John from Brooklyn,

If I didn't know better I would say that you're John from Viacom.

When you say "... when an indie filmmaker is presented with a clerical error that could be very easily fixed..." What makes you think that the filmmaker did not try to solve "a clerical error" that was not even hers, for starters.

Also, a company as powerful as Viacom has a very well trained staff to play such a dirty game on a filmaker, but can't hire a very good clerk? You know what, let's not go for a "very good" one, let's hire a decent one. Are you available?

so can I make a claim on some Viacom products?

I just watched the film, a cute little animated college film. I doubt anything in is remotely infringing on any Viacom copyright, but this is what God put Lawyers on the earth for. If you are not prepared to protect your copyright, expensive thou that may be, you will loose your copyright.

@johnfrombrooklyn: The problem is is that someone with a bit of grey matter between their ears should double-check Youtube's data considering the method in which its automatically generated. It's not that hard to watch the video that Youtube's system flags as potentially infringing.

It's not like Viacom has an army of trained monkeys watching every YouTube video to see if Cartman is lurking in the background. Viacom sends out these takedown notices based on data gleaned directly from YouTube. So YouTube sent Viacom the wrong data here. It's ironic that somehow posters feel that YouTube should be able to show free and profit from the millions of dollars Viacom spends to produce content. On the other hand, when an indie filmmaker is presented with a clerical error that could be very easily fixed, the only response is to sue Viacom for billions of dollars. Hypocrisy is a wonderful thing.

Contact the EFF. There is currently a lawsuit AGAINST a media company for sending a takedown notice over a fair use of a Prince song in the background of a baby video.

According to the DCMA, fraudelent takedown notices are a nono. She should cash in and teach Viacom a lesson.

@WolfDemon:

Nope, but I sympathize with their efforts to protect their content from being illegally distributed without their consent. If you don't think it's a problem that people are illegally downloading Viacom content and/or posting it to YouTube (and they are), then you also shouldn't think that what happened to the OP is a problem; if Viacom's copyright is meaningless, then the OP's copyright is meaningless too, and Viacom should be free to claim rights to the animation, run it on TV, put it on Viacom sites, whatever, all without compensation.

@crankymediaguy:

My point is that she hasn't suffered damage (no revenue lost), so the aren't any grounds for a lawsuit.

Also, for those of you advocating a British libel suit, it might be worth remembering that, while Britain does have lax libel laws, it also has loser pays.

I dont' know if this is possible.

@msbluesky: If the material is never removed from the site (you are just informed and asked to take it down) you don't have the ability to file for damages, but once it is removed for this cause without your consent (and you are indeed not violating copyright or trademark protections) have at it!

So I could claim ownership of something of theirs, but never remove it and get away with it? Please. What a freakin' joke that is.

Class action against Viacom from all of the recipients of their fraudulent claims.

I smell a potential Class-action coming on against Viacom... Can i join!...ooohhh i can imagine it now the whole redstone family (Those spawns of satan) in extreme finacial ruin and of course Viacom an National ammusements getting liquidated....Best revenge ever!

Wow I sounded creepy there..lol!

Under the DCMA if a company removes your item/product/in this case video from its website/server/online presence because another company claims the copyright/trademark/et cetera, you do have a right to file for financial damages if you were not violating the copyright or trademark. If the material is never removed from the site (you are just informed and asked to take it down) you don't have the ability to file for damages, but once it is removed for this cause without your consent (and you are indeed not violating copyright or trademark protections) have at it!

absolutely on board with an amendment to the dmca either implementing statutory damages for false dmca copyright holder claims or requiring websites to perform at least a modicum of due diligence to determine if a copyright claimant is legitimate. i have seen way too many false dmca takedown notices in the last year, this is getting ridiculous.

For the record, real people scan YouTube for infringing material as well, courtesy of the fine jerks at BayTSP.

I do find it interesting that Viacom is allowing the video to stay up.

Also, I'd file a counter-claim immediately.

So, you see "no story" in a multi-billion-dollar corporation falsely claiming someone else's work as their property? You don't think that it *might* be a wee bit difficult for an independent filmmaker to fight them if they decide to be difficult and refuse to acknowledge their mistake?

