Today I filed a formal complaint against #YouTube with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner for their illegal deployment of #adblock detection technologies.
Under Article 5(3) of 2002/58/EC YouTube are legally obligated to obtain consent before storing or accessing information already stored on an end user's terminal equipment unless it is strictly necessary for the provisions of the requested service.
In 2016 the EU Commission confirmed in writing that adblock detection requires consent.
The problem is there’s the statutory notice and takedown then counter-notice then lawsuit process that must be followed. There is also a requirement to have a policy to deal with repeat infringers and that doesn’t really have an ‘only for new content’ exception as it’s generally all still under copyright. If Google doesn’t follow those requirements, they can be found liable for the copyright violations instead of being covered under the safe harbor. No business is going to want to open themselves up to that kind of potential liability for all the thousands of hours of videos they get a day.
That said, the whole ContentID and non-DMCA copyright process they have is on them, as that part is voluntary (to some extent, they got pressured by the music industry and friends).
The problem is there’s the statutory notice and takedown then counter-notice then lawsuit process that must be followed. There is also a requirement to have a policy to deal with repeat infringers and that doesn’t really have an ‘only for new content’ exception as it’s generally all still under copyright. If Google doesn’t follow those requirements, they can be found liable for the copyright violations instead of being covered under the safe harbor. No business is going to want to open themselves up to that kind of potential liability for all the thousands of hours of videos they get a day.
That said, the whole ContentID and non-DMCA copyright process they have is on them, as that part is voluntary (to some extent, they got pressured by the music industry and friends).