How do you feel about Copyright and Fair use laws?

[TrunkMonkeyMedia]

Hello all,

This is a discussion mostly for those in the US, but obviously anyone can join in on the conversation!

That being said, I would love to hear what you all think about the US Government's current regulations on Copyrights and Fair use, including DMCA and Youtube abuse!

For ease of discussion, I have created a small google form you can fill out below:
https://goo.gl/forms/HavYVGJNr2BlSyrc2

(I used a google form instead of a freedom forum poll because I have been posting the same poll on multiple sites across the internet to get a more diverse set of answers)

Personally, I feel that the current laws are not only inadequate for the constantly changing landscape of the internet, but also completely contradictory to the aims of it. Time and time again we see big corporations misusing the power of DMCA to censor discontent about their own content, and it needs to be changed.

 

[GucciCarry]

I think the laws are ******** honestly and always will be.

 

[cqld2d]

The laws seem pretty fine itself, Its just Youtube doesnt do enough to help the smaller youtubers from getting affected by these abusers. Also there is basically nothing being done about false reports too.

 

[zeke morgan]

I think there is a lot of misinformation about copyright and fair use, which trips up newer Youtubers, mostly I see people try and argue why they have gotten copyright strikes or can't monetise videos when using gameplay / video lyrics, mostly due to them not knowing as much as possible about these factors to know the loopholes or ways to stay copyright free.

There does also seem to be this systemic prevelance of false reports being bought by unknown and smaller sometimes smaller channels, regards that they (the channel claiming) don't own the copyright and don't legally have a leg to stand on - Yet Youtube especially doesn't seem to do anything about this, and basically gives them free reign.

On top of that it would be nice to have companies respond to counter-claims or notifications of fair use instead of utilising the policy of allowing them 30 days to respond or drop the claim - I think personally that it can be too long for Youtubers to have to wait for the potential of a copyright strike, ideally I would like to see this idea of claiming ear marked first - so put the potential revenue in an escrow account, in which neither party can have potential revenue, then whoever wins or if one side withdraws the claim the money is released. Also to end the post I think that larger companies should be more careful when mass claiming content as I have seen a few friends and other users of the the Forums have videos claimed despite the users falling under fair use, but still having to justify this to keep the video's live and monetised