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Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by sansnomme on Friday August 16, 2019 @01:21PM (#20717314)
Considering how advanced GOOG is at ML, instead of blocking they should just filter out the music instead. You don't even need ML for this if you have the original music piece. This way they can insert themselves as a middleman and act as a marketplace. If the video creator wants to pay for music and music companies wants to profit from it, they can go through Google directly. The two parties don't ever have to even meet each other or know who each other is.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by otakucode on Friday August 16, 2019 @02:07PM (#20717827)
The problem is, in the USA at least, there is a legal right to Fair Use of copyrighted works. Analysis of Fair Use issues is not simple and is impossible to automate. Music companies have been consistently breaking the law with their claims. The law requires them to do a proper Fair Use analysis prior to lodging any complaint under the DMCA. While it might be possible for Google to automate removal of a given scrap of music from a video, and providing that as an option to the music companies as an alternative to blocking the entire video or disabling monetization might be a good idea, it leaves a few problems on the table. Music companies would still be legally obligated to perform proper Fair Use analysis on every single video they do this to. Additionally, there is no such thing as a central copyright registry that Google could use to verify that the people filing the claims have any right. Googles systems can be, and actively are, abused. It's the sort of situation that I imagine Google really dislikes, as the law in this area is basically impossible to automate. So, they will probably just automate destruction of Fair Use because the groups most likely impacted have fewer resources to fight it.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by judge2020 on Friday August 16, 2019 @02:18PM (#20717949)
As noted elsewhere, the Content ID system is only there to make sure DMCA and Fair Use doesn't have to get involved since the only way to legally assert your use of a piece is Fair Use is to go to court, which is costly for YouTube if they're pulled into the case.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by wormseed on Friday August 16, 2019 @03:10PM (#20718584)
> The law requires them to do a proper Fair Use analysis prior to lodging any complaint under the DMCA.

No it doesn't

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by nkurz on Friday August 16, 2019 @03:31PM (#20718826)
What makes you so confident? I think the current belief, as decided in Lenz was that the law requires copyright holders to consider fair use before filing a takedown notice:

"The panel held that the DCMA requires copyright holders to consider fair use before sending a takedown notification, and that failure to do so raises a triable issue as to whether the copyright holder formed a subjective good faith belief that the use was not authorized by law."

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/13...

Have I missed some precedent that overturns this?

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by kevin_thibedeau on Friday August 16, 2019 @06:15PM (#20720232)
Lawyers are court officers and are duty bound not to advance frivolous or false claims. They can be charged with barratry for violating their oath in this regard.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by basch on Friday August 16, 2019 @04:00PM (#20719118)
Ive never understood fair use to be a right. Fair use is a weakening of right holders rights, a defense that can be used to get a case dismissed, despite copyright infringement having technically occurred.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by nkurz on Friday August 16, 2019 @10:08PM (#20721507)
This was a traditional understanding, but the decision in Lenz is largely based on the conclusion that "fair use" is explicitly an "authorized use", and not just a defense of infringement. Universal made the essentially argument you are making, and the court soundly rejected it:

"We agree with the district court and hold that the statute unambiguously contemplates fair use as a use authorized by the law. Fair use is not just excused by the law, it is wholly authorized by the law."

In defense of this (among other arguments) they cite portions of the US code that explicitly refer to fair use as a "right":

"See also 17 U.S.C. § 108(f)(4) (“Nothing in this section in any way affects the right of fair use as provided by section 107 . . . .”"

https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/13-161...

So while your understanding of fair use as merely a defense against infringement may be widely held, and arguably is even the historically accurate position, it doesn't reflect the way that the courts currently interpret the statutes.

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by basch on Saturday August 17, 2019 @11:01AM (#20724350)
Thanks. I hadnt read Lenz and understood it more to be saying its not ok to make bad faith claims you know you will lose.

Now I agree with your interpretation to an extent, however its only the 9th circuit court. Lenz is also odd in that the person claiming fair use is the plaintiff, and the suit itself is that a DMCA claim was frivolous. The video was restored after her counter-notification, and her lawsuit was later.

A DMCA taketdown request is itself not a lawsuit. So my interpretation of the ruling is not that "you cant sue someone" but that you "cant blast out DMCA notices." I read it as an anti-intimidation ruling. It is clear, that it sees fair use as authorized by law, but it also still categorizes fair use as an affirmative defense.

