Guinness World Records People Accidentally Claiming Copyright On Tons Of 'Super Mario Bros.' Speedruns

from the automagic-mistake dept

Even a cursory review of just the headlines on our posts about YouTube’s ContentID will demonstrate a theme. That theme mostly centers around how the automagic copyright detection system that YouTube put in place is mostly useful for creating collateral damage on non-infringing material, often times at the expense of the rightsholders themselves. Whenever this happens, there are usually apologies issued, blame cast on ContentID for the mistake, and then everything continues on with no changes made. Which is absurd. These situations identify a flaw in the ContentID system, or the use of an automated system of any kind, and yet we never do anything about it.

Which is why this sort of thing keeps happening. The most recent example of this concerns tons of Super Mario Bros. speedruns being issued copyright notices because the YouTube channel for the Guinness Book of World Records uploaded a record-holding speedrun itself. From there, ContentID did its thing.

About nine months ago, Guinness put together a video profile on Super Mario Bros speedrunner Kosmic including footage from his record-breaking warpless run. Now, Kosmic’s own video of the record and tons of other SMB speedrunners have had copyright claims made on their similar videos.

Guinness have now released those claims saying “sorry for causing concern, we know how distressing it can be to get these notifications,” signed by Dan. Ta, Dan.

The Guinness people later tweeted out the explanation that ContentID was to blame for sending out the automatic claims. And I believe them. Still, this is again highlighting a flaw within the ContentID system, in that, far too often, legitimate content either gets taken down or issued a copyright notice all because no human being actually has to look at anything before those go out. And, since there are plenty of ways a video could use similar content, or even a copy of some part of some content, without being infringing, the automatic system fails at distinguishing that and sends out the notice anyway.

This is how it always is with these automatic content policing systems. And yet here is another case where the apology is made, the apologizer blames ContentID, and on and on we go. Even when another speedrunner, Karl Jobst, did a video on how his speedrun received a copyright notice, that video received a notice as well.

Funnily enough, even Jobst’s video on the subject initially got slapped with a copyright claim. Thankfully it sounds like Guinness have cooled their trigger finger.

But it’s not funny. It’s just frustrating.

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Companies: guinness, youtube

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Comments on “Guinness World Records People Accidentally Claiming Copyright On Tons Of 'Super Mario Bros.' Speedruns”

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24 Comments
This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
Anonymous Coward says:

ContentID needs to die or at least the automatic punishment associated with it. When matches are identified they ought to be emailed to the assumed owner for them to deal with. And eliminate support for automated submission of DMCA takedowns. Oh, and add punitive damages for false/fake/incorrect takedown reports.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: ContentID . . .

And copyright is broken because it was designed to work in a world where publication was via a publisher, and this limited the number of works in publication. Now, new works are being published at a rate such that the only record, while it lasts, is the works existence on a publication platform.

Realistically, when everybody can self publish works, copyright becomes a problem because ownership of original works cannot be tracked. Further, systems such as contentid are limited by practical implementation to protecting works whose copyright is owned by a corporation, and that is now an insignificant fraction of works in publication.

This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

or at least all the money associated with users viewing that content, I mean if a corporation ‘wants’ it they just take it, there are no consequences to them claiming the content (even when it’s not their work and they are making claims ‘on penalty of perjury’ it never happens).

Corporation claims something that isn’t theirs, they get money, the creator loses out and gets a possible ‘strike’ on their account.

User files counter-notice to claim that the work is THEIRS not the Corporation, and they then ASK the corporation if they agree that the work they claimed wasn’t theirs, and if the corporation doesn’t agree, it continues the dispute (all the while the corporation earns all the ad money from the post while it’s being investigated, you know the user is guilty until proven innocent, which requires an absurd level of proof over what the corporation has to do to claim things in the first place.

Welcome to the world of our new Corporate Overlords, all our bases are belonging to them…

Anonymous Coward says:

Company’s like Guinness book of records should exclude all videos with video game footage
from content I’d. Guinness does not make or publish video games. Of course footage of Mario bros or any game will be identical or similar to videos made by
Random you tubers of that game.
Contentid is a system whereby ip holders can upload footage to YouTube of content they own TV shows etc so it can be matched if someone uploads
Similar content which matches the ip holders content Since its automatic there’s bound to be mistakes also content ID cannot check is this content legal due to fair use, eg its legal to use part of a TV show for review without getting permission
from the rights owner

This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
Aaron Walkhouse (profile) says:

The solution is as obvious as it it simple.

Youtube should allow uploaders to fill in a preemptive counternotice
against all complaints or ContentID hits. ‌ ContentID is then blocked
from all automated actions.

Any persons complaining are automatically sent the counternotice and
must acknowledge receipt of the notice with a proper explanation why
they disagree with it before a moderator may do anything like a
takedown or demonetization.

The uploader’s declaration exempts that upload from mass censorship,
forces all complainants to acknowledge the uploader’s declaration on
that upload and then they must negotiate with the uploader directly.
Youtube is shielded from liability, free to move on to other things.

That saves Youtube both automatic and manual effort on any upload
the creator wished to protect from inept or malicious inerference.
The savings in time/conflict would be quite huge for Youtube alone.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: The solution is as obvious as it it simple.

This would save nothing. If there was such a system then all YouTubers would attach these notices to all of their videos and the entire copyright enforcement mechanism becomes manual. YouTube would have to process all of the moderation manually which would be extremely cost-prohibitive and time-consuming which is the whole reason the system is fully automated today. If they then automated that system the outcome would be no different than what we have today.

