Does YouTube legally need proactive takedown? YouTube needs to figure out what to do about people posting copyright material. The actual solution they arrived at, after some negotiation with the media companies, includes programs that scan uploaded content and proactively block material that matches a copyright database. (Inevitably these programs sometimes get it wrong, which is a problem.) A friend of mine has claimed they are not actually required to do this. That US safe harbor law only requires them to take down copyright material after it has been brought to their attention. That they could stop using the proactive programs completely, and just replace them with a call center to take and act on copyright infringement notices. I'm not sure about that; it seems to me that Napster is case law to the contrary, and anyway Google employs a bunch of expensive lawyers who wouldn't have advised them they needed a negotiated solution unless they really did. Which of us is right? Could YouTube really revert to a purely reactive system, or could the media companies sue them if they didn't continue the proactive takedown measures?
Under the DMCA(United States Federal Law: Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and its Safe Harbor provisions, yes, Youtube is protected from copyright claims, provided they comply when they receive a notice. But....the DMCA that gives Youtube (and its parent company Google/Alphabet) this shield is US law, but Youtube does large amounts of business in other countries, making it liable in those countries, which don't necessarily have the same protections. Case-in-point, the EU. Under some other nation's law, Youtube may be liable for infringement if they wait to be notified. Alternatively, part of the agreement that was being hammered out between Youtube and the content companies might very well be some sort of indemnity agreement, that protects Youtube from the content companies so long as they uphold their end of the agreement. Additionally, even if Youtube isn't liable for the copyright infringement itself, since they serve ads on such videos, they could conceivably be sued under the theory of "unjust enrichment". (Similar to the logic that the EU is currently trying to get Google to pay their "link tax" for Google News on). There are also non-legal considerations to consider: Benefit to Self: Youtube is now selling/renting copyrighted content such as movies and TV shows as well. By becoming a distributor, it's in their interest to not also allow free versions of what they are selling on their platform. Cost-to-implement: As Ron Beyer points out, a call center/email center/mail room to receive the DMCA notices would be an enormous cost. What's more, it's a continuous, recurring and likely-growing cost. Youtube/Google is also not short on software engineers. It's much cheaper to pull some devs off of their current project for a couple days, implement a solution and call it a day, with occasional maintenance, especially as they are going to be paying those engineers' salaries anyway. Business Relationships: Youtube/Google make most of their money from advertising (and off of user data, but that is often tied to advertising in the other direction). The content companies are often their customers. Angering your customers is generally not a good idea. Ultimate Desires/Future View:Youtube doesn't care about the lost content. They don't care about the fight. If the copyrighted material is blocked, their users are far more likely to find something else than leave the site; if the material is blocked before uploading, most users won't even realize it was ever there. As such, Youtube doesn't care if copyrighted content is blocked, as that is not their main market.
You may at your peril. The safe harbor provision in 17 USC 512 does not provide absolute immunity to service providers, that immunity is only available (c)(1) if the service provider—(A)...(ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent Given your question, which reasonably assumes that the material is infringing, infringement is apparent. The DMCA provisions were written not to protect service providers, but to protect innocent service providers who are not aware of the infringing activities of their users. So it depends on what you know.
The answer depends in part what venue you're talking about, e.g. Reddit, Facebook etc. The details are revealed somewhere in the Terms of Service for that venue. The general pattern is that you are allowed to use that venue, provides you grant permission for the service to do what they do with your content. You cannot legally send them a take-down notice for your stuff, because a take-down notice requires you to say that the stuff was posted without your permission (and that is false – and you can be punished for making that statement). There could be a venue where they do not hold you to an irrevocable license, in which case you could revoke that permission (but not Reddit: you granted them a "royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your user content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so"). I've seen a site that actually asserts ownership of user-contributed content (I don't know if their TOS ended up being litigated) – if is not at all hard to write a TOS that includes transfer of copyright, rather than granting of a license. The only hard parts are (1) figuring out what you want in terms of permission to use and (2) whether your answer to (1) means nobody will use your service. SE and Reddit TOS probably are as close as you need to get for what you describe.
