News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by haywirez on Monday June 18, 2018 @12:31PM (#17339543)
As you might know, this is related to the disastrous EU copyright reform directive proposal that would mandate such filters put in place everywhere. Please don't be complacent, it's very important to do something about this.

At risk of repeating my comment[0] from 3 days ago, I'd like to appeal to you to contact the MEPs that will vote on Wednesday in the EU's JURI committee. This was the first time I called politicians' offices to voice my opinion. The assistants were shocked that a private person actually bothered to do so and seemed quite humbled - I could hear the change in the tone of their voice when they realised an ordinary citizen is calling. I think it's a lot more effective than the 1000s of e-mails piling up in their spam folders.

Please help out to make sure this directive proposal is voted against on Wednesday by the majority of the JURI committee. List of Twitter handles of reportedly yet undecided MEPs:

@jbergeronmep @1PavelSvoboda @FrancisZD @KaufmannSylvia @mcboutonnetfn @rohde_jens @marinhopintoeu @mady_delvaux @emil_radev

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320122

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by pitaj on Monday June 18, 2018 @03:02PM (#17340786)
According to some, YouTube's copyright filters / markers aren't good enough to satisfy the EU directive. It's insane. The DMCA is bad enough already. Copyright should be loosened, not tightened. Then maybe we'd see some competition in video hosting.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by avs733 on Monday June 18, 2018 @03:31PM (#17341006)
I've always felt like false assertion of copyright should cause the loss of copyright. Seems like a fair balance for me.

And before someone gets on me...I realize that these are automated filters that are rarely asserted by the actual copyright holder.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by ben_w on Monday June 18, 2018 @04:28PM (#17341440)
I agree with the sentiment, but I think in practice that would lead to something like patent trolls — organizations designed no face no threat from the normal consequences.

Plain old money based fines should work. Even a tiny fixed fee of $50 per error might be enough, given the scale of the internet.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by adjkant on Monday June 18, 2018 @05:04PM (#17341685)
I really like the per error idea - allows for large cases to have no barrier to contest but for the whole thing to not become like patent trolling. Maybe also some sort of threshold for mass cases, like a progressive taxation:

If you're right 95% of the time, you get a discount. If you're wrong 50% of the time, you pay the full fee.

Who would be in charge of setting these?

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by glenneroo on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @07:07AM (#17345498)
Or what about a system like they use in Finland to deal with speeding tickets - the fine is based on your income. The local paper has a weekly list of top offenders, which is amusing to say the least.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by scroogly on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @10:32AM (#17347016)
Sorry to hijack the thread slightly, but is only to introduce some visibility to the fact that this particular issue is nothing to do with the EU, or content ID, or anything like that.

Google is blackmailing the Blender foundation to try and get them to enable adverts.

https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...

edit - and Blender have now got https://video.blender.org/ in testing already. I didn't think they'd be the ideal people to issue ultimatums to on video hosting, given their technical specialities.

A situation like this triggered the development of git, (after the licence to use bitkeeper was withdrawn from the linux kernel team) so I will be watching the fallout with interest.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by hknd on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @05:55AM (#17353885)
Apparently Blender had more than 2 years to sign an updated contract - a contract which every partner had to sign to comply with updated legal regulations. Their existing contract would not work anymore (legal reasons?).

The Blender team never did that, and also never reacted to any youtube support mails.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by natch on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @03:43PM (#17359013)
That doesn't map onto the Blender account of what happened.

They said YouTube was requiring them to enable ads, but the ads checkbox was grayed out. Among other issues. Not that they wanted to enable ads on a not for profit site. But just taking this one issue, it's not clear how they could have possibly complied with Google's requirement, when Google keeps the checkbox UI element grayed out and unchangeable.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by cabalamat on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @09:39AM (#17346448)
> Even a tiny fixed fee of $50 per error might be enough

If the fine went to the person who uploaded the work, this would be good because it would force the filter to be robust in the face of adversarial attacks.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by dotancohen on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:35AM (#17352846)
That would create a cottage industry of borderline-infringing works designed to trigger the filter but win in court.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by DennisP on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @06:23AM (#17354002)
I.e. they would trigger bad copyright takedowns that weren't legally justified, forcing companies to stop doing those.

