Just because a claim doesn’t stand in court, doesn’t make it fraudulent. Actual fraudulent claims have landed people in prison.
ETA: Once again, I have no idea why I am being down-voted. The copyright fanatics here are really something else.
The burden of proof is on the wrong party and convictions for fraudulent dmca claims are extremely rare.
You’re talking about the court system. They are talking about Content ID. YouTube makes it easy to submit faulty copyright claims with little repercussions if they fail, so there are more fraudulent claims than you’d see in the actual court system. They want YouTube to penalize the abuse of their system more strongly so people that upload videos don’t have to deal with so much shit.
I understand the insanity. They want a private company to prosecute “fraud”. Yikes. Less Ayn Rand and more civics lessons, please.
The ask that YouTube manage their system better. Currently, they assume that a copyright claim is valid unless proven otherwise, and it is difficult for content creators to actually get them to review a claim to determine if it is invalid. So, a lot of legitimate users that post videos without actually violating anybody’s copyright end up being permanently punished for somebody illegitimate claim. What we want is for YouTube to, one, make it more difficult or consequential to file a bad claim, and two, make it easier to dispute a bad claim.
However, that’s not going to happen because the YouTube itself is legally responsible for copyrighted material that is posted to their platform. Because of that, they are incentivised to assume a claim is valid lest they end up in court for violating somebody’s legitimate copyright. Meaning that the current system entails a private company adjudicating legal questions where they are not an impartial actor in the dispute.
So your concern is legitimate, but it’s ignoring the fact that we already are in a situation where a private company is prosecuting fraud. People want it to change so that it is more in favor of the content creators (or at least, in the spirit of innocent until proven guilty), but it would ultimately be better if they were not involved in it whatsoever. However, major copyright holders pushed for laws that put the onus on YouTube because it makes it easier for them, and it’s unlikely for those laws to change anytime soon. That’s what I’d say we should be pushing for, but it’s also fair to say that the Content ID system is flawed and allows too much fraud to go unpunished.