This is relatively uncharted legal territory, so until multiple cases establish some sort of precedent, we can only guess. I know of no legal requirement that a Browser or User has to submit cookies or referrer data or other meta-information accurately. In that regard, a user is unlikely to be prosecuted just for submitting HTTP headers. It is likely closely related to Free Speech issues. The DMCA spells out that it is illegal to circumvent copyright protection measures. While this law is typically used to make it illegal to copy DVDs, video-games or streaming movies, it is possible that the "3-free articles" policy could be interpreted as a copyright protection mechanism, and defeating it by changing HTTP headers is a circumvention. A good summary is here. A specific site's TOS (Terms of Service) probably contains language that spells out it is a violation to use the site in a manner other than as it is intended. This is a typical anti-hacking, anti-screen-scraping provision. Altering a browser session to circumvent their services is probably a violation of the license to access the site, and may open a user to a civil lawsuit for damages or even criminal hacking charges (the details of which are different state-to-state)
In general, a gameplay video would be either a partial copy or a derivative work, and in either case an infringement if created without permission. Such a video might be covered under fair use in US copyright law, particularly if made for the purpose of commentary on a game or instruction in how to play or design a game. In general, a fair use defense is more likely to succeed if only the minimum amount of the work required for the purpose is used, and sound tracks might not be required for such a purpose. Thus a maker of such a video might choose to omit the sound to improve the fair-use case. Moreover, when the sound track contains licensed popular music it would be subject to a separate copyright, and many music publishers are notoriously litigious, so prudence would advise omitting the sound. All that said, fair-use is a case-by-case determination, and if the makers of such videos have not been sued, they (and we) can only guess how a case would turn out. As to why game makers refrain from having such videos taken down (if they in fact do refrain) one can only speculate. Game publishers may consider the videos good advertising. Questions based on the absence of legal proceedings are inherently speculative, unless a copyright holder has announced a policy of not taking action and the reasons for it.
I see that channel offers playlists and &quot;videos&quot; of popular music by several artists. The one video I tried had the music with no accompanying video or images. The channel's about page says that then operator does not own the copyrights to the music and cannot grant others permission to play it. It is possible that the channel operator has obtained permission from the artists and is thus operating under a valid license. It is possible that the channel is committing copyright infringement, but the various copyright owners have not noticed the channel, or have noticed it but decided not to take action. There is no easy way for an outsider to tell which of these is correct. If the operator has not obtained proper permission, then it seems that this would be copyright infringement. If so, any copyright owner could send a takedown notice, use YouTube's own copyright complaint mechanism, or could file a copyright infringement suit. But nothing compels the owner to act if the owner chooses not to, it is entirely the owner's choice. I do not see that the US fair use or any other exception to copyright would be likely to apply here. If the owner brought suit and won (and a win seems likely to me, from what I can see), the operator would be liable for damages, which might be sizable, or mild. In the US at least the owner could also obtain a court order (injunction) requiring the operator to stop using the owner's copyrighted music. If the owner complained to YouTube, the site could add a &quot;copyright strike&quot; against the operator's account. After a few strikes (I think three) YouTube will cancel the account, according to its posted policies. Similar outcomes could face anyone else who posted or made available for streaming copyrighted content (such as music) without permission from the copyright owner. But again, everything depends on action by the copyright owner. If the owner chooses, for whatever reason, not to act, then nothing is likely to be done about the infringement.
You would need a court order to force them to take it down. There is virtually no chance a court will order them to take it down, because it would be almost impossible to do so without violating the First Amendment. You would have to prove that forcing a publisher to stop saying that you teach at the university would advance some compelling governmental interest, and that there isn't a better way to advance that interest. It's not clear what you mean by "cyberstalking," but if you're talking about someone sending you harassing messages, then the court would probably conclude that the better option would be to punish the harasser, rather than limit the publisher's speech. You could try paying them off or sending a threatening legal demand, but I doubt either would go far. I suspect that the best course would be a persistent campaign to escalate up their chain of command to find a sympathetic person willing to help. Even that, though, I would expect to be tough, because I'm sure you wouldn't be the first person trying this.
From what I can see on the USPTO registry, &quot;tweet&quot; is still not trademarked for the purposes you're talking about. Twitter has been working to secure that trademark, but I can't find any record of them having actually secured it. Just the same, I'd predict that using it will get you at least a cease-and-desist letter, and possibly a lawsuit. Whether you'd win that case seems to be a very open question, but that presumes you have the resources to litigate.