Mirrors - An exercise in futility? Yes and no...

[InModiasWeTrust]

Hello,
Modias here. I am not the first person to bring this up I'm sure, so bear with me if you have seen the topic before or if it was in a video, etc. There are two sides to mirroring videos. Input from all of you, especially others who have been vote-botted, false flagged or false-DMCAed, is welcome and wanted. For those of you who are unaware, I run a channel on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/InModiasWeTrust which was recently hit with 7,000 1* votes. This occurred directly after Eimajuno received his 22nd false-DMCA and directly before DPRJones was suspended for his third.
I was having a friendly Skype discussion with a friend and fellow YouTuber when the subjects of vote-botting, false-flagging and false-DMCA filing, the lot of which I will hereinafter refer to as "YT cheating", came up. The day before, I had posted a video informing my subscribers that I was hit with 5K one stars and was making my correction to him when he told me that he had received a false-DMCA earlier that day. "Odd," I said to him, "I didn't see your announcement video in my subscription box or I would have mirrored it."
"I didn't make a video," he told me.
After seeing so many angry videos from fellow atheists regarding the victim role their channels had unwittingly played in the recent rash of YT cheating, I was surprised. "Why not?"
"I'm keeping it quiet because whoever is doing these things wants attention. I'm not giving them any more!"
I thought about it for a few minutes and realized that he was absolutely right. This isn't like it was last year... No electronic paper trail leading to PCS or anyone else, just an array of these cheats filed under an impressive variety of names in the DMCA category. This user and I talked a bit further and came to the conclusion that it's very likely these cheats have a common source; a single user or perhaps a small group. It is clear that very few (if any) of the creationists would continue this, as they have surely seen the results at this point... When a user is votebotted, they gain a huge quantity of new subscribers, all eager to vote up their videos. Several comments to my announcement read something like "If you have angered someone enough to vote-bot your videos, you must be worth listening to".
To a degree, the same is true with the other cheats, though the effect is delayed when a suspension is employed. Realizing this, why would anyone who genuinely wanted to silence us continue in this manner? They wouldn't. The conclusion that we came to was that the culprit must be trolling, getting his or her jollies by watching us become collectively angrier and angrier. We are providing entertainment and effectively reinforcing the behavior.
There are obvious benefits to speaking out when people cheat at our expense in that we gain a larger voice, and sometimes a mention by one or more of the larger channels. On the other hand, there are clearly reasons to remain quiet. What do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts, not only on silence vs. announcement, but also about other options for dealing with these cheats. I want my voice to grow of course, but more than anything I want this behavior stopped.

 

[stratos]

A interesting and valid point, the observation that most of the current DMCA notices might come from a small group whom are just amusing themselves by the reaction it evokes, might very well be true, although I think it is very hard to verify that.

However, if we think about this even deeper it really does not matter who is sending the DMCA's.

Now first I have to make the assumption that it is the goal of LoR and many other scientific or reason based youtubers to spread awareness and inspire people to be more critical. Now while that in mind, and noticing that as you yourself say the amount of subscribers and views go up when a person is votebotted or DMCA'd or flagged and the community reacts to it, we could say that this is actually a positive outcome. The initial goal to spread is perhaps better reached by a video that has been vote botted and subsequently gets hundreds of views, then a video that stays in obscurity and remains unseen by many.

Now I would never go as far as to say that causing these reactions would be a useful tool, since that would certainly be stepping over some moral line. But I don't necessarily see harm in letting the current state of things be as it is.

Another reason to keep doing it is that it is far more likely that the people who DMCA are a mix of religious zealots and just bored 4chan-esque children. While not doing anything with the DMCA notices might wane away the attention of the kids, it will probably only strengthen the effect of the actions of the zealots, who might see it as a sign that their effort is working.

Yet another reason to keep doing it is to also keep bugging youtube about it. Because the fact that youtube has a fully automated wizard to send DMCA notices, but no such tool for counter-notices is not right. When you make the strategic choice of stopping to make a fuss about it, the chance of youtube ever changing it becomes zero. Even if the signal youtube gets from this is only minute, it is still beter then no signal at all.

The reason youtube created a DMCA form is surely because media giants requested it. As most such changes tend to have, this has had the unforeseen side-effect that everyone can now send DMCA notices by just filling out a simple form. On one side the EFF is already occasionally taking action against false DMCA notices on youtube, but that does not mean our community shouldn't send a signal as well.

So in the end I think because of the above points it is more productive to keep making a noise about ill deeds against our community on youtube.

 

[Marcus]

I think one of the most positive effects that come from actively fighting all the various methods of censorship is to make it worth YT's while to make false flagging, votebotting, false DMCA notices and so on much harder to do. The more of their staff time that is taken up by having to manually deal with the grief they get when these things happen, the more likely they are to put the effort into making de-flagging a community action, making the form for submitting DMCA claims much tighter or having an automated counter-claim form so blatantly spurious claims won't work, or any of a number of features they don't bother with because they don't give a stuff about anyone but their advertisers.

