Originally Posted by The Guardian

When you hear about "piracy" in connection to YouTube, perhaps you think of the billion-dollar lawsuit brought by Viacom against the Google division, claiming that Google should have the duty to police all of its users' uploads to determine that they don't infringe copyright.
...
But one titanic problem with [YouTube's copyright reporting system] has received little attention: the use of ContentID by those who falsely or incorrectly assert ownership over public domain works – works that have no copyright at all – and then either block access to the videos, or collect the advertising revenue from these videos.

Originally Posted by aroundtheworld ➡️

The pirates of YouTube | Technology | guardian.co.uk



Interesting read. Apparently YouTube has no procedural mechanism to facilitate uncopyrighted public domain works, so when a media giant falsely issues a takedown claim against such a work, the uploader has no way to contest the claim and restore the work.

ContentID has been effective at monetizing uploaded content for the rightsholders -- 90% of those using it choose to monetize rather than remove their content -- but YouTube clearly needs some sort of method to defend against a takedown claim on the grounds of the public domain.