If it's possible to trigger those intentionally, then it's likely that it's also happening accidentally, and this policy would make that stop.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by ben_w on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @10:31AM (#17355727)
Possibly, but machine generating edge cases for the purpose of collecting fines feels like it should also be wrong.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by DennisP on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @10:49AM (#17355900)
True, but those edge cases have to convince a court made up of humans, who will probably have similar feelings. That might be a decent check on abuses.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by ben_w on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @10:31AM (#17347002)
I’m no lawyer, but deliberately performing adversarial attacks to get rich from being automatically and incorrectly fined feels like it ought to be somewhere between fraud and hacking (in the Computer Misuse Act sense rather than thr hackernews sense).
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by larkeith on Monday June 18, 2018 @04:32PM (#17341473)
Or for a minimum starting point, the accusers should be obligated to compensate the victims for lost profits, as well as time cost. The current system of penalty-free reckless false assertions is insane.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by mrmr1993 on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @07:30AM (#17345592)
The complexity here is that there are multiple parties involved: the copyright holder, who suspects there may have been an infringement; the uploader of the potentially infringing content; and the host, who wants as little to do with copyright claims as they can.

The DMCA strikes a balance for the copyright holder and the host, by letting the host avoid any liability for the copyright infringement, as long as they enforce valid requests by no longer hosting the content.

The new EU law builds on this principle, giving hosts more responsibility to check whether copyright might be being infringed. I'm strongle against the idea, but I can see the logic that the host is best-placed to actively monitor all uploaded content.

A big issue I have, both with the DMCA and this new legislation, is that there's no balancing in the direction of the uploader. Aggressive solutions like your proposal do address this imbalance, but they don't do anything to address the actual concerns each side has.

If we want more reasonable copyright laws in this arena going forward, we should also be pushing for an uploader's right to appeal, as a balance against the rights of and affordances for the other two parties: * There should be an 'appeals'/'counterclaim' process for content uploaders to take responsibility for the content. Presumably, to balance against the copyright holder's needs, they should submit their name and address when they claim that their content is non-infringing. * From the host's side, the uploader following this process should remove all responsibility for that content from them, so they have no concern about liability and can re-enable access to the content. * From the copyright holder's side, they need to be able to seek recourse if they still think the content is infringing. This can be done by taking the uploader to court, using the details they have provided.

I desperately hope this new legislation fails, but I think you were spot-on about aiming for a 'fair balance', and even acheiving that would be a great improvement.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by AlanSE on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @07:48AM (#17345691)
I don't think your proposal would do anything to reduce the rates of false negatives, because there's no incentive to avoid them. Many false negatives will never get identified in the first place, because if a side-project pedestrian creator wasn't going to make any money off a creative work, why would they expose themselves to a possible court summons?
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by mrmr1993 on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @08:41AM (#17346012)
This is all true, but it does do something to start redressing the balance. Once we're at the stage where content creators have some of the control back, then we can start looking at reducing the stakes for non-profit content, limiting the claims rights holders can make if they abuse the system, etc.

Expecting a solution that covers everything first time -- and trying to persuade people that the special cases are necessary without seeing the system in action -- is a great way to achieve slow/no progress.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by taneq on Monday June 18, 2018 @09:35PM (#17343109)
> I've always felt like false assertion of copyright should cause the loss of copyright.

Which copyright should be lost, if the assertion was false?

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by josephcooney on Monday June 18, 2018 @11:13PM (#17343535)
I'm guessing here, but if you claim that work Y infringes your copyright of X. If it turns out to be false you lose copyright of X.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by colordrops on Monday June 18, 2018 @11:19PM (#17343555)
The one that is falsely being infringed upon.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by stcredzero on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @03:51PM (#17349776)
I've always felt like false assertion of copyright should cause the loss of copyright. Seems like a fair balance for me.

I'd say that a pattern of such behavior should trigger a penalty. It's not a single claim that's the problem. It's patterns of such claims en masse.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by garmaine on Monday June 18, 2018 @10:18PM (#17343312)
> I've always felt like false assertion of copyright should cause the loss of copyright. Seems like a fair balance for me.

I don’t understand. I put out a takedown request for something I don’t have the copyrights to and as a result the real copyright holder loses their copyright? How is that fair?

