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More DMCA Censorship at Yahoo!
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Apr 07, 2008 12:28 AM
from the do-they-call-it-censorship!-there dept.
from the do-they-call-it-censorship!-there dept.
Thomas Hawk writes "Once again a Yahoo! user has found themselves on the short end of the DMCA stick. Video blogger Loren Feldman recently found that his video mocking (read parody) the Village People and blogger Shel Israel was removed from the Yahoo! service after Scorpio Music served Yahoo! with a DMCA takedown notice. The video in question contained a very brief fair use parody snippet of the Village People song YMCA as performed by a puppet. What's more, Yahoo! threatened Feldman with the termination of all of his Yahoo! services including the revocation of his Yahoo ID."
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Submission: More DMCA Censorship at Yahoo! by Anonymous Coward
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It's a Village People thing... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a Village People thing... (Score:5, Funny)
I do wonder what happens when they find the image of YMCA Jesus [13gb.com].
D'you think they'll sue the Catholic Church?
If they do, I wanna watch. With pop-corn.
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Re:It's a Village People thing... (Score:4, Funny)
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Preparing for the MS takeover, are they? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Whaa? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whaa? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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It was a typo it was meant to say "person" not "people".
No wonder... (Score:2, Funny)
Finally! Now we know how to delete a Yahoo ID! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What are they doing? (Score:3, Insightful)
And they wonder... (Score:2)
.
/. doesn't get a takedown notice for my having sort of quoted some old song that somebody might actually hold a copyright
It's an old 50s song or something. But appropriate. I do not even know who the "artists" are.
They -- yahoo -- wonder why their business has not done so well. Well, here is one hint: don't harass, intrude upon, or intimidate people for stupid reasons. Other corporations have slowly been learning that lesson, harshly and expensively.
Gee, I hope
Re:And they wonder... (Score:4, Informative)
Del Shannon originally penned (and had a hit with it) in 1961
Lawrence Welk 1962.
the Small Faces in 1967
Elvis Presley in 1970,
the Beach Boys were known to have played it live.
Charlie Kulis 1975
Bonnie Raitt 1977
Just to name a few
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They're trying to avoid lawsuits during takeover (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe Microsoft is behind this in order to use a barrage of picayune lawsuits as a justification for lowering their bid offer. Goodness knows, Microsoft's staff of eager-beaver Ivy League lawyers do live for this kind of thing.
Re:They're trying to avoid lawsuits during takeove (Score:4, Interesting)
It seemed to me (not an American, not a lawyer) like a good system: the host is responsible in the first instance and takes material down without judging about the illegality (which the host can't), unless the poster takes responsibility and claims it is not illegal (fair use, own work, whatever), and it can be settled in court.
Apparently, it doesn't work that way...? Or does the poster not have the guts to stand up for his right? Or does yahoo go further than required by the DMCA?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is guilty untill proven inocent and the burden is on part of the defence.
I don't know what the best solution is, but requiring that every case like this go through a lengthy civil trial is just going to swamp our already overloaded judicial system. It would be like a DOS on justice, and that's really not something we want. Legitimate civil cases would be backlogged, some criminal cases would be backlogged (meaning a lot of people would be held awaiting trial for longer), and frankly, it would just be a mess.
At the same time, I don't like the fact that any idiot can claim owne
D-M-C-A (Score:5, Funny)
I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground.
I said, young man, 'cause you're in a new town
There's no need to be unhappy.
Young man, there's a lawyer I know.
I said, young man, who can get you some dough.
You can sit back, and I'm sure you will find
Many ways to ruin others good time.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
You can get yourself mean, you can have a good deal,
You can get folks to settle for whatever you feel...
Young man, are you listening to me?
I said, young man, what do you want to be?
I said, young man, you can make real your dreams.
But you've got to know this one thing!
No man does it all by himself.
I said, young man, put your pride on the shelf,
And just look there, to the D.M.C.A.
I'm sure our legal team can help you today.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
They have everything that you need to enjoy,
You can hang out with all the lawyer boys
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
You can get yourself mean, you can have a good deal,
You can folks to settle for whatever you feel
Young man, I was once in your shoes.
I said, I was down and out with the blues.
I felt no man cared if my band were alive.
I felt the whole world was so jive
That's when a lawyer came up to me,
And said, young man, sign this release.
There is a law called the D.M.C.A.
They can start you back on your way.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
They have everything that you need to enjoy,
You can hang out with all RIAA boys
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A
Young man, young man there's no need to feel down
Young man, young man pick yourself off the ground
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A
Young man, young man are you listening to me?
Young man, young man what do you wanna be?
you'll find it at the Y-M-C-A
no man, young man does it all by himself
young man, young man put your pride on the shelf
then just go to the Y-M-C-A
young man, young man I was once in your shoes
young man, young man I said, I was down and out with the blues.
My comment has too few characters per line and I'm really hoping that this brings up the average - though I don't know that it will be enough. Apparently not on the first try- though I did bring up the average an entire character. Let's see if this was sufficient. Wow - it did go up another word but still too few. This could take a while. And of course the entire joke is ruined now. But I've got a stubborn streak in me that just kicked into full gear. Holy cow- 26.2 characters per line is not enough. I'm gonna have a novella down here to go with my funny (or not funny - we'll see) lyrics. Or maybe I'll just go down in flames as off topic for this section. Oh the suspense. 28.4 is not enough. For crying out loud. I like Slashdot, I really do, but this is annoying. If there are going to be ads in the comments then I ought to be able to at least post song lyrics - or should I say parodies of song lyrics. And while I hate to play this card, if that's not possible for the hoi polloi, well it'd be a nice bonus for the um you know - paying customers. I mean I don't think that is asking too much. Time to check again. Oh really - 32.6 is too few? There has to be something more to it than that. I've posted lots of comments that were shorter than that. The one I'm looking at right now above mine isn't that long. There must be something else in the formula there. But I'm not giving up. I'm going to keep at it until this thing gets past. On the bright side, no fear of seeing "Slow Down Cowboy!" now is there? I'm an eternal optimist. And I really feel like I'll be making the world a better place once this goes live
Re:D-M-C-A (Score:5, Informative)
You should have used HTML formatting.
