Human beings are probably the most gifted species to ever walk the earth. The assortment of these gifts stretches across various areas, thus enabling us to enjoy an expansive lifestyle. Now, while such a setup does everything to bring more value to our experiences, it comes at a very high cost. You see, when you allow humans the power to use these special abilities in whichever way they deem fit, they don’t always lean towards using them in a good way. Instead, we have a long history of undertaking activities that were purposefully designed to place our interests over the interests of the masses. As you can guess, the by-products to emerge from said activities would go on to make a major dent in how the world functioned. Hence, in a bid to keep personal motives from repeatedly damaging our societal structure, we coined a concept of total regulation across the board. From afar, it looked like the move solved many problems in one go, and honestly speaking, it did. However, soon enough, it brought a whole new set of questions to the fore. For instance, the regulatory bodies recognized the challenge on their hands when getting everyone to comply with the rules became one tough grind. If you think we were able to get a hang of it with time, you are wrong. Before we could do that, technology entered the scene and opened a wide gap between governing forces and the rest. The core problem here has, of course, been a lack of tech knowhow. Thus, the regulatory industry is now finally trying to adopt the new-age principles, and as they do it, they should be looking at a recent YouTube report for learning a huge lesson about the ground reality.
According to a newly-introduced Copyright Transparency Report by YouTube, over 2.2 million copyright-related complaints between January and June 2021 were found to be inaccurate. Picked up by Content ID, YouTube’s automated enforcement tool, these complaints constituted only one percent of the total received during the stated timeframe, but they do point a finger at inefficiencies plaguing the current digital enforcement approach. Upon digging a little deeper, we can see how 60% of claims got overturned in the creator’s favor, when disputed. Nevertheless, one fact worth noting here is that the main problem doesn’t reside in the filing process. It has more to do with the manner in which YouTube handles such claims. YouTube creators have long criticized the company in regards to being too aggressive and unjustified with its enforcements, often resulting in significant economic losses for the users.
In 2019, YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki did issue a reassurance about company’s efforts in “exploring improvements in striking the right balance between copyright owners and creators.”, but the wait for some meaningful changes continues to go on.