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by avs733 on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @12:30AM (#17343846)
I hold copyright on the song "I OWN THE COPYRIGHT ON THIS SONG"

You use my song in a fair use way

I claim you are infringing my copyright

you challenge, I fail to prove my case

I lose copyright on the song and it enters the public domain.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by Silhouette on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @03:27AM (#17344456)
Merely attempting to enforce a copyright that you legitimately hold against one instance that might be fair use, and then having a court find in a real case that it was fair use, would be enough to lose copyright of the work entirely in your view?

That's so disproportionate that you might as well just abolish copyright.

Also, most of the world doesn't have fair use like the US does, though many places have similar but weaker provisions in some respects. US fair use law is somewhat controversial, because it arguably doesn't comply with international obligations.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by c4h8o3del on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @09:54AM (#17355319)
> That's so disproportionate that you might as well just abolish copyright.

Ideally that's what we would do.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by Silhouette on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @02:57PM (#17358543)
Maybe one day we will, but first someone had better come up with another economic model that demonstrably supports creation and distribution of new works anything like as effectively as copyright has. There are a few ideas with potential, mostly in specific niches, but no-one has come anywhere close to reaching that goal in the general case yet.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by barrkel on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @12:54AM (#17343958)
No, that's not what's being argued will happen.

I own the copyright on the song X.

Person A uses the song X in a fair use way.

Person B claims A is infringing.

Person A challenges and wins.

Then I lose my copyright, without any involvement?

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by detaro on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @06:47AM (#17354103)
Why would you lose your copyright in that case? Person B loses their (non-existent) copyright to the song. This would only fail if it'd be literally "all copyright on song X gets wiped, without looking at who owns it", which as you pointed out is obviously a non-workable interpretation of the proposal.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by henrikeh on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @01:27AM (#17344049)
You are replying to the person who proposed the “lose copyright” idea.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by barrkel on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @04:33AM (#17344722)
That's exactly right. The person repeated the concept, in a comment dated later than the other replies to the original; I tried to clarify why it wouldn't work.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by catach on Monday June 18, 2018 @03:38PM (#17341044)
Video competition certainly exists already [0]. But I agree that copyright terms are trending in the wrong direction.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_hosting_services

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by shados on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @11:50AM (#17347770)
Yeah, things like this will have similar effects as certain highly regulated sectors in the US, where software is 20 years behind the time and built for billions of dollars by huge contracting firms because it's so difficult/expensive to make anything compliant with the rules.

No one can build filters that are good enough beyond the big tech cos. They can build these libraries and hopefully open source them for everyone to use...but if they don't...

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by vetinari on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @12:28PM (#17348087)
> No one can build filters that are good enough beyond the big tech cos. They can build these libraries and hopefully open source them for everyone to use...but if they don't...

It is backwards: nothing but whatever can be build by big tech companies is good enough, because their lobbying and interests define what's good enough. It's also obvious, why it wouldn't get open-sourced then. Kicking the ladder and so on.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by eulers__number on Monday June 18, 2018 @07:10PM (#17342375)
what are you talking about copy right needs to be abolished
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by piokoch on Monday June 18, 2018 @05:03PM (#17341678)
That might help, however, for some reason I don't understand, this proposal hasn't created an outrage similar to the one we had seen before ACTA.

EU "wisely" has chosen voting time to be in the middle of FIFA Soccer World Cup, so many people are just sitting watching matches. This is also almost the beginning of the holiday season and many people are just relaxing, travelling, etc.

Apparently someone really needs that regulation to go through (hopefully it will not).

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by TeMPOraL on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @01:12AM (#17344002)
SOPA / ACTA happened in parallel with FBI shutting down Megavideo - a place where a lot of "illicit" streaming services offloaded the content to. Basically, a lot of people lost the free TV they were used to. The events were unrelated, but I remember them being widely seen by regular people as the shape of things to come.

Take away people's TV for some bullshit reason again, and they'll go to the streets.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by Tenoke on Monday June 18, 2018 @04:15PM (#17341329)
Thanks for this - I wouldn't have gotten involved, but I believe I have a much higher chance to influence policy in this case than I've ever had after seeing Emil Radev's name, and I've now done everything in my power to sway him.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by zyxzevn on Monday June 18, 2018 @04:00PM (#17341218)
I hope Google & Youtube will troll the EU and block all official state content for a while, until they see that this law is not working.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by test6554 on Monday June 18, 2018 @04:04PM (#17341250)
Google and YouTube have a more than $60 million solution in place that everyone hates. But that is more than potential competitors have. If it passes, they will surely benefit.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by toomanybeersies on Monday June 18, 2018 @10:34PM (#17343384)
There's a parallel in the tobacco industry of how seemingly harmful policies are actually beneficial for certain parties.