To fix this YouTube needs to issue warnings, not take-downs, and give the uploader a chance to defend themselves before punishment (take-down) is doled out. Then, if YT finds for the YouTuber, a fine or black mark is issued against the complainant. Enough fines and/or black marks and that complainant is barred from future complaints.

Aaron Walkhouse (profile) says:

Re: Re: The solution is as obvious as it it simple.

"If there was such a system then all YouTubers would
attach these notices to all of their videos and the entire
copyright enforcement mechanism becomes manual. "


Actually, no. ‌‌ Because it would be an optional, manual
process to fill out such a form, relatively few would use it. ‌
The result is the system becomes even more automated in the
cases where a bogus or malicious attempt is made on a video,
and even in the few cases where a legitimate complaint is met
by a legitimate counterclaim, Youtube need not get involved
until one or the other prevails or is abandoned by the usual
timeouts. ‌ Your hypothetical result fails on the assumption
that everybody is as smart or involved as we are.

"To fix this YouTube needs to issue warnings…

…complainant is barred from future complaints."


Unfortunately, all of those changes would require changes in the
laws underlying the whole procedure. ‌‌ Youtube could do preemptive
counternotices in full compliance with the law because it’s their
website and the sequence of events is both sped up with automation
of the counternotive and appeal process and relieves then of direct
involvement by moderators until that additional layer of automation
has played out, likely quashing lots of bogus takedown attempts and
discouraging many more attempts.

Censorship by abusing Youtube’s process would be severely curtailed.
That’s a win-win for everybody but the scammers. ‌‌ ; ]

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: The solution is as obvious as it it simple.

This presumes that the users posting to You Tube will know that some malicious corporation is going to post and claim their work at some point in the future…

If we have to make that presumption (that we will know which unknown videos the corporations will target), then we also have to assume anyone uploading anything that they made that they plan on monetizing, they will file the ‘preemptive’ notice on everything they upload (I know I would if I thought there was any chance some scummy corporation was going to try and claim it at some point… and lets be serious, how long before someone starts a corporation just to claim and monetize other people’s content on the various platforms? Or is it already being done and we just don’t hear about it since there are no penalties for filing 500 claims on other people’s stuff, other than a, "oops, we got caught, I mean it was totally an automated system failure, we had no idea that we were attempting wide-spread copy-fraud…"

That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Because copyright can only belong to corporations.
If a corporation uses your content it becomes theirs.
If you happen to use a corporations content, for any fraction of time, you will be on the hook to them for billions in damages.
Fair Use isn’t a thing until we sue you & we are the only ones who decide if it is fair or not…

Said by someone who got copyright strikes on Twitter for sharing a short video of Party Rock Nation over Uptown Girl lyrics showing they share the same beat. A UMG employee went after dozens of accounts for sharing it… funny that the much longer version was still on YT while I am getting yelled at for stealing from UMG & having to provide UMG all my details if I disagree with their heavy handed bullshit. But with dog as their witness they protected their content from a like 30 second snippet that made people laugh.

This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.

Anonymous Coward says:

Content ID Is not really part of any specific law, its more like a program to allow ip holders to take down content they own or else claim the ad revenue from a video. Since its an automatic program that just matches video and audio its bound to make mistakes especially if its used by company’s who ignore fair use or simply want to get as much ad revenue as they can. YouTube has to have system to remove videos or share ad revenue otherwise it would simply get constantly get sued by big media
company’s .

This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

If you do, then you are a RASIST! Because you are even asking the quesiton, yo are a FUCKING WHITE SUPREMACIST RASIST! No, it won’t be any trouble for you, with your FUCKING WHITE RASIST WORLD that’s SO FUCKING EASY FOR YOU, but hard for BLACK PEOPLE! GIVE ME MONEY, I AM BLACK! YOU HAD ENOUGH! GIVE ME GIVE ME GIVE ME GIVE ME MONEY AND POWER AND MONEY AND POWER AND GET DOWN ON YOUR NEES NOW!

John85851 (profile) says:

The solution is obvious: stop using YouTube

For all the complaints against ContentID and how YouTube "has to do it", I don’t see anyone stating the obvious: if you don’t like the service, don’t use it. Does Viemo and TikTik and other video sites have this issue? If they don’t, why are we still using and complaining about YouTube?

If people start leaving YouTube en masse over this issue, then maybe they’ll see a decline in advertising, which means less revenue, which means it’ll get their attention.

But complaining and hoping something will change doesn’t seem to working.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: The solution is obvious: stop using YouTube

They actually have the same problem, they just flying under the radar of the content mafia for the most part so far, simply because they are small enough.

Should any of those services become big enough the conent mafia will go after them as well.

And most certainly don’t habe enough money for sustained legal battles as Google had.

Keep in mind the moment one offers their services within the EU those laws apply as well as the laws of the member states they offer their services to.

Sheena Afzal says:

Guinness World Record

Hi! My 9 year old daughter broke a Guinness World Record on July 18th 2020, by arranging the elements of the periodic table in the fastest time.
Her picture and record time were posted on the Guinness official website, she also recieved her certificate. Today I saw that her picture & record info has been taken down from theri website, and the previous record holder’s info is back up.
I am so confused……why is this happening. They take their sweet time replying to any query, I have sent them messages & tried calling their headoffice too, but apparently no human is available to talk to.
My daughter had been interviewed over 60 times by different TV channels and I am guessing a few Youtubers also. Do you think someone has used Guinness’s logo or infringed upon something sensitive?
But why have they taken her record off their website?? Please look up "Natalia Najam", a lot of her interviews have been taken down as well.

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