Put a <br/> at the end of each line, and instead of empty lines, use the occasional <p>...</p> tag pair. Empty lines are the worst, I'd say; they bring your average way down.
I learned it the hard way, too, but I've been posting my comments in HTML ever since.
P.S. Obligatory Userfriendly link [userfriendly.org]
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Re: (Score:2)
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Host it yourself then (Score:2)
If the video creator is sure its not infringing they can just put it up themselves on another service and then they can go head-to-head with Scorpio Music.
Whether its in Yahoo's interests to keep it up is probably a painful
What's the BFD here? (Score:3, Informative)
You really think Yahoo (or any other large webhost/portal) is going to spend the money to have people sitting around all day checking the validity of every single DMCA takedown notice they receive?
Yahoo did what they were supposed to do under the law.
Now it's your turn to file a counter-notice [chillingeffects.org]
Re:What's the BFD here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then in the instances where they have to go to court, their countersuit remedy should ask that the supposedly infringed work in the public domain in the event they prevail. One company engaging in that sort of brinksmanship winning one time would make all the other paper people better corporate citizens.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As for counter notices. I can see where Yahoo sits on this. It's not in their interest to waste money chasing up the many thousands of these shitty notices they get each day. They just rip out the "offending" content and let the two ends of the deal battle it out.
The problem with the system is that the Recordi
File a counter notice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In this, I feel that Yahoo is acting in a manner which is not in their customer's interest. Whoever made that threat probably thinks that the extra time required to deal with DMCA notices justifies removing the accounts of people who are likely to be repeat offenders. Unfortunat
DMCA counter notice (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
* The subscriber's name, address, phone number and physical or electronic signature
* Identification of the material and its location before removal
* A statement under penalty of perjury that the material was removed by mistake or misidentification
* Subscriber consent to local federal court jurisdiction, or if overseas, to an appropriate judicial body.
Doesn't
Publish it in the open (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
While it is completely bogus and will be repelled one day for the time publishing takedown notices is a bad idea.
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That's not to say that the big guns wouldn't just follow suit with that strategy, but the eas
Move servers out of USA? (Score:5, Insightful)
What actually surprises me is that there are no similar portals in e.g. the EU. All major portals and sharing sites are US based - Yahoo!, MSN, Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, MySpace, you name it, they are all in the USA, I can't think of anyone based fully in Europe. And as such they are subject to the US's draconian copyright laws.
This again makes me wonder why none is being set up outside of the US jurisdiction. How about a facebook.de, or a youtube.nl, fully hosted in that country, and incorporated there as well. What is holding the Internet back? It is not that Europe doesn't have the IT infrastructure, on the contrary. It may be better than what's available in the USA. Same accounts for the people. I may assume there as much business sense on both sides of the pond.
Yet all these video-sharing and other creative enterprises on the Internet seem to sprout and flourish mostly in the USA. The world is really a wonderful place.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I fail to see how anyone could reasonably expect any country's laws not to apply to content that's in that country by virtue of being on servers that are physically located there.
"Or not even necessarily that it seems, do legal reverse-engineering or encryption related work in your own country, visit the USA, get arrested, it's possible, no?"
It only happens if you reverse engineer stuff that would be covered
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't throw a rock without hitting someone trying to start a company around here, and so there's [i]plenty[/i] of things to fund. EU labor laws apparently make Europeans significantly more conservative, both due to how safe people's jobs are (keeping people from wanting to leave their jobs a
hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't "fair use" for a court to decide?
All services in one place... (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it great having everything integrated into one easy-to-use service? Pictures, searching, games, dating services, emai--oh fuck--they just canceled everything in my entire life.
Same goes for Google everything. If one company controls all the services you use, all it takes is one idiot at that company to make your life hell.
DMCA doing what it should do? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank goodness the UK doesn't have anything quite as bad as the DMCA (yet...)
The bit about terminating services is a bit more extreme, but seems to be some standard practice taken too far - "You've breached part of the ToS by posting breaking a law, so we'll terminate your account" but without the part where they check whether it was a copyright infringement or just another quick DMCA claim.
OpenID (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a slightly larger problem than it may seem at first. A Yahoo ID as at the same time an OpenID. People using that account as an OpenID are subject to the whims of Yahoo. I'm not yet sure of the implications this bears, but it will become a problem when people become more reliant on OpenID.
Ya Know..... (Score:3, Interesting)
As much of a copyright violation that it may seem to be, it would still be *VERY* Fair Use, since it would be a parody.
Question mark end of DMCA stick (Score:3, Informative)
Unlike DMCA counter-circumvention provision this is actually a good thing. ISP is off the hook and instead the customer and the purported copyright owner get to give up their claims or duke it out in court if they choose. Genuinely infringing material can be immediately removed from public access, ensuring that say, Photoshop source code does not make it into too many hands before the court battle is settled.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Put it on Youtube, then Yahoo can't take it down so easily.
Re:Not taking a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Not taking a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
~Dan
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Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, -where- you can exercise free speech is just as important as what you can say. Here in the U.S. they remove all confusion by placing specific areas (out of the way of any events, for the safety of the people trying to speak freely) around cities hosting political events for us, the Free-est of people, to speak our mind
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It's scary how predominant this process is in American politics. About the only positive thing I can say is that at least it's not as bad as China, where a sin