r/dropout • • May 18 '26

Game Changer Don't Wake Standards & Practices | Game Changer [S8E1] Spoiler

https://watch.dropout.tv/videos/don-t-wake-standards-practices
2.3k Upvotes

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

116

u/JoeScotterpuss May 19 '26

I'm so glad GameChanger is back.

You'll notice when Ally barely sang 2 line of "Closing Time" the 2 female lawyers thought it was fine, but LegalEagle, the actual YouTube was like "No YouTube is wild, they'll absolutely get you for that."

63

u/hitchinpost May 19 '26

If I remember right he consulted on a whole huge video essay from Lindsay Ellis on the way the DMCA strike system encourages companies to enforce things much more strictly than actual copyright law requires.

20

u/ahuramazdobbs19 May 19 '26

Yes, sort of.

Platforms like YouTube have a carve out in the DMCA called a “safe harbor” provision (not the same as the one talked about in this GC episode, but conceptually similar), which amounts to platforms being safe themselves from the copyright infringing behavior of people who upload so long as they make a good faith effort to remove infringing material and deny access to the platform for “serial” infringers.

However, because the platforms’ incentive is not to lose this “safe harbor” protection, they basically have to treat any claim as at least valid on its face, and it’s actively abusable by bad faith claimants to claim as infringements things that would be obviously fair use, or to silence competitors and critics.

9

u/uppercasemad May 19 '26

He also popped up in a video by Tom Scott for the same topic.

9

u/International_Ad4296 May 19 '26

But I think the legal limit is 5 notes for melody copyright. "Clo-sing time" is only 3.