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451
Washing machine chime scandal shows how absurd YouTube copyright abuse can get (arstechnica.com)
submitted 5 months ago by jeffw to c/technology
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[–] CosmicCleric 229 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (11 children)

From the article...

But while many think that YouTube's system isn't great, Trendacosta also said that she "can't think of a way to build the match technology" to improve it, because "machines cannot tell context." Perhaps if YouTube's matching technology triggered a human review each time, "that might be tenable," but "they would have to hire so many more people to do it."

That's what it comes down to, right there.

Google needs to spend money on people, and not just rely on the AI automation, because it's obviously getting things wrong, its not judging context correctly.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

[–] [email protected] 75 points 5 months ago (1 children)

US Corporations: But we can't start paying people to do work! That would completely wreck our business model!

Workers: So you would actually be bankrupt? Your corporation is that much of an empty shell?

US Corporations: Well, we really just don't want to have to spend less time golfing, and having to pay people might eventually cut into golf funds and time.

[–] blanketswithsmallpox 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

YouTube is already a giant cost sink lmfao. It's basically the one decent thing they're keeping up still which is why they've been monetizing it as much as possible lately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

And I just canceled my YouTube premium family in favor of SmartTube and Spotify.

Somehow I'm yet to encounter a single ad in Spotify Free and I have no idea how or why.

But the downside is that I want to subscribe to CuriosityStream/Nebula and I can't find a referer link for the channels I like because they are all being skipped.

[–] chonglibloodsport 68 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Google is absolutely allergic to hiring humans for manual review. They view it as an existential issue because they have billions of users which means they’d need to hire millions of people to do the review work.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This isn't unique to google but if the system continues to be designed to allow companies to mask the true cost of doing business we will never move ahead past it.

We undervalue ourselves repeatedly at the sake of cheap products.

[–] chonglibloodsport 16 points 5 months ago

I’m not sure what you mean by “true cost of business.” The biggest cost here is the issue of copyright claims and takedowns which were created by law in the first place, not by a natural phenomenon.

No matter what system we design, you’ll find that people adapt to take advantage of it. Well-meaning laws frequently have large and nasty unintended consequences. One of the biggest examples I can think of is the copyright system — originally intended to reward artists — which has led to big publishers monopolizing our culture.

[–] nixcamic 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That seems a bit excessive, say all 8 billion people were using Google products, 8 million reviews would be 1 per thousand users which seems like many more than are needed since almost all users of Google are passive and don't create content.

[–] chonglibloodsport 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

There are an estimated 720,000 hours of video uploaded to YouTube per day. At 8 hours per day it would take 90,000 people just to watch all those videos, working 7 days per week with no breaks and no time spent doing anything else apart from watching.

Now take into account that YouTube users watch over a billion hours of video per day and consider that even one controversial video might get millions of different reports. Who is going to read through all of those and verify whether the video actually depicts what is being claimed?

A Hollywood studio, on the other hand, produces maybe a few hundred to a few thousand hours of video per year (unless they’re Disney or some other major TV producer). They can afford to have a legal team of literally dozens of lawyers and technology consultants who just spend all their time scanning YouTube for videos to take down and issuing thousands to millions of copyright notices. Now YouTube has made it easy for them by giving them a tool to take down videos directly without any review. How long do you think it would take for YouTube employees to manually review all those cases?

And then what happens when the Hollywood studio disagrees with YouTube’s review decision and decides to file a lawsuit instead? This whole takedown process began after Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube!

[–] nixcamic 10 points 5 months ago

But they don't have to review every video, just the ones that are flagged by the AI then contested, which is probably a fraction of a percentage of all of them.

[–] werefreeatlast 4 points 5 months ago

Just go to a public library, get on a computer and search for transparent undergarments. Or better yet, "the black tape project".

This will ensure the computer is going to be tainted forever with soft YouTube porn for everyone to enjoy.

[–] HereIAm 61 points 5 months ago (10 children)

They could also punish false claims. Currently the copyright holders (and not even that, just something that might vaguely sound like your stuff) can automatically send out strikes for any match in the system. The burden to prove it's fair use goes to YouTube channel, and if it's found to not be copyright infringement nothing happens to the fraudulent claimer.

A big step would be to discourage the copyright holders from shooting from the hip.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

Linkspam

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

From the article…

But while many think that YouTube’s system isn’t great, Trendacosta also said that she “can’t think of a way to build the match technology” to improve it, because “machines cannot tell context.” Perhaps if YouTube’s matching technology triggered a human review each time, “that might be tenable,” but “they would have to hire so many more people to do it.”

That’s what it comes down to, right there.

Google needs to spend money on people, and not just rely on the AI automation, because it’s obviously getting things wrong, its not judging context correctly.

I hereby grant approval for anybody to change, alter, and or use my comment for AI and commercial means.

[–] General_Effort -1 points 5 months ago

I hereby grant approval for anybody to change, alter, and or use my comment for AI and commercial means.

I'm guessing this is what gets you down-voted. The "information wants to be owned" brigades are out in full force today.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 5 months ago (8 children)

God I fucking hate YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I copy&paste the one unavoidable youtube video per week to mpv, so i'm not bothered with whatever they do (as long as yt-dlp works).

For playlist followers, there's a bunch of cli/gui tools.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Albino, who is also a popular Twitch streamer, complained that his YouTube video playing through Fallout was demonetized because a Samsung washing machine randomly chimed to signal a laundry cycle had finished while he was streaming.

To Albino it was obvious that Audego didn't have any rights to the jingle, which Dexerto reported actually comes from the song "Die Forelle" ("The Trout") from Austrian composer Franz Schubert.

Albino suggested that YouTube had potentially allowed Audego to make invalid copyright claims for years without detecting the seemingly obvious abuse.

"Ah okay, yes, I'm sure they did this in good faith and will make the correct call, though it would be a shame if they simply clicked 'reject dispute,' took all the ad revenue money and forced me to risk having my channel terminated to appeal it!!

YouTube also acknowledged in 2021 that "just one invalid reference file in Content ID can impact thousands of videos and users, stripping them of monetization or blocking them altogether."

"That rings hollow," EFF reported in 2021, noting that "huge conglomerates have consistently pushed for more and more restrictions on the use of copyrighted material, at the expense of fair use and, as a result, free expression."

The original article contains 981 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Machines can't tell context

They could back when everyone was using pre-AI context engines that were actually capable of it. Autocorrect is in the same boat. It used to change things correctly to match the context, and now a days it will change words to other words that entirely don't work within the rest of the context.

Though I am doubtful whatever detects music and sounds in the video literally ever had any kind of context seeking in the first place.

[–] ASeriesOfPoorChoices 13 points 5 months ago

tldr: "Soon after, YouTube confirmed on X that Audego's copyright claim was indeed invalid. The social platform ultimately released the claim and told Albino to expect the changes to be reflected on his channel within two business days."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

After the first wash cycle I turned the tune off. I mean, the guys putting the damn thing in place, your machine's legend, as well as the manual all tell you how.

[–] toynbee 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There's kind of a scary face in the middle of the washing machine in the thumbnail.

[–] jeffw 1 points 5 months ago

Totally missed that lol

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