You Can’t Fool YouTube Bots to Protect Copyright
If you’ve logged onto YouTube to watch an unofficial TV series upload, or even one scene from your favorite anime, you’ve probably seen weird things downloaders do to prevent YouTube from deleting their videos. Your show may be sped up a bit, voices are lowered, video is flipped horizontally, or covered in digital snowfall. You may have lived through this knowing that this degradation is a necessary sacrifice to avoid YouTube’s copyright bots. The bad news is, it probably wasn’t necessary.
Culture critic Mike Ragnetta says this whole video editing is just superstition. YouTube relies on good relationships with TV show, movie and music companies. Therefore, the site spent a lot of time and money on the development of a Content ID system that can recognize almost everything that a person recognizes. (It helps that most videos have the correct show and episode title.) He tells Lifehacker, “People are doing everything they can to bypass copyright protections and think they’ve beaten Content ID when in reality they just downloaded content. … which Content ID was not looking for “.
These downloaders may be wrong, but they are not crazy. Years ago, it was much easier to cheat YouTube’s algorithm. “I remember people setting up blogs and entire one-off YouTube channels just to test the system,” says Ragnetta. Since YouTube will close the account after receiving too many copyright infringement warnings, the stakes are high for frequent downloaders.
But as YouTube grew, so did its resources and the need to keep business partners happy (and avoid legal action). YouTube now allows anyone to register their content with a Content ID and track down violators. The algorithm is wrong about false positives: the site even filmed computer generated static because it sounded like existing static videos. Rugnetta explores the moderating influence on fair use in an episode of his podcast “reasonably prudent ” “Automated illegal actions” .
However, downloaders try all sorts of editing tricks. Ragnetta made a playlist of uploaded animes that distort videos in an attempt to avoid Content ID. The list has increased by two weeks, and five of the eight videos have already been blocked.
Many other users add disclaimers such as “No Copyright Notice,” which are even more useless because no one makes that judgment – just a ruthless, unforgiving algorithm. If the content “passes” the Content ID, it is because the content owner is not looking for it or has ordered YouTube not to launch a copyright infringing download. Content owners can simply advertise on the video and profit from it.
The good news is that many content owners are opting for the softer options. Some content doesn’t even receive ads. Ragnetta points to TheFlamingShark, which downloads full episodes of the popular anime, embedded in videos, in which he watches and responds in real time.
The genre is called Blind Reaction and is in the gray area of fair use. This could mean that no copyright holder has ever disputed TheFlamingShark, or that they have successfully proven that their video is a comment and therefore a legitimate fair use.
Rugnetta believes that one of three things happened:
1. This dude got the DMCA, noticed the backlash and won
2. This dude doesn’t monetize his videos, and the rules that Whoever-Distributes-Cowboy-Bebop put in place is, “If they don’t advertise at our job, no big deal.”
3. There is no Cowboy Bebop in the fingerprint database.
“I think it is LIKELY,” he says, “that the person after watching this video decided, using their human brain, ‘this is fair use, so be it.’ As far as the algorithm goes, these commentary videos are definitely not fooled. Either the copyright holder does not close the unauthorized downloads, or he did, and TheFlamingShark had to fight to restore them. (TheFlamingShark did not respond to a request for comment.)
So when you download content owned by someone else, don’t try to slow it down or flip it. You can try adding your own video commentary, but you might have to struggle with the deletion notification. If you lose this fight, you may lose your channel.
Again, you can always download to Bittorrent instead .
Update 1/25/2018 10:50 AM ET: This post was originally illustrated with an embedded fake Naruto episode, but YouTube removed it: