October 20, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Data Ownership
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October 21, 2008 at 1:42 am
aahhhh, copyright.... my favourite subject.. NOT.
feeling slightly aggrieved at the moment after having to buy a license to let staff listen to their own radios, tuned in to stations that have already paid to enable them to play the music they feature. Sounds to me like they're being paid twice, but in order to avoid a possible court case we stump up the cash and see if we can find a way of claiming a refund later... these people have got you by the short and curly's... british law... it's a wonderful thing.
I wonder how they are going to handle copyright in relation to data, perhaps we'll need a license to use a pen and paper next
Rant over.. sorry every one :o)
October 21, 2008 at 3:11 am
Well I can't imagine the republican campaign has done anything other than take these "short news clips" completely out of context anyway, so I'd take the "factual" claims in the letter with a pinch of salt.
I don't see an issue here - if you don't have the foresight to ask the copyright holder for permission to use their clips then I don't see why you should expect You Tube to do anything but take them down when the copyright holder asks them to, if you're going to rip someone's stuff then your problem - You Tube certainly have no obligation to you but they do have to cover themselves, unless they start charging, if you want good service it's really not unreasonable to expect to pay for it.
If it wasn't a bunch of neo-fascists doing the complaining I might care a little more, but I doubt it.
October 21, 2008 at 6:21 am
I can't decide on which candidate, but I know that I don't want to take the chance of Palin being president, if McCain's cancer comes back. I don't want anyone in office who believes dinosaurs and man walked the earth at the same time. If they ignore that much evidence and make a decision based on faith, who knows what kinds of decisions she will make when she is in office?
October 21, 2008 at 6:33 am
There is one very important fact that you failed to note in your editorial (and the two users that have already responded apparently failed to read the letter for themselves to see this).
The McCain-Palin letter did not ask for special treatment of THEIR videos, they asked for special consideration of ALL videos posted by ANY political campaign. Further, they copied the Obama campaign on the letter to make them aware of the request as well.
Under full consideration, I don't think there is anything wrong with the request that ANY POLITICAL CAMPAIGN get a more thorough review to avoid the possibility of overzealous (though misguided) members of either party interfering in the campaign of their opponents. How would you feel about a Republican running around town tearing down signs for the Democrat candidates?
October 21, 2008 at 6:41 am
Sorry Bryan, I didn't mention it because it is completely irrelevant to me - my default position on politics is that nobody worth voting for would ever run for office, so the histrionics of these people is really neither here nor there (I do vote, as it happens, but not with the expectation of any great result, and I do have an interest in the US elections, but only because I'd rather Palin didn't have the nuclear codes and I don't like such a powerful country being run by right wing religious fascists).
I don't care whether they want to do this for political campaigning or advertising toilet duck, the principles are the same, you can't expect an organisation offering a free service to dedicate resources to YOUR problem, if they're so excitable about it they should get permission from the copyright holders before they start.
October 21, 2008 at 7:18 am
I think the copywright enforcement and take-down procedures are totally whacked. The impetus for extending these laws into the digital realm came from "big content" producers (record companies, film comapanies, etc.) who have a history of screwing everyone.
I think it would be significantly more reasonable if a copywright holder had to produce some evidence/argument before a video could be taken down. Should the copywright holder fail to do so, the video stays up the whole time. That way when, as the letter indicates, copywright holders do nothing more than file a take-down notice, they don't get anything for it. I'm not against copywright, but the truth is that the people who deserve the protection it offers are not the ones constantly lobbing take-down notices all over the internet.
I don't agree with the letter that YouTube should be responsible; i think the burden should be on the "plaintiff" (the copywright holder) to prove that the content shouldn't be there. That would immediately discourage the filing of so many notices, and hopefully lead to fewer, more reasonable cases.
NOTE: i primarily refer to videos (especially on youtube) here, but my point extends to all web-hosted content.
October 21, 2008 at 7:20 am
Richard, your bias is showing. I don't really care what your political choice is, it isn't necessary to state it here. Your political opinion is irrelevant to the issue.
The issue (and the point that I'm trying to make without bringing politics into the discussion) is that YouTube's reporting mechanism is prone to abuse by either party. The letter has a valid point in that the knee-jerk reaction of immediately pulling down a video isn't necessary under the law, and the review period is much too long in a time-sensitive case like political campaigns. Requesting some accommodation or modification to the existing procedure is not unreasonable. Had this occurred outside of the political context, I doubt nearly as many people would be shouting about it.
October 21, 2008 at 8:16 am
Ignoring politics, though you're welcome to send me an email on that, if we ignore copyright or review it more, then do we do the same for other types of content?
The whole system is a mess. Fair use needs to be defined and clearly spelled out to prevent these types of issues. Most people ought to be allowed to reuse some amount of content for any purpose, commercial or not. That's what has built the tremendous amount of creative content in the world. No one does it alone; they're inspired by someone else.
