TL;DR: for a whole decade YouTube allowed a copyright troll to claim all the rights on a recording of a washing machine end cycle chime
The account of the copyright troll is still standing and it’s not permanently banned
IMHO in this case YouTube should permanently ban at the first offense any copyright troll that maliciously claim as their property something that’s in the public domain
Also: if it wasn’t that it affected a big streamer with lots of followers, YouTube would have ignored the problem
In 2021, YouTube announced that it had invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” to create content management tools, of which Content ID quickly emerged as the platform’s go-to solution to detect and remove copyrighted materials.
Content ID was introduced in 2021? Only 3 years ago? I thought it was significantly older.
Dunno if they meant something different or typoed the year.
Or they just made an announcement in 2021 about their existing content management tools and how much they’ve spent on them over the years. That’s how I read it anyway.
That’s it! When I grow up I won’t become an astronaut or firefighter. I’m going to become a copyright troll!
I recommend people to read the comments in that thread, too. A lot of them are rather insightful; they get it - the problem is not just Google being a cheapstake, but also the copyright laws themselves.
This one is IMO specially insightful:
… and that is the strategy, right? It is cheaper for them [YouTube] to have a botched process that most people will not even try to fight, then to become more sophisticated (i.e., involve more actual humans) in order to preempt complaints. Alphabet / Google / YouTube are so big they can literally just ignore their users and still get away with it.
Yeah the DMCA really fucked things up for creative work. It’s way too easy to take down things you don’t like fraudulently.