YouTube Fails in Handling Copyright Takedown Notices
Like others, YouTube has become one of the common places for posting copyrighted material without permission and being slammed with actions like account termination if flags are raised. But, Maria Schneider, a Grammy award-winning musician, isn’t satisfied with the ongoing YouTube’s actions. In a lawsuit she filed against YouTube, she blamed the platform for not taking appropriate actions against the copyright infringers after complaining through a notice. More specifically, she pointed out that YouTube identifies the infringement with Content ID, which is ineffective in dealing with such cases. In her filing, she said YouTube’s “two-tiered system essentially trains YouTube’s billions of uploading users that there is essentially minimal risk to uploading to their hearts’ content.” To prove this, she demanded YouTube to share with her all the copyright infringement notices served on the platform since 2015! While this plea was rejected by YouTube, calling it’s too much, Schneider narrowed her asking to provide the data such as account names, email addresses, IP addresses used for uploading the content, and timestamps of those infringers, since 2015 again. Also, she demanded an explanation on how YouTube has handled them all. YouTube called these demands “overly broad” and “unduly burdensome” repeatedly in its response. While we look at how YouTube tries to thwart these demands, it’s interesting to see how judge reacts to this and deliver the judgment.
