Content Moderation Case Study: Electric Truck Company Uses Copyright Claims To Hide Criticism (2020)
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Summary: There are many content moderation challenges that companies face, but complications arise when users or companies try to make use of copyright law as a tool to block criticism. In the US, the laws around content that allegedly infringes on a copyright holder’s rights are different than most other types of content, and that creates some interesting challenges in the content moderation space.Specifically, under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), online service providers who do not wish to be held liable for user-posted material that infringes copyright need to take a few steps to be free of liability. Key among those steps is having a “notice-and-takedown” process, in which a copyright holder can notify the website of allegedly infringing material; and if the website removes access to the work, it cannot be held liable for the infringement.This process creates a strong incentive for websites to remove content upon receiving a takedown notice, as doing so automatically protects the site. However, this strong incentive for the removal of content has also created a different kind of incentive: those who wish to have content removed from the internet can submit takedown notices claiming copyright infringement, even if the work does not infringe on copyright. This creates an interesting challenge for companies hosting content: determining when a copyright takedown notice has been submitted for illegitimate purposes.
"YouTube regularly identifies copyright violations of Nikola content and shares the lists of videos with us," a Nikola spokesperson told Ars. "Based on YouTube's information, our initial action was to submit takedown requests to remove the content that was used without our permission. We will continue to evaluate flagged videos on a case-by-case basis."YouTube offered a different description, saying that Nikola simply took advantage of the Copyright Match Tool that's available to people in the YouTube Partner Program."Nikola has access to our copyright match tool, which does not automatically remove any videos," YouTube told the [Financial Times]. "Users must fill out a copyright removal request form, and when doing so we remind them to consider exceptions to copyright law. Anyone who believes their reuse of a video or segment is protected by fair use can file a counter-notice."Company Considerations:
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