Video taken down due to a copyright claim by Tom Evans?
1) Totally bogus copyright claim, copyright does not prevent someone from doing a teardown/repair video on your gear
2) Nothing says "I'm a shyster" like making a bogus copyright claim to try to suppress criticism
3) Still needs to be legal penalties for those who file bogus copyright claims
Edit: In response to above: to be fair to Youtube, copyright enforcement is heavily biased in favor of the copyright holder and, given Youtube's scale, automated enforcement is the only practical option. The result is, they basically take the word of anyone who makes a claim and take the video down automatically. To do otherwise would risk a lot of lawsuits from copyright holders. It's garbage, but it can't be fixed by Youtube/Google. The copyright system needs reform, but of course copyright holders will fight tooth and nail against any rules that don't prioritize them and their pocketbooks.
Disagree. The burden of proof is on the claimant. Even in court, the burden of proof is on the owner of the IP unless what is being infringed is actually filed for protection with the US Office of Copyrights. Copyright protection is there whether or not it's filed, but the burden is on the owner to demonstrate the copyright and not on the alleged infringer when the item isn't duly filed. If the infringement occurred after a filing, then and only then is the burden on the alleged infringer to show that the use was allowed by fair use or some other exception.
When a supposed copyright holder complains to YouTube, they should provide the specifics of the claim, the date the copyright was filed, and specifically how the video violates their copyright. If the claim lacks something the software can't point to specifically, it should be automatically rejected. If the owner wants to try again, there are the courts. If the claim does produce those specifics, and the video owner still refutes the claim on the basis of, say, fair use, it should be reliably referred for human evaluation by someone who actually knows the difference between parody/criticism and infringement, or, as in this case, what is and is not actually protected by copyright.
The layout artwork of a PCB can be copyrighted, but the infringement has to show enough of it to cause confusion in the market. That's, of course, ridiculous in the context of this video. Even software should know to reject a claim such as this.
For years, ebay had a tuba buying guide created by some guy I don't know, and he liberally used both text and photos from my (copyrighted) website. Ebay was the opposite of Youtube--even my letters that started with "Notwithstanding Ebay's unresponsiveness..." they got absolutely nowhere. I gave it up, not really caring enough to spend what it would take to bring the action legally.
This is a play by Youtube to be responsive to legal threats from big corporations only because they perceive greater risk than the (valid) legal action than could come from Youtube content creators. They are probably right--content creators are not, as a whole, a deep-pockets threat. But the law is pretty clear and Youtube's policy and software detection could easily be more in line with it.
Rick "the law is good enough" Denney
