Or, how to abuse the law to one's own advantage
On YouTube's page of our very own Down to Earth video (Public Digital Festival 2010 entry) you may see a message saying that it contains material from an entity called IODA.
This, of course, is totally unfounded - all contents of the video are either completely original or belong in the Public Domain, as explicitely stated in the description and credits.
There appears to be a flaw in YouTube's automatic Content ID algorithm, which enables irrelevant third parties to lay false ownership claims on visual and audio material they have no rights to, and in some cases even monetize it at the expense of its original creators and legal right holders.
Unfortunately we have no way of handling this directly, as the video was uploaded through a user profile (PublicDFestival) we neither own nor control.
This was the reason, after two more similar instances we had to deal with, unsuccessfully, on our own account (one again having to do with some company's wrongful appropriation of Public Domain material - see a pattern here? - and the other with arbitrarily banning our right to Fair Use for reviewing and educational purposes) we decided to abandon this particular video platform despite its popularity and the greater visibility it offered, and will continue avoiding it for as long as it keeps turning a blind eye to an increasing problem (thus practically endorsing a bunch of blatant abusers while negatively impacting hundreds, or maybe thousands, of honest law-abiding members).
An excellent article about copyfraud here: YouTube Copyfraud & Abuse of the Content ID System.
UPDATE: The IODA claim is now gone from the video - a sincere THANK YOU to whoever took care of this. The above post, however, shall remain in place for "historical" purposes and future reference.
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