YouTube's New Copyright Filter Helps and Potentially Hurts

As ExpertPreneurs increasingly use Web 2.0 sites like YouTube to both demonstrate their expertise and promote their products and services, they have to be glad to hear that the service's just announced copyright filter will make their job of monitoring for copyright infringing uses of their materials easier.

Yet, as discussed by Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the partial vaccine to reduce the need for DMCA take down notices and lower the temperature on claims of secondary copyright liability claims against the site may sometimes be worse than the disease.

As the article explains, YouTube's video filter reportedly doesn't allow for the equivalent of DMCA counter-notices when it thinks it's found a match. Instead, the removed video is sent to the copyright holder for review, leaving it to the holder, in the first instance, to decide whether there may be fair use as opposed to infringement.

Considering the divisive climate already in the air over claims of over-aggressive use of the take down notice procedure,  ExpertPreneurs, while benefitting when they're the copyright holder, may find themselves wishing for a better method of protecting their own fair use materials from abrupt disappearance.

Von Lohmann's article offers at least two technological fixes that could take a step in the right direction by YouTube even further down the right road and is worth  reading.    


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