The music business is up in arms over the safe harbor/harbour protections enjoyed by the likes of YouTube, and it doesn’t care who knows.
The industry’s trade groups mobilised late last month, creating petitions against the legislation in the US which featured the signatures of blockbuster artists such as Katy Perry, Steven Tyler, Lionel Richie and Deadmau5.
These lobbying papers were filed with the US Copyright Office, which will ultimately make the decision as to whether the US safe harbor laws need some adjustment.
The managers’ filing in particular nailed the objective of the music business, which is deeply concerned by the fact that safe harbor means YouTube is not legally punishable for copyright infringement taking place on its platform.
“The current notice-and-takedown system was designed in an era of Internet connectivity characterized by screeching and hissing 56k dial-up connections,” it argues. “This was a time when downloading or uploading a song took minutes or hours, there were less than 2.5 million websites, and ‘user-generated content’ meant postings on all-text bulletin boards.
“In that context, a system that required music creators to police the entire Internet and give individualized notice to service providers of each link to unlicensed music might have had at least some logic to it.
“But it makes no sense at all in an Internet ecosystem with gigabit connectivity and nearly a billion websites. No one can police that vastness – and anyone who tries to do so finds the universe online is growing faster than our ability to inspect it for illegal copies of our clients’ work.”
“Since January 2014, over 98% of all YouTube copyright removal claims have come through content ID.”
YouTube filing with US Copyright Office
Now MBW has uncovered YouTube’s filing with the Copyright Office, which fires back at such accusations.
It points out that the platform’s Content ID system has been built to ensure that record labels, managers and others don’t only have to rely on DMCA notice-and-takedown tactics to get infringing content removed from its platform.
This is not going to go down well with music biz players exasperated by seeing their content continually played and shared on streaming platforms such as YouTube.
You can read YouTube’s full paper, which was filed by Google last Thursday (April 7), through here.
This is the key passage:
“Some in the recording industry have suggested that the safe harbors somehow diminish the value of sound recordings, pointing to YouTube and blaming the DMCA for creating a so-called “value grab.” This claim is not supported by the facts.
“As an initial matter, it is important to understand that YouTube has had license agreements in place with both major and independent record labels for many years; it is simply incorrect to say that YouTube relies on the DMCA instead of licensing works.
“Any claim the DMCA safe harbors are responsible for a ‘value gap’ for music on YouTube is simply false.”
“Those pressing the “value grab” argument also assert that the royalty rates in these licenses are too low, allegedly because the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown process makes it too difficult for record labels to withdraw their works from YouTube in the face of users re-uploading those works.
“This claim, however, ignores Content ID, which has been in existence since 2008 and which record labels (and many other copyright owners) use every day to monetize their works on YouTube. Thanks to Content ID, record labels do not have to rely solely on the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown process on YouTube—they can remove any or all user-uploads of their works from the platform on an automated and ongoing basis.
“Indeed, since January 2014, over 98% of all YouTube copyright removal claims have come through Content ID. Although business partners can be expected to disagree from time to time about the price of a license, any claim that the DMCA safe harbors are responsible for a “value gap” for music on YouTube is simply false.”Music Business Worldwide
