• Disney retracts copyright claim on a YouTuber’s “Steamboat Willie” video, allowing it to be monetizable and shareable worldwide.
• The claim had previously demonetized the video and restricted its visibility and embedding options.
• This move by Disney may signal its recognition of “Steamboat Willie” being in the public domain.
If I’m looking at dates correctly, Disney filed the strike AFTER it was in the public domain already. So it was a bullshit strike from the beginning, not just something that was struck before it entered the public domain and was left over.
The DMCA needs to be updated with fines for clear bullshit claims like this. As it is, there is no penalty for a company to just claim everything. I’d even be okay with platforms like Youtube receiving a portion of that fine for having to be in the middle of the bullshit copyright claims that were overturned because. Give the platforms an incentive to make the process streamlined and straight forward instead of the crap we have now.
YouTube is legally obligated to take the content down as soon as they receive the DMCA notice or else YouTube will become liable for potential damages. YouTube’s automated copyright claim system is inherently broken, but that’s a symptom of DMCA, not the cause.
From my understanding the big copyright owners basically have a stranglehold on youtube when negotiating how youtube should handle copyright stuff. The current copyright law was not designed to accommodate platforms such as youtube so if they don’t do as the copyright owners say it could result in a long court battle resulting in a decision that youtube itself is the one violating the law for being the one hosting the non-licensed content on their platform.
Not a lawyer and don’t even live in the US so i might not be the most reliable source on this though.
A fine is useless if the default is that the request is granted, which platforms like YT are more or less forced to do since you can submit thousands of request at no cost. Add a security deposit (and punitive damages in case of bogus requests) for each and every request and maybe you solve the problem.