Here's a wacky thought: why doesn't Viacom make sure they know what the fuck they're talking about before they accuse someone of stealing their material?

And since I'm a lawyer only on this side of the Pond, Wikipedia has a brief summary of it.

The fact that the Ars Technica link referenced by Imaginary_Friend says that Viacom would be manually reviewing all content before issuing takedown notices, even though a takedown notice was not issued here, it's obvious that nobody reviewed it before claiming it. She should contact the EFF, because I think they would love this.

My understanding from reading the actual notice is that it is about eight hundred times more likely that Viacom is using an automated flagging system that threw a false positive than it is that they have specifically set out to try to harm an illustrator chosen at random who has nothing to do with them or any of their content.

It's not that this isn't unfair to her, because it is, and it's not that this doesn't mean YouTube needs to fix its matching system, because it probably does. And it's not that this is her fault, because it's not. But I suspect this is an automated system goof-up, and what it means is that YouTube needs to stop acting on claims based on an automated system unless it puts in a preliminary step requiring the company to review any flagged content individually before it (YouTube) sends this kind of notice to the consumer or takes the action of sending stats or putting up advertising. An actual human being's review should be required before action is taken.

I think the right thing for her to do is dispute the claim and use her case to point out the apparent problem of false positives, instead of spending her money filing lawsuits, which I frankly think will get her treated like a nutter. Remain calm but insistent and point out what's apparently actually gone wrong, which is an unacceptable substitution of automated judgment for human judgment, instead of arguing about a malicious attempt to steal that they probably aren't even guilty of.

What Viacom did was either perjury (if this was a DMCA complaint) or, the "lesser" offense, fraud.

After all, YouTube is worldwide, and she has done the animation for the title sequence for the BBC-..., as well as the graphic design for the show's website.

Branding someone as a copyright infringer might hurt the television industry's view of her, would it not?

There IS a story here. Viacom has notified YouTube that this work in question IS infringing on their copyrighted works. Not might be. IS.

I watched the whole video. I don't see or hear ANYTHING that's been sampled from Viacom's property. She's actually quite a talented illustrator and animator.

She should sue Viacom for claiming her content as their own. Unfortuantely, Viacom has more money than the artist and thus can bribe politicians, cherry pick judges and juries.

@ravensfire:

This sounds like exactly what happened. My assumption is that they use this system to flag and highlight potentially infringing videos, and they want the viewing count to be able to focus the people who check the actual videos on the highly viewed ones, which makes sense.

I am a film maker and make something other then for grins I am very careful to get signed releases from actors and seek out bands that want to get some exposure for music or otherwise make sure all content is mine and mine alone. Just like I am sure the woman for the OP did.
If viacom tried that with me for sure the EFF would be hearing about it. The biggest problem with the knee jerk reactions of huge content owners like Viacom is that if knowone pushes back at them when they bully it will set a very bad precident indeed.
Say I make a Music Video and it is shown on MTV But I do not give up the rights to the Video They just show it. And I also post it on Youtube.
Some kid likes the video and digitizes it off of MTV (Logo in lower Right screen) He is in violation. I am not. But what is he in violation of? Making an Illegal copy of a Viacom broadcast. By virtue of them broadcasting my video does not give them rights to the content.

I read youtube's Video Identification system faq and it sounds like the system is incredibly stupid (stupid as in requiring no human input, not stupid as in a bad idea). It sounds like what happens is that when a user uploads a video of sufficient length, google runs an algorithm on it that generates a hash code ([en.wikipedia.org]) for that video.

In this case, the hash code for Joanna's video closely matched the hash code for content claimed by Viacom. Its not that Viacom is claiming Joanna's work, its that her content hash sort of matches their content hash so a notification was sent to her. She should proceed with the Video ID Dispute process as normal. If Viacom is still claiming her work after that, she has her copyright and can use that against them.

This sounds like this is yet another case of bad things happening because humans were removed from the computer decision-making process.

It appears she can resolve this potentially here:

[www.eff.org]

It says it's for DMCA takedowns and I'm not sure that this falls under that specific categorization but it seems like a good place to start.

Specifically, look at this entry which says "If it is determined that the copyright holder misrepresented its claim regarding the infringing material, the copyright holder then becomes liable to the OSP for any damages that resulted from the improper removal of the material."

