Copyright owners threatened for issuing DMCA takedowns on pirated videos

[Dan Robinson]

I stumbled upon this today during my copyright infringement search routine. This is your garden-variety freebooting/pirate monetized Youtube channel that mass-reuploads videos from others in the form of compilations, without permission from the owners of the original videos. These channels pop up every other day. This channel has amassed 18,000 subscribers in a little over a month (not hard to do when you just steal everyone's content).

As is typical, the response to DMCA copyright complaints by owners of the stolen videos are met with contempt and even threats by the fans of the channel. I have experienced this myself several times.

Here is a screen capture of the threats by the channel's supporters on Youtube and Reddit:



For the record, this particular channel did not take one of my videos (as of yet) but has ripped from hundreds of others. Many channels just like this one have stolen my videos in the past, and I have received the same type of hate from supporters and the channel owners.

I'm not aware of if anyone has made good on these threats, but clearly from the upvotes on the comments, the sentiment/motivation is strong and shared by many.

Both Youtube and the pirates directly profit from these types of channels, which is partly why Youtube is in no hurry to help the original creators police for these types of infringements. Content ID is not granted to smaller channel owners, only the larger ones as well as the big media corporations.

 

[Drue Bernardi]

In my experience the YouTube comments section is filled with empty threats from empty heads. The theoretical teenager in his parents' basement type of people.

The major issue I'm seeing is there's no good solution to the problem of people stealing content, especially if YouTube is reluctant or lazy with its help.

Moving to another service is an option, but with the sheer popularity of YouTube its hard to imagine being able to get the same amount of views, plus your video could just as easily be downloaded from there.

Joining together under one big umbrella would make us look bigger in YouTube's eyes, but we would lose individuality.

Obviously, YouTube needs to change their way of doing things to protect Copyright holders, but so far it appears the money they make off pirates is held in higher regard than the laws of Copyright as long as you're not a major company with a team of lawyers.