Youtube to manually review some claims

Google-owned YouTube is set to alter its algorithms to reduce invalid copyright infringement claims on its video-sharing site and soon it will begin manually reviewing some claims instead of the system automatically blocking disputed footage.

One month before, the First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention was wrongly flagged by algorithms just after it aired. YouTube, the official streaming partner of the Democratic National Convention, had automatically put a copyright blocking message on the live-stream video of the event shortly after it ended.

Thabet Alfishawi, the rights management product manager for YouTube, addressing the issue of false positives and outright abuse of the system, said, “We’ve improved the algorithms that identify potentially invalid claims. We stop these claims from automatically affecting user videos and place them in a queue to be manually reviewed.”

The procedure till now.

Five years ago YouTube adopted a filtering system, which enabled rights holders to upload music and videos they own to a “fingerprinting” database. When YouTube account holders upload their videos, the algorithm known as Content ID scans new uploads against the copyright database for matches.If a full or partial match is detected, the alleged rights holder can have the video automatically removed, or it can place advertising on the video and make money every time somebody clicks on the video.

But if Content ID over-matches or a unauthorized person manages to feed the filter content it doesn’t own, a YouTube user could see her video hijacked through a false copyright claim because Content ID had largely functioned on auto-pilot.

The new rules that were announced yesterday, require the alleged rights holder to abandon the claim or file an official take-down notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, if the uploader challenges the match. 

“Prior to today, if a content owner rejected that dispute, the user was left with no recourse for certain types of Content ID claims (e.g., monetize claims). Based upon feedback from our community, today we’re introducing an appeals process that gives eligible users a new choice when dealing with a rejected dispute,” Alfishawi said. “When the user files an appeal, a content owner has two options: release the claim or file a formal DMCA notification.”

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