Along the same lines, I was publishing church services each Sunday between May and December of last year, with three English hymns in each, mostly old ones well-known across denominations. In total, I got 23 Content ID claims (about 20% of the hymns), claiming ownership of the melody. Every single one was for a work in the public domain. I disputed each, providing the name and date of death of the composer.
Two were released (one after three days, the other after 27), the rest were allowed to lapse in my favour (which happens after 30 days).
A few of these claims were duplicates (same claimer, same hymn). This showed that even though I had successfully disputed their claim in the past in the grounds of the work being in the public domain, YouTube had not revoked their ability to claim the melody in question.
If any of the liars claiming they owned these works had rejected my dispute, it could have become a strike, &c. and there would of course be no recourse, because Google generally refuses to arbitrate.
Also, an insidious aspect of the claims system was that YouTube basically didn’t tell you about the copyright claim at all when publishing; you had to close the edit page for the video and return to the list, and see if the Restrictions column for the video said “Copyright claim”. If you didn’t do that, the video would probably be being monetised by the claimer in at least some of the world (and if you disputed it, I guess Google would happily take the lot for the period while they had monetised it—though now that they’re putting ads on everything, this lot isn’t so different from the usual situation; depends on whether you hate the balance of the ad money going to the copyright liars or Google more).
(There was also one amusing case where some music being played at a nearby temple was audible during a quiet time in the service, and so I found out the name of the music being played. I claimed fair use on that one, because I didn’t even want that music in it, and it was quiet. That claim was released after ten days.)
I don't think I'm ever going to approve of any sort of automated copyright claim system but if Google wanted to make it one bit fair, they should use the same concept of three strikes against the accounts that make false claims and ban them.
Too easy for bad actors to create multiple accounts or game this system. I think this would end up hurting genuine claimants of actual pirated works more that it would help the wrongly accused.
That's putting a lot of trust in YouTube that they'll find every claim you make to be valid. Someone could make a dozen accounts with a dozen duplicate/similar versions of your song, you dispute all of them, are found in the right on 9 claims and in the wrong on 3, your account gets 3 wrong accusation strikes and you channel gets banned while the other person then marks one of those knockoffs as the official one.
> Every single one was for a work in the public domain.
While the sheet music is, the performance by other artists - as your own performance - is not. That's the issue the algorithm is having here (not defending).
The automated system would need to "understand" that this is indeed a new performance of a public domain piece of sheet music and not a reproduction of a copyrighted performance by somebody else. Even if you were note for note playing exactly the same (tempo and whatnot) with the same instrument tuned the same way. I think this would be an argument against automated systems. Whether a human could know that my bike-ride was scored by myself and not somebody else is doubtful though.
On the other hand, I do understand that people do not want their individual performances to be used without licence and there may be many such performances.
I said that two actual and copyrightable performances of the same melody are arguably indistinguishable.
Edit: How would an automated system know, that you did not just non-transformatively alter another person's performance, instead of performing yourself?
I have gained the impression that YouTube has two distinct techniques within Content ID, one for claiming melodies, and another for claiming specific recordings.
I’m absolutely confident that this is doing melody matching: these recordings are trivially distinguishable from any professional performance, with completely different instruments and playing styles, and with much lower quality singing.
For example, the most repeated claim was by “AdRev Publishing”, claiming “Crimond (The Lord's My Shepherd) - FirstCom” three times. (That song was also claimed once by “Capitol CMG Publishing and Adorando Brazil” as “The Lord's My Shepherd I'll Not Want”.) The first two times, I was accompanying with a piano-sound keyboard in the traditional four-part harmony—admittedly they sound fairly similar to one another; but in the third, an Indian was playing, using a piano-and-strings sound on a different keyboard, using Indian harmonisation (which is quite different).
I think we even had an unaccompanied song claimed once, matching throwaway0b1’s report.
These are completely different performances from whatever recordings the liars may have provided to the Content ID system. The melody is the only thing they will have in common.
My experience aligns with yours. I had a video of a half-hour coffee-shop-style gig blocked because at one point I covered "Hotel California". This was just me -- one voice, one acoustic guitar played poorly, and was down a whole step from the original key.
I believe that Hotel California is still under protection as a melody, rather than a performance.
Hence covers require either a license or fair use according to law. This differs a lot from the case of performing a 200 year old song whose melody is in the public domain.
Not to say it was wrong what you did, or that Google was in the right for flagging. But Google was legally correct.
(Google suggests controversy around the question of whether hotel California is public domain or not)
> How would an automated system know, that you did not just non-transformatively alter another person's performance, instead of performing yourself?
Yes, exactly. You have really nailed the problem with the current system.
Google chose to build an automated system. That was a choice, not an immutable fact. Google chose not to have a human arbitration process. Another choice. Google chooses not to punish the claimants that abuse the system. Another choice, not an immutable fact.
People aren't saying there must be a perfect automated system. People are saying Google has chosen to employ an automated system that does not meet the actual needs.
The criticism is for Google choosing to exclusively use an automated system, which can never successfully perform this task.
Ideally, the easy cases are automated, and more difficult cases like these are not. Hence, the system would know because of an actual DMCA request, rather than an automated YouTube request.
I've had the same experience (although I don't remember if it was specifically the melody being claimed). I don't always bother to dispute them (in my understanding, most of them just claim ad revenue, and we don't run ads), but sometimes it annoys me enough that I do. (The organist and people singing are pretty clearly pictured, and I get especially annoyed when it's a capella.)
Historically Google only put ads when requested by the channel, which required a fairly significant threshold of views and subscribers and supposedly manual review by Google. Some time last year they started a switch towards serving ads on all videos, regardless of the preferences of the channel (whether you’re big or small, whether you want ads or not), which I hear has been progressing steadily further and further. (I wouldn’t know. The internet’s too dangerous to view without an ad blocker. I also just generally hate ads and only see any at all when I leave my peaceful rural environs and go to the big city.)
My reading of the situation at the time was that if there was a copyright claim, the video would be monetised in certain regions (depending on the claimant). So once I cottoned on to the situation, I always disputed the claims before publishing, so that no one would be fed ads. Now, who knows. Once I returned from India to Australia I stopped uploading the videos personally, and I don’t intend to publish any of my own stuff that I might make to YouTube.
Two were released (one after three days, the other after 27), the rest were allowed to lapse in my favour (which happens after 30 days).
A few of these claims were duplicates (same claimer, same hymn). This showed that even though I had successfully disputed their claim in the past in the grounds of the work being in the public domain, YouTube had not revoked their ability to claim the melody in question.
If any of the liars claiming they owned these works had rejected my dispute, it could have become a strike, &c. and there would of course be no recourse, because Google generally refuses to arbitrate.
Also, an insidious aspect of the claims system was that YouTube basically didn’t tell you about the copyright claim at all when publishing; you had to close the edit page for the video and return to the list, and see if the Restrictions column for the video said “Copyright claim”. If you didn’t do that, the video would probably be being monetised by the claimer in at least some of the world (and if you disputed it, I guess Google would happily take the lot for the period while they had monetised it—though now that they’re putting ads on everything, this lot isn’t so different from the usual situation; depends on whether you hate the balance of the ad money going to the copyright liars or Google more).
(There was also one amusing case where some music being played at a nearby temple was audible during a quiet time in the service, and so I found out the name of the music being played. I claimed fair use on that one, because I didn’t even want that music in it, and it was quiet. That claim was released after ten days.)