 

[theninjasoulreaper]

Vote botting and false flagging are things that YT can and often should handle. The problem still lies with the DMCA. I don't think it would be incorrect for me to state that YT decides to honor a DMCA whenever it's presented one in order to protect themselves. My biggest concern in this area would have to be with the law itself. I think Ryhsz was not completely incorrect when he said that we Americans couldn't properly write a law to save our lives, and I was not quoting him by the way. I would agree that those who wrote up our version of the DMCA could have done it better, and perhaps they can still fix it. While YT could do many things to change how it enforces a DMCA, I must agree that they will do nothing so long as the law is worded the way it is. So long as it worded the way it is, I would have to say that the only option left that would break the stalemate is to take those who are abusing the DMCA to court. I am aware of the fact that this takes money to do, and especially when one of us are taken to court after filing a counter-notice, but this is something that someone needs to start doing in order to keep this type of abuse to a minimum.

My only other suggestion would be to write to your elected officials asking them to reform the DMCA. How we go about doing that is an entirely different issue that can be addressed in another post. For those of us from the US, I would suggest getting in touch with the ACLU and the EFF in order to get some better ideas as to how we can get our elected officials to reform the DMCA, and some ideas as to where the changes need to be made. That is all I have for now.

 

[stratos]

Vote botting and false flagging are things that YT can and often should handle. The problem still lies with the DMCA. I don't think it would be incorrect for me to state that YT decides to honor a DMCA whenever it's presented one in order to protect themselves. My biggest concern in this area would have to be with the law itself. I think Ryhsz was not completely incorrect when he said that we Americans couldn't properly write a law to save our lives, and I was not quoting him by the way. I would agree that those who wrote up our version of the DMCA could have done it better, and perhaps they can still fix it. While YT could do many things to change how it enforces a DMCA, I must agree that they will do nothing so long as the law is worded the way it is. So long as it worded the way it is, I would have to say that the only option left that would break the stalemate is to take those who are abusing the DMCA to court. I am aware of the fact that this takes money to do, and especially when one of us are taken to court after filing a counter-notice, but this is something that someone needs to start doing in order to keep this type of abuse to a minimum.

My only other suggestion would be to write to your elected officials asking them to reform the DMCA. How we go about doing that is an entirely different issue that can be addressed in another post. For those of us from the US, I would suggest getting in touch with the ACLU and the EFF in order to get some better ideas as to how we can get our elected officials to reform the DMCA, and some ideas as to where the changes need to be made. That is all I have for now.

Now I know there are some american's here, but do notice the fact that this website is "co.uk". Most of us could write to our officials all day, but we don't have the DMCA, so it would be a bit futile.

Secondly, I think the DMCA is really trying to fix a valid problem. Yes I am sure it could be written much better, otherwise organisations like EFF and ACLU wouldn't shout so hard.
However the core of the law is reasonably sensible I think. Instead of having everyone of these copyright claims to pass trough court it can now be fixed in a private matter.

 

[theninjasoulreaper]

Now I know there are some american's here, but do notice the fact that this website is "co.uk". Most of us could write to our officials all day, but we don't have the DMCA, so it would be a bit futile.

Secondly, I think the DMCA is really trying to fix a valid problem. Yes I am sure it could be written much better, otherwise organisations like EFF and ACLU wouldn't shout so hard.
However the core of the law is reasonably sensible I think. Instead of having everyone of these copyright claims to pass trough court it can now be fixed in a private matter.

Indeed, I am aware of the fact that not everyone here is from the US. In fact, I directed the suggestion at those of us from the US. As to the DMCA itself, I agree that we do indeed need a copyright law that is up to date. The problem is the manner in which it's written. I am not suggesting that we scrap the DMCA entirely, just that some revisions be made to protect civil liberties and keep companies like YT from taking a lazy approach when it comes to DMCA claims. The DMCA claims that would wind up in court would be those that were filed fraudulently. While I'm certain that we need a law like the DMCA, we should be able to file a counter notice under such law while maintaining some level of anonymity or be able to seek legal action against those who would use such a law just to censor us. Indeed, my suggestion isn't perfect and it has room for improvement. My hope here is that we can use it against those who would try to shut up a voice that doesn't agree with them.

I think I'll end it here before I start typing my point into circles.

 

[Quincunx]

Speaking out about a false DMCA or similar (i.e. making a video about it if you've been hit) draws attention once again to YouTube's flawed flagging/voting/DMCA systems. If the users do not protest, YouTube will never do anything about it. Therefore I think mirroring is very important and should continue.