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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Content warning Long thread/17
But that's just for starters, because Youtube isn't the only place where a copyright enforcement bot is making billions of unsupervised, unaccountable decisions about what audiovisual material you're allowed to access.
Spotify is *yet another* monopolist, with a justifiable reputation for being extremely hostile to artists' interests, thanks in large part to the role that UMG and the other major record labels played in designing its business rules:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing
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Content warning Long thread/18
Spotify has spent hundreds of millions trying to capture podcasting, in the hopes of converting one of the last truly open digital publishing systems into a product under its control:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/27/enshittification-resistance/#ummauerter-garten-nein
Thankfully, that campaign has failed - but millions of people have (unwisely) ditched their open podcatchers in favor of Spotify's pre-enshittified app, so everyone with a podcast now must target Spotify for distribution if they hope to reach those captive users.
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Content warning Long thread/19
Guess who has a podcast? The Engelberg Center.
Naturally, Engelberg's podcast includes the audio of that *Blurred Lines* panel, and that audio includes samples from both "Blurred Lines" and "Got To Give It Up."
So - naturally - UMG keeps taking down the podcast.
Spotify has its own answer to Content ID, and incredibly, it's *even worse* and harder to navigate than Google's pretend legal system.
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Content warning Long thread/20
As Engelberg describes in its latest post, UMG and Spotify have colluded to ensure that this now-classic discussion of fair use will never be able to take advantage of fair use itself:
https://www.nyuengelberg.org/news/how-explaining-copyright-broke-the-spotify-copyright-system/
Remember, this is the *best case* scenario for arguing about fair use with a monopolist like UMG, Google, or Spotify.
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Content warning Long thread/21
As Engelberg puts it:
> The Engelberg Center had an extraordinarily high level of interest in pursuing this issue, and legal confidence in our position that would have cost an average podcaster tens of thousands of dollars to develop. That cannot be what is required to challenge the removal of a podcast episode.
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