Ergo, fair use gives you a defacto right to not be harassed.

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by derefr on Friday August 16, 2019 @04:10PM (#20719217)
Correct: fair use is a defense. Like "self-defense" or "coercion" are defenses in assault cases.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by otakucode on Saturday August 17, 2019 @09:45PM (#20727692)
Fair Use is specifically an affirmative defense. Not a defense like self-defense at all. It's not a matter of 'yes I did a bad, but I had a good reason', but 'it is my right to do this, I did nothing wrong'. The other references to Lenz v Universal in this thread established this and it's been upheld in many courts.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by basch on Sunday August 18, 2019 @09:53AM (#20730133)
Self defense is an affirmative defense.

The affirm part is you conceding you committed the crime, and then you argue it was justified.

Lenz didnt confirm it was an affirmative defense, they ruled the way they did despite admitting it was an affirmative defense, one that can only procedurally arise after you've been accused of a crime.

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by Marsymars on Friday August 16, 2019 @04:42PM (#20719499)
I don't know about American fair use, but Canadian fair dealing is explicitly a user's rights. From wiki:

> According to the Supreme Court of Canada, it is more than a simple defence; it is an integral part of the Copyright Act of Canada, providing balance between the rights of owners and users.

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by Paul-ish on Friday August 16, 2019 @04:00PM (#20719119)
Google is working on this. Look at section "Mute song only (beta)"

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2902117?hl=en

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by crazygringo on Friday August 16, 2019 @02:09PM (#20717859)
You very much do need ML for that, because the EQ distribution of the music in a video is going to be completely different from the original, and both volume and EQ distribution will vary even within fractions of a second as the sonic environment changes as objects move.

The only time it's closer to trivial to filter out is when the music has been edited in as an audio track, and no additional filters/EQ have been applied. But even then, subtracting a lossless original will leave funky-sounding audio compression artifacts, a "ghost" of the song left behind.

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by derefr on Friday August 16, 2019 @04:09PM (#20719209)
> But even then, subtracting a lossless original will leave funky-sounding audio compression artifacts, a "ghost" of the song left behind.

But 1. that's not YouTube's problem, and 2. most content-creators would prefer a segment of weird artefacted audio to their video being demonetized.

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by Felk on Friday August 16, 2019 @02:19PM (#20717975)
Youtube already offers the option to either just mute the relevant section, or remove the music only. It's marked as beta and doesn't always work, but it's there.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by nickjj on Friday August 16, 2019 @05:35PM (#20719952)
I'm not sure if ML can solve this problem in a decent way.

For example, let's say most of your voice falls within a range of 120hz to 160hz and there is a guitar playing in the background at various frequencies where a majority of it happens to match your voice's frequency. Now your goal is to cut out the guitar, leaving a pristine copy of your voice.

How would ML or any strategy be able to differentiate a voice or guitar at 140hz?

I deal with a similar problem when recording my voice for video courses in a non-treated room. I have to set up a noise gate to lower the volume of certain frequencies (background computer fans, etc.) until you can't hear them. They tend to give off a low frequency compared to a human voice, but the more loud the fan is relative to my voice requires setting the noise gate to a higher frequency.

If you try to filter too much, then your voice gets cut off for those frequencies and it sounds horrible. It either cuts out entirely or you sound super dirty and metallic since your wave forms are all jaggy instead of smooth lines.

I'm no ML expert but I think this problem would be insanely hard to solve in a way that's high quality. You can bend your voice's frequencies and the frequency of various instruments in a similar way. Then on top of that, there's going to be situations where the singer's voice is going to happen while you're talking. That'll be even harder to separate if you criss-cross frequencies. And on top of that, you might have 2-3 guitars, drums, keyboard, a singer and your voice all hitting the same frequencies. So much overlap!

I'd love to hear the quality of a tool that claims it can remove only the songs out of any audio footage that may include your voice, background voices of other people talking as well as other ambient sound (water falling, people shuffling around, cars honking, etc.). If I were watching someone's vlog I would want to hear the atmosphere of the place. Making it completely mute except for their voice would be extremely weird and unsettling (and still crazy complicated to do I bet).

