good morning John I watched your video
on Tuesday which is good because you
included a bunch of clips of hockey and
soccer and football games that you did
not own and one of the companies that
owned some of those clips decided to
block the video from being viewed on
YouTube so it feels like this might be a
good time for an educational video on
the very weird state of copyright and
online media in 2019 19 before the
internet piracy was excruciating ly slow
we did it of course we recorded mixtapes
from the radio and traded fansub DHS's
of anime yes that's actually something I
did but the internet first through
Napster made it very easy to instantly
distribute other people's property it
was so easy and it didn't feel wrong
songs were already free on the radio and
everyone I knew was doing it and YouTube
in its early days was part of this
system it would not be the platform it
is today if it weren't for pirated
Family Guy and Daily Show clips
Viacom sued them about it for years so
in order to keep existing YouTube had to
create a ludicrously complicated piece
of technology that checks every moment
of every video uploaded to its platform
against a vast library of content that
includes like everything that has ever
been made but YouTube doesn't actually
want to stop copyright violation and
neither do the rights holders who own
that content here on the vlog with this
channel we by which I mean mostly me
have uploaded copyrighted content to the
channel lots of times before and we've
never had a video blocked or taken down
I've blatantly stolen like when I
basically made a music video for a
Willie Nelson song and then there are
more questionable cases like when I
released a song called the subway where
I used to go which I would argue is
parody in all of those cases those
videos were not blocked or taken down
they were claimed which means that the
money that they earned through Google's
Adsense product went to the record
labels of gautier and Willie Nelson
respectively when YouTube's fancy-dancy
Content ID system finds someone's
property in someone else's video they
give the rights holder the option to do
one of four things one they can
basically do nothing and just track the
video two they can claim the video and
make money from it three they can block
the video in certain countries or in all
countries or four they can take the
video down off of YouTube and issue a
copyright strike inside YouTube's
dashboard a rights holder can set up
rules simple ones like everyone who uses
anything gets a global block or
complicated rules like claim any view
from Croatia that contains more than 30
seconds of my property but this is
almost never done manually it's just
done with these filters only this last
thing the takedown is a legal step it's
the only step that is not automated and
it's the only step that requires an
electronic signature it is also the step
that's most impactful a copyright strike
affects the channels ability to monetize
and channels that get three of them can
be deleted from the platform along with
all of the content from that chance so
you only get a copyright strike which is
the big deal if the rights holder
decides to give you a copyright strike
which is from a creators perspective
uncommon and completely random this
policy and the way that rights holders
interact with it actually encourages
creators to take these kinds of risks
and I would argue that this is actually
a good thing I think it frees up
creators to do more interesting things
that allows for everyone to interact
with an electoral property in a more
malleable and less strict way and it
allows rights holders to allow uses that
actually benefit them losing
monetization on a single video which is
the most common thing that happens isn't
that big of a deal for most creators and
the claiming system is actually pretty
genius because it allows these big giant
companies who would otherwise be yelling
at Congress about how they need to shut
YouTube down to get a whole new income
stream so they stop yelling so much so l
Mills can use I'm walking on sunshine in
a video and she might lose her youtube
revenue but she might also grow her
audience and make money selling shirts
or doing a brain deal and I can use
Elle's footage in my video without
asking her because I know that the worst
that's gonna happen is that I'm gonna
lose monetization which sucks but isn't
the end of the world now of course this
is not a perfect system and has two very
big flaws one only large rights holders
have access to this system if you're an
independent filmmaker or musician or
photographer it's
very difficult to get your content into
the Content ID system YouTube does not
and will never let everybody into the
system in part because it's very easy to
abuse which leads us to the second
problem it's very easy to abuse even
sometimes accidentally here's a
hypothetical situation for you say The
Daily Show includes some footage from
NASA that's in the public domain in a
clip that they upload to YouTube they
then claim that clip as their property
but then other people also upload videos
that have this same public domain clip
from NASA in their video the Content ID
system doesn't know the difference
between the part of the Daily Show clip
that's their property and the part
that's in the public domain
all those people suddenly have their
content claimed they might not know how
to dispute that claim or they might be
afraid to dispute that claim because
they might end up with a strike on their
account false claims have been a huge
issue since the beginning of Content ID
and they remain a really big issue
especially for small and medium sized
creators who basically have no recourse
if they hit that third strike so it's a
system with problems but it's not not
working there's lots of interesting
creative things being done on the
platform so far YouTube has allowed that
stuff to continue happening without
being sued out of existence well it's a
creative and economic ecosystem built on
policies and individual choices not on
the law apparently this is all possible
because of what's called safe harbor
laws and we have a really good big one
here in the US that basically says
rights holders cannot sue YouTube for
the laws that have been broken by the
users of the platform and that turns out
to a little bit weakened intellectual
property because that means that we can
