Lon Seidman knew he wasn't going to get rich from his three-hour video discussion of the Curiosity rover landing on Mars. The local media entrepreneur did a live Google+ Hangout about the event and posted the resulting video to YouTube, expecting it would earn him a few bucks and attract some new readers to his site, CT Tech Junkie. During the discussion, Seidman played a number of NASA videos about the Curiosity mission. He knew he was on safe ground because works of the federal government are automatically in the public domain.

So he was surprised to find that no fewer than five other media organizations (mostly television stations, including some from overseas) had "claimed" the content of his video through YouTube's Content ID system. It appears that the other media organizations had uploaded their own news broadcasts—which contained the same public domain material—to Content ID's matching system. The fact that Seidman's video used the same content was enough to trigger a content match.

Once a third party has "claimed" a video, the rightsholder has a number of options. It can order the video taken down altogether, as occurred with one of NASA's own videos earlier this week. But more often, the rightsholder will simply begin running ads against the content and pocketing the free cash.

"This is a problem I've had in the past," Seidman told us in a Wednesday interview. For example, he said, he sometimes includes licensed stock music in his videos. "Even though I paid for it and had a right to use it, someone else who licensed the music was claiming ownership over it," he said.

Seidman said that Content ID's dispute-resolution process leaves a lot to be desired. If Seidman disputes another media organization's claim, the other organization has up to a month to respond. "That's a long time for a news agency," he told us. In the meantime, the original owner of the video is blocked from earning any revenue.

"In two instances in the past, the 'rights holder' released the claim on the video, and then YouTube still denied me revenue share for no reason," Seidman told us. In another case, a rightsholder "released claims, and then they re-claimed it. And then you can't do anything."

"My biggest concern is that for every guy like me who will contest this stuff, there are many more people who don't," Seidman told us. "If it goes unanswered, the revenue flows away from the content creator to a corporate entity."

"Not fair to the little guys"

The Content ID system was created because major content owners insisted that the notice-and-takedown regime established by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) didn't go far enough in protecting their rights. YouTube chose to go beyond the letter of the law, creating a system that was supposed to automatically detect infringing videos and either block them or let the rightful owner claim the revenue.

But in accommodating the demands of large copyright holders, YouTube has inadvertently reminded us all of the crucial point that flagging copyright infringement isn't nearly as simple as it is often portrayed by rightsholders. Even scanning videos for exact content matches that exceed certain thresholds (in order to preserve at least some fair uses) actually fails in all sorts of interesting ways.

Rather than acting as a neutral arbitrator between major content companies and independent organizations, YouTube's system favors the larger rightsholders that make use of its Content ID system over smaller creators. And because it's a private system that goes beyond the DMCA, the Content ID system is under no legal obligation to comply with the DMCA's safeguards and timelines.

While the stakes aren't high in this particular case—Seidman estimates he would have earned $3 in advertising revenue from his video—the principle matters to him.

"Working in this independent content space, we have such an opportunity to level the playing field," he said. The current system is "not fair to the little guys."