Philip Morris, the manufacturers of Marlboro cigarettes, lobbied in favour of laws restricting tobacco advertising. The logic behind this is that they have such strong brand name recognition, if tobacco advertising was banned they'd cement their position as the market leader, as there would be no way for other brands to gain market awareness.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by ehecatl on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @04:31AM (#17344716)
I had never thought of that. That's cynical genius of the highest order. AND they get to play the moral high-ground card of "seriously, we're sorry! We're on your side-- look at what we're doing to help!"
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by Wofiel on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @06:34AM (#17345349)
When tobacco advertising was banned from TV, literally all tobacco companies profited. It was a classic example of game theory - If one of them advertised, they all needed to advertise to keep up, but if none of them do (or were unable to because of regulations), they all profit because people were still buying tobacco.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by golergka on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @11:27AM (#17347556)
All, except a hypothetical new tobacco startup company. Or not so hypothetical new wave of vaping devices (I don't know much about this industry, just an armchair analyst here).
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by akavel on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @03:55AM (#17344559)
Thanks for your post and report; it made me think that my voice could actually make a difference and I just called, using the Mozilla tool! I got to speak with an actual person and in my native language. The guy seemed to know what's their stance and not to will discussing it, but he for sure mentioned taking note that they got some 6000 emails and also many phones. Anyway, I'm super happy I phoned, I talked with a real person, and the Mozilla website was super easy to use :)
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by cowpig on Monday June 18, 2018 @04:59PM (#17341652)
Would you mind linking to some information about what the proposal is, why it's bad, what the alternatives are, etc?
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by dwheeler on Monday June 18, 2018 @05:53PM (#17341949)
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by kartan on Monday June 18, 2018 @08:35PM (#17342827)
> The Article stipulates that platforms should “prevent the availability” of protected works, suggesting these ISSPs will need to adopt technology that can recognise and filter work created by someone other than the person uploading it.

But there is no requirement that at the same time protects fair use. To remove content just in case has no negative consequences.

> Article 13 is “incompatible with the guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms and the obligation to strike a fair balance between all rights and freedoms involved”

This looks like a one-sided law. It takes into account "authors rights", you can read it as big media conglomerates financial interests, over any other consideration.

This is an example of a law that puts some companies profit over any social consideration and will impact EU socially and economically in a negative way.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by BlackFly on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @03:19AM (#17344430)
> This looks like a one-sided law.

Yet the law says:

> Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate.

Ignoring fair use is neither appropriate nor proportionate. Also, taking someone's works down falsely would be a violation of this same article, since the content provider is obligated to

> take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works

which obviously precludes YouTube from just deleting your content on a false positive and not providing you with any recourse. Furthermore, article 13 only applies to

> providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works

and not smaller companies. The whole article basically sums up the idea: work together.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by Natanael_L on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @04:48AM (#17344814)
It's never going to be enforced in that way, though. It would just take too many lawyers to cover your ass if you tried that as a host.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by BlackFly on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @05:47AM (#17345104)
Obviously you cannot just allow copyright infringement because you are a small content provider. However, this particular article would not apply to you. You would have the ordinary duties already in law. Once you start to be large, then this article places an obligation on you to work with copyright holders directly in an appropriate and proportionate amount.

Other than misreading or ignoring parts of the law, I don't really see how it is unreasonable.

Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by gm-conspiracy on Monday June 18, 2018 @11:20PM (#17343562)
What do most EU citizens have as far as upload bandwidth and the cost for that?
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by Natanael_L on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @04:52AM (#17344827)
100/10 Mbps is a very common baseline in large parts of Europe. Some only has 10/1 (often old people on old contracts), some has gigabit speeds. Prices vary between countries a lot, often $10-20 for the cheaper options, rarely above $100-150 for gigabit (when available). Usually no data caps on home internet.
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by rando444 on Monday June 18, 2018 @05:02PM (#17341673)
Re:YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Video... by QasimK on Monday June 18, 2018 @05:39PM (#17341892)