As people that have to deal with data, watch out. Unless we push for copyright to be a more reasonable and understandable entity, we'll get drawn into this at some point.
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October 21, 2008 at 8:26 am
I disagree with Andy and Brian. (Especially Andy)
The main reason for my disagreement actually has to do with something Andy said, re: the law being for big companies. Only a big comany could afford to immediately go thru the LEGAL process of proving content infringement, and thus having content removed. The ability to have infringed content removed on filing of the complaint favors "the little guy" much more than large corporate contributers.
I believe the same rules should apply to everyone - whether you're a corporate big-wig, a political candidate, or a grandmother in Podunk, France. I really don't care that McCain/Palin sent a copy to Obama/Biden, they still were asking for special treatment as though they were more important than any one else in the world. They are not. YouTube, by its very nature, serves the world. I believe the presidential candidates serve only a small part of it, and so should not be allowed any special privileges.
Steph Brown
October 21, 2008 at 8:41 am
Totally agree with Stephanie apart from the following:
The ability to have infringed content removed on filing of the complaint favors "the little guy" much more than large corporate contributers.
Good point although I do agree with Andy that a lot of the take-downs probably come from big companies full of corporate lawyers generating activity to justify their existence.
treatment as though they were more important than any one else in the world. They are not.
Tell that to the moose.
I believe the presidential candidates serve only a small part of it,
But we do still worry about them nuking us.
Yep- still working on a really boring project....
October 21, 2008 at 8:59 am
Actually, I think that YouTube's formal response (http://lessig.org/blog/2008/10/youtube_responds_to_mccain.html) addresses all of this masterfully and is one of the best legal response letters that I have ever seen.
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October 21, 2008 at 9:07 am
The response from YouTube is well done and it outlines the issues. They need to protect themselves because of the laws. It also seems to hint to the McCain campaign that they should change things.
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October 21, 2008 at 10:46 am
I'd definitely love to see this change. Ignoring all political aspects of this, we need to put Copyright law back where it was. Original intent, IIRC, was to give the content creator a period of time to enjoy the fruits of their labors. However, it was not so broad that they could then sit back and rest forever. Disney and other companies lobbied pretty hard to extend the timeframe more and more and as a result "Steamboat Willie" is still protected. That clip is getting up there in years and should not be protected anymore. Time to produce something new. (Which Disney does pretty well, but I realize they profit greatly from the mouse. 🙂 )
I'd like to see this for all content creators - give them a good period of time, maybe 5-10 years, and then the copyright protection is over. Create something new. We all have to do it in our jobs, why shouldn't they? I know I still enjoy books from the "golden years" of science fiction and pulp fiction. A lot of people still listen to the Beatles' works.
As for the DMCA - it's just bad law. It might have been well-intentioned, though I have my doubts on that. It definitely was not designed with the little guy in mind. I definitely don't support wholesale pirating of an album, movie, etc. Punish the consumer with the endless warnings, copy-protect schemes, encryptions, the threat of lawsuits/penalties if you want to decrypt something you bought so you can use it elsewhere and so on is just wrong. It's really ironic that pirates strip out the warnings and encryption first thing, but the consumers typically are stuck with them because most are ignorant of how to remove them. (Or in the US, are prevented from downloading things like DeCSS legally so they can make a backup of their media.) I've got a young daughter and would love to make a copy of my movies legally so I can store the originals and put out the copies for her use. Ideally, I'd like to fit several movies on one disc so I can just bring one instead of a wallet of movies, but I know that I'm dreaming there. 😛
Good topic, Steve. Hopefully we can keep the politics out of this one. The DMCA was supported by both parties and supposedly Canada has a worse one on the way. As YouTube hinted, it's time to do something about the law that brought about that behavior in the first place.
October 21, 2008 at 11:39 am
Bryan Esposito (10/21/2008)
... How would you feel about a Republican running around town tearing down signs for the Democrat candidates?
Happened to my wife last election cycle.
That aside, the McCain campaign has been using copyrighted material without permission in their ads and has several lawsuits against them for such infringement. Specifically, they have used music by Jackson Brown and Frankie Vallie(sp?) in ads. The copyright holders have hit YouTube with take-down notices, YouTube has complied. In case you haven't read YouTube's reply to the McCain campaign letter, they have an appeal process: if your material is taken down, you have a time frame and appeal process to get it re-posted. Unfortunately for them, the timeframe is about 2 weeks, which is when the election takes place.
Oh, and McCain voted for DMCA, so it is truly a classic "hoist by his own petard". If his campaign can't follow the rules that he helped put into place, then I have no sympathy for them. I don't think DMCA is good legislation, in conjunction with the Sonny Bono/Disney copyright extensions, it's truly made a mess of fair use.
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