Back in the day, I uploaded a music video of my relative, with filming, production and post funded completely by her, and with her retaining all the copyright. It was a couple of years before and I was the "guy who knows this computer stuff" so I did it for her. Fast forward to 2014, and I receive a claim that a company which acts on behalf of a certain nationwide TV station here has put a copyright claim on the video and that it will be either taken down or monetized (with the revenue going to that company). I angrily issue a counter-notice on her behalf saying that she holds all the copyright and there is no possible way that the claim has legal ground. A few days after that, I'm informed by YouTube that the company has lifted the claim and the video is back online.
What happened here is that there's a talk show on that TV station where she appeared as a guest, and they aired the music video during the show (with her consent, of course). The episode got uploaded to the Content ID system and YouTube detected the music video as part of the station's intellectual property. However, the fact that they immediately lifted the claim without even bothering to ask for a legally binding document, signed by her, confirming what I said in the counter-notice, is indicative of the fact that these claims are all hit-or-miss and that the companies who issue them are blatantly aware of that. As soon as someone issues a counter-notice, they bail out pretty quickly in order to escape the potential legal ramifications of issuing false DMCA notices, even though my counter-notice could have been completely false and with no legal ground of itself.
Isn't it possible that they automatically send the claims, but manually go over the counter claims? Somebody read your e-mail, looked up the video in question, searched for a contract proving they had the copyright. Finding none, they determined either you were right, or someone else was, but it wasn't them either way, so might just as well leave it with you.
>Isn't it possible that they automatically send the claims, but manually go over the counter claims? //
That's entirely possible but the company making the claim that they owned copyright is committing a [serious IMO] fraud and should be punished severely for it. If copyright infringement is a such a crime as the corporate world tries to suggest then false claim on copyright is far worse. The company knows that they will get false positives but continues.
One reason it's worse than mere infringement is it's an attempt to deprive either the public domain or the original owner in order to make financial gains whilst mere infringement is usually just for use. It's much closer to theft than plain infringement as it seeks to deprive the owner (or public domain) of the enjoyment (i.e. use or licensing) of the work whilst mere infringement generally does not.
AFAIK such fraudulent claims to ownership are not treated at all harshly in IP law? This is a case where it should be considered criminal [rather than just as a tort] as generally it's the action of a larger organisation against a content creator - the state should protect its citizens particularly when there are such imbalances of power.
The problem is that these youtube claims do not approach the law; the companies have private contracts with youtube that effectively let them have free reign; so it at no point goes anywhere near the DMCA system (not that it is any better at handling fraudulent claims)
Indeed but if a company says to YouTube "this is our IP" and it's not and they don't have proof that it is then they have likely knowingly committed a fraud. The fact that the fraud is in a private arena is neither here-nor-there - it's still fraud and still impacts the public and/or actual IP rights holders.
If YouTube send you a DMCA takedown notification and those calling for the takedown can be easily confirmed to have acted falsely - eg you created the IP then the law _should_ enable you to successfully get punitive damages awarded. That would balance the current law and go someway to ensuring companies/people would only claim ownership of IPR they were sure they owned.
At the moment a company can just take a splatter-gun approach, claim everything is theirs, get paid. When you prove they made false claim all they get is less money paid to them - without punitive damages [and criminal proceedings] there is nothing to stop this sort of abuse.
I had some bizarre experiences with both FB and YT content policing. First, I performed a Chopin piece on piano and it was instantly flagged by YT's content matching system. They reinstated it when it was evident from the video it was me performing. Second, I created a timelapse video and uploaded it to both FB and YT, using a classical music piece performed by US Army Orchestra (public domain) as background music. FB disabled it within an hour, after filling counterclaim they reinstated it for one hour and then suddenly completely removed without any chance to appeal. YT flagged it within one day and after appealing they put it back in a few hours and it's there since.
What happened here is that there's a talk show on that TV station where she appeared as a guest, and they aired the music video during the show (with her consent, of course). The episode got uploaded to the Content ID system and YouTube detected the music video as part of the station's intellectual property. However, the fact that they immediately lifted the claim without even bothering to ask for a legally binding document, signed by her, confirming what I said in the counter-notice, is indicative of the fact that these claims are all hit-or-miss and that the companies who issue them are blatantly aware of that. As soon as someone issues a counter-notice, they bail out pretty quickly in order to escape the potential legal ramifications of issuing false DMCA notices, even though my counter-notice could have been completely false and with no legal ground of itself.