use video from the English Football
Association or whatever it's called and
they can block our video they can take
down our video they could even issue us
a copyright strike but they can't really
sue us because the amount of money it
would cost to pay lawyers to sue us is
literally more money than our company
has in its bank account doing this
individually for tons and tons of small
creators it's just not logistically
possible but doing it all at once for
all content that had English Football
Association stuff inside of it that was
uploaded to YouTube if they could sue
YouTube for that YouTube has tons of
and has had lots of English football
association of stuff illegally uploaded
to its site that would be a great
lawsuit waiting to happen
but safe harbor laws make it so that
YouTube isn't responsible for the dumb
decisions of creators like me which is
good cuz John and I are like among the
more trustable YouTube creators and you
still can't trust us to not break the
law so the system is kind of set up in a
way where YouTube has figured out how to
satisfy the requirements of the law and
from there the law doesn't matter
anymore this isn't how it's supposed to
work like if you break the law you're
supposed to get fined or arrested you
are not supposed to get claimed or taken
down copyright law or even the the
modern idea of what copyright is was not
designed for a world in which literally
everyone is a distributor much less for
a world in which everyone is a rights
holder it's not law it's YouTube's
policy informed by the law but its
consequences are just as significant
like having your channel D monetized or
removed to the platform isn't that
different from a fine now you can
challenge a takedown or a block but if
you do that in my opinion at least
you're much more likely to get a strike
for example the Football Association
didn't issue a strike to our channel but
if we challenged their block that would
annoy them because a human being would
have to deal with it and most of these
arguments come down to what's called the
fair use doctrine though it is often
claimed to be simple by creators like
myself fair use is not simple and in
fact we have pretty much an entire
episode of crash course intellectual
property dedicated to explaining how
unsympathetic oppe right law does not
work great in today's society you should
watch it but there are literally not
enough lawyers alive in the world today
to argue all of the fair use cases that
YouTube has created for us and courts
have not been consistent at all in how
they determine what is and is not fair
use even within individual countries and
there are also hundreds of different
countries all with different laws so you
can see how this can get complicated
really fast this isn't to say that you
shouldn't dispute claims if a claim has
been made on your content and error or
if there's a good case for fair use
dispute that claim that's the only way
this is
works but if you just Hank green style
used to Willie Nelson the song because
it made the video better don't dispute
that claim that's how you get a strike
so John was your video last week
fair use probably not what was it an
excellent promotion of the FA Cup was it
great
content for the rights holder was it
better for them to have the content on
YouTube than to have it removed
I think everyone even the English
Football Association if they actually
watch the video would agree that is
probably better for that video to be out
there than to be blocked so that brings
up another hairy question is it okay for
rights holders to take down content when
they don't like it but leave up content
that they do like and we have in fact
seen this explicitly among independent
creators where creators are commenting
on each other's content in ongoing drama
feuds and then they escalate that by
issuing takedown notices and copyright
strikes on a channel that they're
feuding with so would it be okay for the
Football Association to leave your video
up if they like it but take it down if
it's really mean about football Minh
talks about how it's the dumb sport ins
very slow and no one ever scores goals
not my personal opinion I'm just saying
that's a video people could make again
it doesn't matter
this isn't about law anymore no one has
the time or money or inclination to take
any of this stuff to court the current
state of copyright is kind of only
peripherally related to the law it's
much more related to the policies of the
platforms on which we operate our
businesses and our lives which is a
strange situation to be in as we realize
that we are kind of citizens of
corporations when YouTube changes policy
in ways that benefit creators which it
has done for example when it stopped
sending money to rights holders who
claimed videos immediately and instead
held that money while waiting to see if
there was a dispute it doesn't do that
for legal reasons it doesn't because its
creators yelled at it enough that they
listened almost like a government and
changes in YouTube's policy have
real-world legitimate effects on
intellectual property and how creative
people interface with it that's what I
mean when I say that we've moved beyond
the law for me you
to policy matters far more than the
courts when it comes to copyright and we
didn't really have another option
because copyright as written is
fundamentally broken we know that
because we are all constantly breaking
the law and no one cares here's an
example this jiff I don't know in this
jiff
it was absolutely stolen but everybody
agrees that gifs are ok because culture
blew past the law and also apparently
standardized pronunciation of the word
yeah but somewhere between gifs and
soccer highlights there's a line and no
one knows where that line is but it is
not being defined by governments at
least not at the moment
seriously if you're in the EU look into
article 13 it's pretty scary makes
intellectual property much stronger
which in my opinion probably makes
creativity a lot weaker if you examine
this for long enough it becomes very
clear that all of this is much more
about like how we feel what seems right
and also existing tears of power than
what like the law says it's a mess and
John if you look closely there might be
a way for you to watch the video that
you up a little last Tuesday those
slightly modified for people who might
have missed it I'll see you on Tuesday