mediamuv – Techdirt (original) (raw)

MUSO Just Can’t Stop Sending DMCA Notices On Behalf Of Indicted Fraudsters

from the please-stop! dept

Let’s be clear about this upfront: MUSO is a European copyright enforcement group with all the negative trappings that come along with that industry. That being said, MUSO has also distinguished itself from other piracy tracking groups by making some forward-thinking statements that don’t track with the copyright industries, such as coming out against the use of DRM or when it essentially told copyright holders to fix their business models to start bringing pirates in as customers.

But MUSO is, as we said, still a copyright enforcement group at the end of the day. It sends out millions of DMCA notices every year. Much of that is done on behalf of customers you wouldn’t bat an eye at. But as TorrentFreak points out, at least one of MUSO’s customers is causing raised eyebrows.

While going over the list of clients, one name stood out like a sore thumb. Apparently, Muso is also working with a company named MediaMuv Inc. While this name may not ring a bell with the average person on the street, it sits at the center of one of the most controversial copyright swindling schemes in history.

Last December, the US Department of Justice launched a criminal proceeding against two men suspected of running a massive YouTube Content ID scam. By falsely claiming to own the rights to more than 50,000 songs, the pair generated more than $20 million in revenue.

This would be a perfect place to remind everyone that the copyright enforcement mechanisms at major sites like YouTube are horrifically flawed in ways that opens them up to fraud and abuse. We actually wrote about the MediaMuv case back in April, some four months ago. One of the scammers has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing, which could potentially be incarceration over several years. MediaMuv has been shuttered.

And, yet…

Publicly available takedown notices show that MUSO continues to send takedown notices on behalf of MediaMuv, with the most recent one sent just a few days ago. Both Google and 4Shared took these notices seriously. Several URLs and files were promptly removed, even though the takedown notices were not sent by the legitimate rightsholder.

Apparently, MediaMuv was trying to limit piracy, which could have hurt their illicit Content-ID profits. And indeed, these notices do indeed target Latin American music, which is in line with the activities described in the criminal indictment.

Now, is it funny that these scammers also used MUSO to “limit piracy”? Hell yeah, dawg, that’s hilarious. But what’s not funny is that months after this scheme was found out, still MUSO is out there getting internet content taken down and/or delisted on behalf of those same schemers.

If your job is the enforcement of copyright on behalf of clients, it sure would be nice if MUSO bothered to be sure it was working for actual rightsholders. Or at least not admitted copyright scam criminals.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright troll, dmca
Companies: mediamuv, muso

YouTube Scammer Pleads Guilty To Making Off With $23 Million In Fraudulently Obtained Royalties

from the broken-systems-are-the-easiest-to-game dept

Content ID isn’t really the villain here. But it’s an accomplice.

YouTube content moderation — including the prevention of copyright infringement — is almost completely automated. It has to be. As of 2019, more than 500 hours of content were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Machines have to do the work because human moderation is no longer possible.

That’s what makes Content ID severely exploitable. And the heavy hand of incumbent content industries ensure the automated process is considered infallible, which has naturally resulted in thousands of bogus copyright claims that adversely affect content creators and their channels.

A system like this is just waiting to be gamed. And it has been by scam artists, unethical content creators, major IP holders ensuring not a single second of content goes unmonetized, and bad faith efforts seeking to silence people.

What’s so surprising about this scam isn’t that it happened. That part was inevitable. It’s that it went on for so long and was so lucrative. The pair behind this multi-million dollar scam was indicted last year, but only after a four-year run that generated more than $5 million a year.

The case – United States of America vs. Webster Batista Fernandez and Jose Teran – reveals a massive Content ID scam that generated more than $20 million for the 36 and 38-year-old from Scottsdale, Arizona, and Doral, Florida.

The basics are straightforward. Starting sometime in 2017 through to at least April 30, 2021, Fernandez and Teran began monetizing music on YouTube for a vast library of more than 50,000 songs, none of which they owned the rights to.

The pair falsely represented to YouTube and an intermediary company identified only by the initials A.R. that they were the owners of the music and were entitled to collect “royalty payments” from their use on YouTube. In some cases the defendants used forged documents claiming to be from artists declaring that the pair had the rights to monetize their music.

It’s not like YouTube hadn’t been notified.

Complaints are not hard to find. Large numbers of YouTube videos uploaded by victims of the scam dating back years litter the platform, while a dedicated Twitter account and a popular hashtag have been complaining about MediaMuv since 2018.

But due to the precarious relationship between YouTube and the many, many rightsholders that have managed to bend it to their will, those making claims on content will most often be given the benefit of a doubt. Those complaining about wrongful claims are ignored, if not removed from the platform altogether.

There’s (sort of) a happy ending here. One of the scammers has plead guilty and will now be watching a lot of their (expensive) possessions be sold off by the government to satisfy (part) of a $25 million judgment — one that will apparently actually funnel the money to content creators who were screwed by this scam.

A man at the center of a copyright scam that abused YouTube’s Content ID system to fraudulently obtain more than $23m to the detriment of artists has entered a plea agreement with the US government. Webster Batista Fernandez wrongfully claimed to own the rights to more than 50,000 tracks and illegally monetized user uploads for years.

According to the plea agreement [PDF], Fernandez and his crew searched YouTube for songs not being monetized, uploaded their own mp3s, sent out copyright claims on the existing uploads, and began raking in the cash. Access to YouTube’s content management system was obtained after Fernandez convinced YouTube he and his company (MediaMuv LLC) had a library of 50,000 songs it wished to monetize. Fake email accounts, fake people, fake music labels… and all this went towards draining actual creators of $5 million in royalties per year.

It was an astoundingly successful scam. But it certainly wasn’t a complicated one. It’s a scam anyone with a handful of email addresses and the willingness to shell out a few bucks to generate official paperwork for a shell LLC can accomplish. And it points to one of the biggest weaknesses in YouTube’s anti-infringement efforts: the platform does not have the necessary amount of time, much less personnel, to sniff out scammers before they walk away with a whole lot of money and/or destroy the livelihoods of legitimate content creators. This is because the system is skewed to believe those flexing IP rights rather than those whose content may have been flagged inadvertently or maliciously. That approach leaves victims out in the cold while rewarding malicious abusers of the system with undeserved profits.

Filed Under: contentid, jose teran, royalties, scams, webster batista fernandez
Companies: google, mediamuv, youtube