YouTubers, Copyrights, And The Abuse Of Technological Security Tools

An unusual case has surfaced that shows us the differences between a YouTuber and a Peruvian television station. In early February, 2016, The Peruvian YouTuber Andysane published a video on his Facebook page in which he staged a "public lawsuit" against Latina, a Peruvian television producer. Latina was taking all the credit for and pocketing the royalties from a video that the YouTuber authored.

It all began with a feature that Latina broadcasted about the most successful Peruvian YouTubers. They included the video "Exposing Golddiggers in Peru" in the segment, which was posted by Andysane. Up to then, everything was fine. But the television stationg subsequently decided to upload the feature story to YouTube and protect it with a Google tool called Content ID. This allows users to inform YouTube that parts of their videos are original and to track videos on the web page that are similar to the video protected by Content ID.

Latina expressed that all of the content in the story was theirs. The Content ID tool automatically identified the video "Exposing Golddiggers in Peru," which appears on Andysane's YouTube page, as belonging to Latina. YouTube then sent Latina a notice giving them three options: to do nothing, to delete the video found by Content ID from Andysane's page, or to leave the video but redirect the monetization of the video to the supposed author protected by Content ID, namely Latina. The Peruvian television station chose the third option, which was obviously not to Andysane's liking.

It is important to point out that YouTubers use the YouTube platform as a source of income.Uploading videos generate web traffic which is measured by the number of followers, the number of times they see the video, and, of course, by the number of times the internet user clicks on ads...