Summary
- Google may have allowed Adobe to abuse a copyright claim on a YouTube video.
- Legal issues, such as recording consent laws, are separate from copyright claims.
- Google enforces a copyright strike without verifying legal ownership, while pushing the channel to attend a copyright course.
It’s no secret that Google has faced years of criticism for how it handles copyright claims on YouTube, which grew into a cottage industry of unscrupulous entities striking anything they can to earn a cut of a video’s earnings. This is all to say Google knows full well its copyright system is abysmal and has done little to address the situation, which is how you get corporations abusing copyright to take down videos that reveal inconveniences.
One such example is happening right now, with Adobe having demanded a whistleblower’s video footage of Adobe’s CEO be removed from YouTube for “copyright” violations, and, of course, Google has removed the video through an automated process without talking to the owner of the channel or verifying who owns the video in the first place.
As far as copyright is concerned, it’s hard to see where Adobe has any legal claim to this video, as it didn’t record it and doesn’t own it, so it appears Google is helping Adobe abuse copyright law to silence a critic and whistleblower. Fun stuff.
Related
Could there be a legitimate legal reason to remove a whistleblower’s video?
Sure, but not under YouTube’s copyright system, which is what was used
YouTube channel The Lunduke Journal is in the middle of calling out Google and Adobe for seemingly abusing copyright law. On April 21st, The Lunduke Journal published a video that contained leaked footage from an Adobe event that addressed the entire company, derived from a whistleblower at the event who recorded the footage (many whistleblowers cooperate with Lunduke).
You see, part of this company-facing discussion had to do with current hiring policies, with gems like “we have never hired based on quotas, but going forward we will discontinue the practice” bandied about on stage. Such a stance could be misconstrued as an end to its illegal and discriminatory DEI policies at the company, something IBM, Red Hat, and others are ending or getting sued for.
But in today’s political climate, ending such policies can be easily painted as uncaring, making the company look bad in the eyes of the public. So now we have a motive for why Adobe might not want the video to stay up, and seemingly, Google was more than happy to help remove it despite Adobe having no legal claim to the video’s copyright.
What about recording consent laws?
Now, the thing to remember is that in some states it is illegal to record someone without their consent, and a leaked whistleblower video could run afoul of this law, depending on where the video was recorded. But this would not constitute a copyright violation; it would fall under a particular state’s laws, requiring law enforcement to be involved, which hasn’t happened.
Related
So if Adobe’s CEO or anyone else in the leaked video has yet to press charges or file a complaint (which admittedly could be difficult when the whistleblower isn’t known), it’s looking like no recording laws were broken. This could mean Google took matters into its own hands, allowing Adobe to abuse copyright law and YouTube’s claim system. While there are supposedly major penalties for abusing copyright law, it’s rare to ever see them used to curb such abuses, which is likely why the practice continues.
YouTube also has a policy that covers voyeurism in its Nudity & Sexual Content Policy. But again, the video was hit with a copyright violation, not a violation of YouTube’s voyeurism or sexual policy.
This questionable copyright strike also comes with a required course on copyright
To make matters worse, Google forces channels that receive a copyright strike to attend a course about copyright. But as Lunduke points out in his video, it is Google who should probably brush up on copyright law as it appears there was no copyright actually broken with Lunduke’s video, which is why the channel will be reuploading the offending video while daring Google to lawyer up. In the end, the process is likely the punishment.
