeal and then release it to the correct party? Otherwise if you dispute successfully you are still losing money

And why do companies get to do that just for audio copyright? They shouldn't be able to pull a video or get all revenue as half is the video.

I think this thread, and many others have made it clear that the system is favoured towards one side.

 

[Vlodril]

Do google really divert ad revenues to the company issuing the complaint? Surely they could hold onto it for eg 30 days to allow for any dispute/appeal and then release it to the correct party? Otherwise if you dispute successfully you are still losing money

And why do companies get to do that just for audio copyright? They shouldn't be able to pull a video or get all revenue as half is the video.

yep they do and its completely illogical. there is a bunch of companies that have no claims but go around claiming people's videos and until they themselves review the dispute (they have 30 days) they can pocket all the money in the time period.

google just doesn't give a shit and it's not like there is an alternative to the service so.

 

[Acorn]

yep they do and its completely illogical. there is a bunch of companies that have no claims but go around claiming people's videos and until they themselves review the dispute (they have 30 days) they can pocket all the money in the time period.

google just doesn't give a shit and it's not like there is an alternative to the service so.

That's so scummy.

 

[Noisepurge]

File a DMCA counter notice (assuming you have the rights to keep the piece up) and then the content should get put back up after 14 days.

great to lose all views over 2 weeks period, this can cripple some reviews and say stuff like Avengers Age of Ultron trailer impressions etc. that need to be seen day-1.

 

[crazyrabbits]

From what I've read, it's a giant scam. They've tried to claim copyright on Valve soundtracks, The Star-Spangled Banner, works commissioned under Creative Commons licenses, commentary tracks and more using some kind of automated system called "B.A.C.O.N.".

I'm just surprised no one's filed a class-action lawsuit against them yet. They've been running around unchecked for at least three years.

 

[munchie64]

From what I've read, it's a giant scam. They've tried to claim copyright on Valve soundtracks, The Star-Spangled Banner, works commissioned under Creative Commons licenses, commentary tracks and more using some kind of automated system called "B.A.C.O.N.".

I'm just surprised no one's filed a class-action lawsuit against them yet. They've been running around unchecked for at least three years.

I was kind of surprised there was no thread about it yet (as far as I can tell at least).