Universal And Warner Block Time Live Streaming Its Time 100 Event Because Copyright Censors

You know how supporters of Article 13 in the EU keep insisting that just because Article 13 (now Article 17) says not to take down non-infringing content that any worries about taking down non-infringing content are misplaced? About that... This week there's been a lot of fuss about the whole "Time 100" thing that purports to highlight the 100 most influential people in the world. This bit of backslapping among the famous starts off with glowing magazine profiles, followed by a big party, the Time 100 Gala and the Time 100 Summit, which is the conference version of the backslapping. Time Magazine livestreamed the Summit yesterday via YouTube.

As Manish Singh pointed out, it appears that both Warner Music and Universal Music Group got the video pulled on copyright grounds.

YouTube has blocked (!!!) Time's official video feed for its 100 Summit from yesterday because it apparently infringed on content from Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. CC @mmasnick pic.twitter.com/peWsHPxYPH

- Manish Singh (@refsrc) April 24, 2019

It's not clear exactly why this happened, though lots of people are talking about Taylor Swift performing, and she's now on Universal, so that's one possibility. Except she performed at that Gala, and it appears that it's the Summit that got blocked. It's possible that the venue music that likely plays in between speakers could have tripped up ContentID as well.

Either way, it's yet another demonstration of how filters are terrible at this kind of thing, and why laws like the EU Copyright Directive will inevitably lead to censorship of perfectly legal material, rather than "piracy."

Now, some will respond that under the EU Copyright Directive, YouTube may just choose to officially license all music uses, and then no longer have to block incidental uses such as this, but that highlights the other problem we've discussed: almost no one other than YouTube can do that. And thus, even if that were the case, YouTube would then become the only player anyone could ever use for livestreaming events like this if they don't want them blocked. For all the talk of how we needed the EU Copyright Directive to take down Google and Facebook's power, the fact that it might just lock them into their dominant positions seems like it should be a concern.