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by davinic on Friday August 16, 2019 @06:30PM (#20720334)
Most productions use a recording of "room tone" to create a noise print, which is subtracted from the recorded audio to reduce noise. Software such as Adobe Audition have this built in.

A known song could be used as a time-series with a similar effect.

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by nickjj on Friday August 16, 2019 @07:29PM (#20720683)
> Most productions use a recording of "room tone" to create a noise print, which is subtracted from the recorded audio to reduce noise. Software such as Adobe Audition have this built in.

Yes, this is what I used to do with REAPER (a digital audio workstation tool). It was even able to do this in soft real time (that's how I recorded my more recent courses) with only 10ms of delay.

But from my understanding it does this by dampening or removing (depending on how aggressive you have it configured) the frequencies of your room or whatever sound you're trying to remove.

A relatively low volume fan hum is pretty easy to remove without distorting the target audio, but if the frequencies start to overlap with varying degrees of volume the whole thing becomes a jumbled mess.

To put this into perspective, the video at the top of https://diveintodocker.com/ used REAPER's noise reduction plugin to remove a pretty loud tower and power supply fan. Even with studio grade headphones at max volume you probably won't notice a hint of hissing or white noise when I'm not speaking, but if you have a trained ear there's a subtle clamping down on the lower end of my voice's range. 99.9999% of people won't notice it, but this is also a best case scenario for removing frequencies (a constant low hum at relatively low volume) that rarely interweaves with my voice's frequency. The whole game changes with multiple instruments and volumes that cut across your range.

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by sansnomme on Saturday August 17, 2019 @08:06PM (#20727267)
You can use ML to optimize for the vocals e.g. like noise cancellation. The upside of this is that you will almost certainly get crystal clear voice output (since 1) you have the known music piece, may not be the exact copy but the signal is there 2) the voice is clear since the music is background music). The only downside is that clear voice is not the same as original voice and it may sound unnatural, but you won't have crackling or any of the other artefacts of traditional filter. This is purely in theory of course, I have not tested it yet.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by nickjj on Sunday August 18, 2019 @06:14PM (#20733288)
I'm really looking forward to seeing examples of how it performs in real situations.

Even outside the scope of removing copyright material there's a lot of interesting use cases, like being able to split vocals or instruments from any track so you can practice layering in your own music as a musician (such as playing your own guitar solo over an existing song).

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by chrisseaton on Friday August 16, 2019 @01:36PM (#20717471)
GOOG?
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by krastanov on Friday August 16, 2019 @01:38PM (#20717496)
This is Hacker News's fashionable way to refer to companies: not by their actual name but by their NASDAQ ticker name.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by toxican on Friday August 16, 2019 @01:46PM (#20717586)
Seems pretentious as hell, to be honest.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by derefr on Friday August 16, 2019 @02:09PM (#20717850)
It's what business newspapers do, especially online, as the name serves as a microformat causing the newspaper's CMS to automatically inject ticker information either on-hover or as an embedded aside.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by chrisseaton on Friday August 16, 2019 @02:18PM (#20717951)
Some ticker names have no relation to the company name though! You often have to go and look them up.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by smallbigfish on Friday August 16, 2019 @02:30PM (#20718104)
Cloudfare has 'NET' IIRC. Funny!
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by owlninja on Friday August 16, 2019 @01:48PM (#20717619)
I'll have to admit I was also very confused by the use of 'FANG' so often around here.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by xeroaura on Friday August 16, 2019 @01:55PM (#20717706)
FANG at least makes more sense since the abbreviation is a lot faster than typing out the multiple company names.

Ambivalent about stock tickers. Sometimes have to look them up, haha.

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by moate on Friday August 16, 2019 @01:55PM (#20717697)
FANG (or FAANG) isn't a ticker symbol though, just industry jargon.
Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by perl4ever on Friday August 16, 2019 @09:40PM (#20721383)
FANG is the ticker symbol of Diamondback Energy, a Midland, Texas oil company.

https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/FANG/overview

Re:YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyrig... by moate on Sunday August 18, 2019 @12:04PM (#20731008)
I understand that it is a ticker symbol, but nobody on Hacker News means Diamondback Engegy when they say "FANG" "FAANG" or "FANG/FAANG Companies".

But great point though.