Content Moderation Case Study: YouTube Relocates Video Accused Of Inflated Views (2014)

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Summary: The internet is the way that many new musical artists get discovered these days, with perhaps the most famous story being that of that of Justin Bieber on YouTube. Some of this came from finding undiscovered musicians who had talent, and some of it came from finding otherwise unsigned artists who had managed to build large followings themselves.Of course, this latter situation also opened up the possibility of gaming the system to appear more popular than you are in reality. Partly in response to this -- and more likely to prevent gaming views in order to gain advertising revenue -- YouTube put in place a policy of removing videos that appeared to use automated systems to game the number of views.An independent musician by the name of Darnaa sought to gain a following via YouTube, and engaged in a marketing campaign designed to drive traffic and popularity to her videos. In 2012 she had uploaded a video that had received nearly 1.9 million views according to YouTube's counter. In 2013, another video received over 1.1 million views. In 2014, she uploaded a new video, for a song entitled Cowgirl, which started receiving views as well. Darnaa claimed that these came from a coordinated marketing campaign that cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• How should a service like YouTube determine which videos are getting legitimate traffic compared to which are generated traffic through artificial means, such as bots?
• Is it possible to distinguish a heavy marketing campaign to point traffic to a video from methods involving artificially generated views?
• In which cases should a video that has received artificial views be moved to a different location (cutting off old links and restarting a counter) as compared to being removed entirely?

• Will fighting back against artificially inflated views lead to false accusations?
• Could actions designed to stop artificial view inflation impact a legitimate marketing campaign?
• Should musicians and labels rely heavily on things like views to determine the actual popularity of an artist when they might be manipulated?

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After Eight Years And Three Reviews Of The Case, Indiana Supreme Court Rules Police Must Return Seized Car To Its Owner

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It's now been eight years since Indiana law enforcement seized Tyson Timbs' Land Rover following his arrest for distributing drugs. In eight years, this case has made multiple visits to the state trial court, the state court of appeals, the state's Supreme Court, and the nation's Supreme Court.This isn't just due to Timbs' tenacity and his desire to have his car returned. His only car -- worth $35,000 when it was seized -- has been sitting in an impound lot for most of decade, all because of criminal charges that netted Timbs $1,200 in fines and one year of home detention.No, these multiple trips are due to the state of Indiana attempting to prevent precedent from being set that would prevent it from seizing whatever it wants whenever it wants. Previous rulings found excessive fines -- in this case taking the form of a $35,000 vehicle seizure over $400 of heroin sold to undercover officers -- violate the Eighth Amendment. And these rulings also reminded the state that it had incorporated that part of the US Constitution years ago and couldn't try to ignore it now just because it still wants to avail itself of Benjamins when ringing up people on nickel-and-dime charges.So, for the third time, the Indiana state Supreme Court is forced to handle the Timbs case because the state has refused to accept every previous ruling that has gone against it, including the one handed down by the US Supreme Court. The opening of the ruling [PDF] expresses some of the court's exasperation with the state's stubbornness.

We chronicle and confront, for the third time, the State’s quest to forfeit Tyson Timbs’s now-famous white Land Rover. And, again, the same overarching question looms: would the forfeiture be constitutional?Reminiscent of Captain Ahab’s chase of the white whale Moby Dick, this case has wound its way from the trial court all the way to the United States Supreme Court and back again. During the voyage, several points have come to light. First, the vehicle’s forfeiture, due to its punitive nature, is subject to the Eighth Amendment’s protection against excessive fines. Next, to stay within the limits of the Excessive Fines Clause, the forfeiture of Timbs’s vehicle must meet two requirements: instrumentality and proportionality. And, finally, the forfeiture falls within the instrumentality limit because the vehicle was the actual means by which Timbs committed the underlying drug offense.

[U]ntil now, the proportionality inquiry remained unresolved—that is, was the harshness of the Land Rover’s forfeiture grossly disproportionate to the gravity of Timbs’s dealing crime and his culpability for the vehicle’s misuse? The State not only urges us to answer that question in the negative, but it also requests that we wholly abandon the proportionality framework from State v. Timbs, 134 N.E.3d 12, 35–39 (Ind. 2019). Today, we reject the State’s request to overturn precedent, as there is no compelling reason to deviate from stare decisis and the law of the case; and we conclude that Timbs met his burden to show gross disproportionality, rendering the Land Rover’s forfeiture unconstitutional.

[C]ontrary to the State’s position, we conclude that the $35,000 market value of the vehicle and the other sanctions imposed on Timbs point to the punitive, rather than remedial, nature of the forfeiture. As Timbs II explained, it’s appropriate to evaluate the market value of the forfeiture relative to the owner’s economic means—because “taking away the same piece of property from a billionaire and from someone who owns nothing” do not reflect equal punishments. 134 N.E.3d at 36. And, here, taking away a $35,000 asset from someone who owned nothing else was significantly punitive. Likewise, imposing the forfeiture on top of other sanctions—sanctions that included six years of restricted liberty as well as $1,200 in fees and costs -- shows that the vehicle's seizure was not for remedial purposes.

Accordingly, we affirm the trial court; and the seven-plus-year pursuit for the white Land Rover comes to an end.

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