Oddly enough, it seem to only be the OSP (Online Service Provider, YouTube in this case) that can sue for damages... not the content-owner whose rights were violated.

.... not just claim things and leave it up to the other person to prove that Viacom does not have the right to it.

I'm not sure what I would do.... but I know I would be very ticked.

@jtheletter:

Assuming you are correct on the fact that DMCA notices are made under penalty of perjury, I believe that perjury is a criminal matter, so you wouldn't have to pony up for any lawyers to pursue a false claim, but you would have to convince a DA to prosecute (and I doubt the Manhattan or LA County DA's are going to pursue the cash cow that is Viacom).

This isn't the first time Viacom has done this; they've been sued over this very issue in the past:
[arstechnica.com]

Looks like they need another legal smackdown.

The responsibility needs to be on Viacom to prove their claim before anything is done to a youtube page. This is so sad.

So long as they don't come for Botchamania, I won't be rioting... yet.

Although mercifully, Barsuk probably doesn't care about my lone contribution... can't see them getting bent out of shape over a horribly out-of-sync video of one song. :P

VIacom can probably calim copyright to just about anything. Remember this?

*silence copyright*
"British composer Mike Batt found himself the subject of a plagiarism action for including the song, "A One Minute Silence," on an album for his classical rock band The Planets.

He was accused of copying it from a work by the late American composer John Cage, whose 1952 composition "4'33"" was totally silent."

They (Viacom) need not find much that they can have a copyright claim.

Remember this?
*Silence*
"British composer Mike Batt found himself the subject of a plagiarism action for including the song, "A One Minute Silence," on an album for his classical rock band The Planets.

He was accused of copying it from a work by the late American composer John Cage, whose 1952 composition "4'33"" was totally silent."

In this case, however, even this weak protection is lacking since this is Google's "YouTube Video Identification Tool" system or whatever. Which is probably YouTube's internal method for identifying and taking down infringements. No DMCA takedown notice is filed when someone uses this tool it sounds like. At least, that is what I think is going on here. Not legal advice/not a lawyer.

@Serenefengshui: Hammer, meet nailhead.

On a more serious note doesn't the DMCA have some protection against frivolous claims? Obviously I'm not a lawyer but I was under the impression that if I had your website taken down by claiming it had my content on it and it was later proven false that I was liable for something. Anyone know how that works?

I can't help but wonder if someone at viacom has decided to take this battle personally. They've decided that YouTube should not be allowed to live, for having the impudence to host South Park and Daily Show clips.

What next, Viacom claiming that it has all rights to Rick Astley and Rickrolling?

What is YouTube's new Video Identification tool?
The Video Identification tool is the latest way YouTube offers copyright holders to easily identify and manage their content on YouTube. The tool creates ID files which are then run against user uploads and, if a match occurs, the copyright holders policy preferences are then applied to that video. Rights owners can choose to block, track or monetize their content.

So, it sounds like YouTube's algorithm is a little trigger-happy...

-Oh noes, he didn't call for Viacom's demise, burn him!!!!-

/sarcasm

But with the benefit of the doubt, if this is a case where Joanna's video is completely original (content, music and otherwise), SHAME ON YOU VIACOM!

Wow, so they erroneously identified her video as possibly infringing, and now have the right to get the # of views! Wow, that's really awful, because the # of views is super-secret and there's no way for her to appeal the decision - oh, wait, the view count is right there on the video page, and the link to appeal the decision is right there in the email. Never mind.

They use software to try to identify infringing videos (yes, it is illegal to post South Park episodes without Viacom's consent - you may not like it, but that the law), and it's not totally perfect. Nothing's been taken down, nobody's getting sued, really, there's no story here.

I think the DMCA needs a retalitory method for this kind of crap. Original content owners should be able to get some sort of claim for FALSE claims against their material.

Regardless, this is complete and utter crap. An absolutely original production that has no Viacom-owned elements at all, and they're claiming it has audio or visual elements that they own. But oh, they're allowing it to remain up, how nice of them.

It's no YouTube but it sure is filled with more content I would rather watch.

I can stand what's on YouTube lately...too many PhilyD's and Hotforword's...