Content warning Long thread/6
One of the panels featured dueling musicologists debating the merits of the *Blurred Lines* case. That case marked a turning point in music copyright, with the Marvin Gaye estate successfully suing Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for copying the "vibe" of Gaye's "Got to Give it Up."
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Content warning Long thread/7
Naturally, this discussion featured clips from both songs as the experts - joined by some of America's top copyright scholars - delved into the legal reasoning and future consequences of the case. It would be literally impossible to discuss this case without those clips.
And that's where the problems start: as soon as the symposium was uploaded to Youtube, it was flagged and removed by Content ID, Google's $100,000,000 copyright enforcement system.
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Content warning Long thread/8
This initial takedown was fully automated, which is how Content ID works: rightsholders upload audio to claim it, and then Content ID removes other videos where that audio appears (rightsholders can also specify that videos with matching clips be demonetized, or that the ad revenue from those videos be diverted to the rightsholders).
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Content warning Long thread/9
But Content ID has a safety valve: an uploader whose video has been incorrectly flagged can challenge the takedown. The case is then punted to the rightsholder, who has to manually renew or drop their claim. In the case of this symposium, the rightsholder was Universal Music Group, the largest record company in the world. UMG's personnel reviewed the video and did *not* drop the claim.
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Content warning Long thread/10
99.99% of the time, that's where the story would end, for many reasons. First of all, most people don't understand fair use well enough to contest the judgment of a cosmically vast, unimaginably rich monopolist who wants to censor their video. Just as importantly, though, is that Content ID is a Byzantine system that is *nearly as complex as fair use*, but it's an entirely private affair, created and adjudicated by another galactic-scale monopolist (Google).
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Content warning Long thread/11
Google's copyright enforcement system is a cod-legal regime with all the downsides of the law, and a few wrinkles of its own (for example, it's a system without lawyers - just corporate experts doing battle with laypeople). And a single mis-step can result in your video being deleted or your account being permanently deleted, along with every video you've ever posted.
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Content warning Long thread/12
For people who make their living on audiovisual content, losing your Youtube account is an extinction-level event:
So for the average Youtuber, Content ID is a kind of Kafka-as-a-Service system that is always avoided and never investigated. But the Engelbert Center isn't your average Youtuber: they boast some of the country's top copyright experts, specializing in exactly the questions Youtube's Content ID is supposed to be adjudicating.
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Content warning Long thread/13
So naturally, they challenged the takedown - only to have UMG double down. This is par for the course with UMG: they are infamous for refusing to consider fair use in takedown requests. Their stance is so unreasonable that a court actually found them guilty of violating the DMCA's provision against fraudulent takedowns:
https://www.eff.org/cases/lenz-v-universal
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Content warning Long thread/14
But the DMCA's takedown system is part of the *real* law, while Content ID is a fake law, created and overseen by a tech monopolist, not a court. So the fate of the *Blurred Lines* discussion turned on the Engelberg Center's ability to navigate *both* the law *and* the n-dimensional topology of Content ID's takedown flowchart.
It took more than a year, but eventually, Engelberg prevailed.
Until they didn't.
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Content warning Long thread/15
If Content ID was a person, it would be *baby*, specifically, a baby under 18 months old - that is, before the development of "object permanence." Until our 18th month (or so), we lack the ability to reason about things we can't see - this the period when small babies find peek-a-boo *amazing*. Object permanence is the ability to understand things that aren't in your immediate field of vision.
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Content warning Long thread/16
Content ID has no object permanence. Despite the fact that the Engelberg *Blurred Lines* panel was the most involved fair use question the system was ever called upon to parse, it managed to *repeatedly* forget that it had decided that the panel could stay up. Over and over since that initial determination, Content ID has taken down the video of the panel, forcing Engelberg to go through the whole process again.
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