YOU. Your women are mine. Give them to me. I want to sell them

YouTube's copyright killjoy bots amok

Content ID MIGHT be a clever piece of software. There's just no evidence to support that

In the event, all my friend had to do was respond to the claim and it was settled within 24 hours. It was a simple mistake on the part of the claimant. No worries, all smiles, glad to get it sorted, etc.

Then it happened again, a different company trying their luck to claim copyright another of my friends’ videos. Once again, they responded and managed to get the claim rescinded on the same day. What the heck is going on?

It’s like this. YouTube provides recognised copyright owners with a tool called Content ID that helps them profile their own content and hunt for unauthorised copies across the YouTube servers. When it finds a match, it flags a message on the user’s YouTube channel to say that it has identified copyright content in the allegedly offending video, giving the user the opportunity to respond or take the video down.

Here’s the first problem: Content ID might be a clever piece of software but it is also thick as shit. Comparing the videos above, the only common feature is that there are gradient colours in the background. Duh, me see pink, me see purple, me see match. Ker-Ching! Content ID, he catch pirate!

Here’s the second problem: when a user responds to the claim, the message isn’t sent to YouTube but to the copyright claimant. This makes sense, of course. YouTube can help claimants hunt down copyright thieves but it does not want to get involved in disputes. If it's to maintain its position as a platform rather than a publisher, it can’t. So this leaves you at the mercy and integrity of the claimant – as indeed David was about to find out.

With crushing inevitability, the whole thing happened yet again. This time, an international rights management business called INgrooves claimed one of David and Heidi’s ASMR videos was in breach of its copyright customers. This time, it turned nasty.

Getting used to this by now, David fired off his response – “it’s my wife’s voice, it’s Final Cut Pro X generating the visuals” – but this time there was no apology and withdrawal of the claim. Instead, INgrooves simply confirmed the claim by return, whereupon my friends’ YouTube channel automatically got slapped down with a naughty-boy strike. Three strikes and you’re kicked off YouTube.

David tried to complain and received a second automatic rejection by INgrooves. At this stage, there appears to be no appeal. YouTube assumes that if the alleged copyright owner reconfirms the claim after the user’s response, the claim must be valid.

But it gets worse. For a giggle, David had triggered the monetisation option for the video to see what little adverts might appear on top. With no little pride, he tells me they amassed a fortune of ten pence during the week before INgrooves barged them out of the way.

And barge they did. By making its erroneous claim and ignoring the user response, the company effectively took over ownership of David and Heidi’s work, before plonking their own monetisation scheme onto it and, one assumes, they had the potential to earn pocket money from it themselves.

In no way am I suggesting that INgrooves is an evil bunch of bastards snatching other people’s copyright on purpose. Defending the intellectual property of content creators is a noble enterprise. Writing as a copyright owner myself, I have made use of copyright organisations in the past to chase publishers who nick my material without paying. The difference, of course, is that it was my material I was chasing, not someone else’s that I simply claimed was mine.

The fact remains that INgrooves stole my friend’s wife and sold her for profit on YouTube. Does this mean if I upload some holiday videos, they will try to steal my children and sell them too?

No, I’m being silly, of course. I suspect INgrooves is simply a victim of the Curse of Bot. Let’s send Content ID off into the ether and find us some pirates! Found some? Great! Now let’s use a mindless autoresponder to deal with (i.e. ignore) the whingeing replies we get from the buggers! That’ll teach them to deal with our all-seeing, all-knowing, carpet-bombing software! Talk to the bot ’cause we ain’t listening!

This was pretty much confirmed by INgrooves when David, not one to give in to the mindless monolith of braindead authority, began ripping up pavements and shouting down brick walls outside INgrooves’ virtual towers. This prompted a human – a human! – to look at the video and come to the obvious conclusion that it had absolutely no connection whatsoever with any of its clients. The eventual response from INgrooves was an apology, a release of the copyright claim and a refreshingly frank, if shamelessly evasive, admission that “YouTube's ContentID system can get a little wonky at times”.

Wonky? You deal in video copyright! How can you do that without actually LOOKING at the videos you claim have been pirated?

Unfortunately, the message of apology contained email history of some internal correspondence at INgrooves, in which a fellow employee at the organisation had referred to my friends’ ASMR video as “super creepy”. Thanks, guys. Sincerity and tact really aren’t your thing, are they?

Still, it has given me an idea. For those with a less honest and more enterprising spirit out there, this surely presents a fine opportunity to make a pile of easy cash. Set up a company that “defends copyright”, run Content ID and steal copyright off other people with countless frivolous claims. All you have to do is hold on to other people’s videos for a short time – YouTube allows up to 30 days for a dispute to run its course – while your ads are showing on top of them, then release them a bit later with a half-arsed apology.

If David can make 10p in one week, I reckon you could set up some bots to trawl at least several thousands pounds a month this way without lifting a finger. Nor should you be worried by YouTube’s Content ID terms that state: “Content owners who repeatedly make erroneous claims can have their Content ID access disabled and their partnership with YouTube terminated.” Judging from the number of people complaining online about unsubstantiated claims by INgrooves in recent years, YouTube evidently couldn’t give a shit what you get up to with its “wonky” software.

Besides, if you want to take my women and sell them, at least make me a decent offer. ®

Youtube Video

Alexei Dobbsovitch is freelance technological man for hiring. He is doing IT journalism, editorial training and digital publishing. He wishes he could chase more copyright infringers like dogs. The problem is that his articles are many times translated into foreign languages and published elsewhere by dodgy European publishers and IT companies. Thankfully, they make it easy to find by forgetting to remove byline. No-one said thieving foreign dogs were clever.