NASA Earthly Problems and Stupid YouTube Content ID

In terms of popularity with video broadcasting, the landing of the Curiosity rover could be argued only by the recordings of the competitions of the XXX Summer Olympic Games held in London. Thanks to the well-conducted testing under the load of the stream for millions of users, the broadcast, like the primarsenie itself, went perfectly - without delays and slowdowns, but for NASA a different, but already familiar problem from the events of April appeared.

An hour after the start of Curiousity, a 13-minute video appeared on YouTube on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on YouTube with a fragment of a landing broadcast. The new video on the nasatelevision account had the most simplified name for the average person, for some reason typed in the uppercase: NASA LANDS CAR-SIZE ROVER BESIDE MARTIAN MOUNTAIN (NASA SAPS ANYWHERE SIZE WITH A MACHINE NEAR THE MARSIAN MOUNTAIN). A few minutes later, instead of recording, a message appeared stating that the video was blocked because it contained protected content from Scripps Local News.
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The public domain video, which documented the most important phase of the search for life project on Mars, created by $ 2.5 billion in taxpayers and supported by research organizations from several countries around the world, was blocked on NASA's official YouTube channel based on a private news agency claim. How could such a mistake happen?

There are three main reasons for the disappearance of videos from YouTube against the will of their uploader: violation of the rules for providing services, receiving a request from the legal right holder of the materials present in the recording, or automatic detection of the presence of such materials. The latter is ensured by the Content ID system introduced in 2007.

YouTube (like all US sites) cannot just ignore the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), introduced in 1998, which regulates how website owners must respond to copyright infringement on their resources.

At the same time, manual monitoring of 72 hours of videos uploaded every second would require hiring about 200,000 moderators, which would cost almost $ 37 billion, which is roughly equal to Google’s 2011 earnings . Roads and lawsuits: both the plaintiff and the defendant will have to pay for the services of lawyers, and reimbursement of their services is not always allowed.

After numerous accusations of the YouTube service of making profits from “pirated” content in 2007, the Content ID tool appeared, which proved itself in independent tests so well that later the restrictions on the length of the video being uploaded disappeared.

YouTube's secret weapon against trespassers uses an algorithmic comparison of materials to find videos with copyrighted content. The video or audio track is blocked, or before playing, an advertisement appears, the deductions from which go to the right holders, which is ultimately convenient for users whose videos are not removed, and copyright holders who are given the opportunity to earn or block attempts to violate copyright, and YouTube, whose staff is finally left alone.

However, the main advantage of the system - the lack of the need to involve people in the work of sorting materials - is its main drawback.

The case of NASA is far from a phenomenon: according to the statement of the deputy head of public relations of the space agency, claims about the rights to videos come with enviable regularity - about once a month. For example, in April, after a Scripps application, a video with a NASA account temporarily disappeared with the participation of the Space Shuttle, which had outlived its resource, and riding on the back of the Boeing 747.



Moreover, the matter is not limited to the US space agency. The stumbling block was the singing of birds and the sound of the wind . Users say that Content ID behaves inadequately, identifies the white noise of a record, barks a dog, records the performance of old academic music as an object of copyright, and places commercials in favor of its holders, completely ignoring the principles of fair use. You can lose an account not by a court decision, not because of the whim of moderators or an independent commission, but only because of the application of the copyright holders.

The system of blocking prohibited materials on YouTube is very much biased in favor of claimants of rights and practically does not take into account materials that have scientific or educational value and include third-party material on the principle of fair use. At the gunpoint of the system are children singing Christmas songs; Even recordings of speeches by the most famous black human rights activist Martin Luther King on YouTube can not be found thanks to EMI's lawyers in the streets.

Despite easing in the DMCA, allowing the service to restore access to the material after the user's response request until the copyright holder sent the second complaint, YouTube only restores access to the video after the user's response only after the copyright applicant agrees or fails to respond 10 days From him. It is impossible to find a single case of harassment of copyright applicants for perjury.

Complaints about the actions of the applicants are meaningless: in response, users receive a notification that all right holders have reviewed the applications and are still confident that they contain protected material. Roughly speaking, this answer is equivalent to the statement: “Yes, this is mine, give me my money from advertising.”

At the same time with such tight control, huge amounts of copyrighted materials coexist. Digital piracy, as stated by Nick Bilton, can never be defeated; Content ID is sometimes bypassed by placing the desired video in a modified form: for example, you can shoot a movie with shaking hands or paste it into the screen frame of the television receiver, which the cat fixedly looks at .

What is the main rule of YouTube in the fight against unfair claims? Bold line "Do not make false requests" in the rules .

Any scammer can indicate that the video belongs to him, and the system will allow to send traffic to their own resources. The Russian offshore company Netcom Partners with pleasure uses this situation for its own benefit and captures other people's videos. Some companies, for example, Universal Music Group, can block videos even without reviewing applications.

Of course, the user can easily upload the video again, but after three warnings you can completely part with your Google account. As Bob Jacobs from NASA says, YouTube lacks the usual button of common sense, especially when it’s in the public domain.

The NASA video was nevertheless restored, as was the video of Lon Sedman again available. After publishing a short video recording in which he discussed the landing of the rover and showed several fragments of its recording, he received complaints from five different organizations at the same time. The symbolic amount of three dollars, which he earned on the video, was going to be given to six news agencies, which included in their news releases the landing record Curiousity, to which the Content ID filter was oriented.

A Scripps representative apologized and assured that the workers reacted to the false positives as quickly as possible, and this will not happen again in the future due to a change in workflow. But does such copyright hysteria make sense?