Universal Uses DMCA To Get Bad Lip Reading Parody Taken Down 298
Joren writes "Bad Lip Reading is an independent producer known for anonymously parodying music and political videos by redubbing them with his humorous attempts at lip-reading, such as Everybody Poops (Black Eyed Peas) and Gang Fight (Rebecca Black). According to an interview in Rolling Stone, he creates entirely new music from scratch consisting of his bad lip readings, and then sets them to the original video, often altering the video for humorous effect and always posting a link to the original off which it is based. Although his efforts have won the respect of parody targets Michael Bublé and Michelle Bachman, not everyone has been pleased. Two days ago, Universal Music Group succeeded in getting his parody Dirty Spaceman taken down from YouTube, and despite BLR's efforts to appeal, in his words, 'UMG essentially said "We don't care if you think it's fair use, we want it down."' And YouTube killed it. So does this meet the definition of parody as a form of fair use? And if so, what recourse if any is available for artists who are caught in this situation?"
Re:It's only fair use if you go to court... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, that's absolutely right.
I had a non-profit service and community that I ran online for close to a dozen years and someone came along and replicated the exact same thing (though not as well) and even took the name and domain and everything else and catered to the exact same niche community (well, niche meaning we had about 100k members) . . . only they changed the name of it by one letter. After this, people were constantly getting confused. I'd get complaints about my site and members and service and everything else, that was clearly meant for the other site and I'd often be tagged for their failings, because of the confusion by the name.
Unfortunately, I'm just a dude and this wasn't a for-profit commercial enterprise of any kind. So, while I was clearly in the right to take legal action, there was absolutely no way I could have afforded the extreme costs that would have been involved.
Re:Fucking hell. (Score:2, Interesting)
The solution is to elect people who understand and respect our founding principles instead of people who promise us all kinds of new shiny stuff. We're supposed to be electing representatives, and instead we vote for people who rape us.
Re:Fucking hell. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Kickstarter that badboy. (Score:2, Interesting)
This shouldn't be necessary. Since Google owns YouTube, they should know all about 'freedom' right? Surely they know parody is protected? Surely they aren't the same as every other corporation out there?
Hello? Is this thing on?
Re:no recourse (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's only fair use if you go to court... (Score:4, Interesting)
Name some of them who have successfully taken Monsanto to court and won.
Re:Fucking hell. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's both the solution, and the problem. Yes we in theory can elect people that will fix the system, but no, we as a people are greedy, short-sighted, narrow-minded voters that will vote in anyone that promises free lollipops after the election, issues be damned, until it gets really bad. That's why our elected officials are voted back and forth on seesaw elections. One election they vote in a candidate for all the shiny stuff he promises because the last guy was too busy trying to solve issues and spending money where it needed to be spent. Then next election they vote the first guy back in because the second one undid all the fixes from the first guy. Rinse and repeat.
I don't blame the politicians or the corporations, I blame the voters. Unfortunately, big business has sat quietly on the sidelines slipping dollars into pockets and actually getting laws passed that serve their good.
Copyright is as out of control as ever (Score:4, Interesting)
I still have a bad mark on my Youtube account from making a short parody video of something once which was flagged as a copyright violation by somebody. The only way to get this off of my record is to send some DMCA formal counter notice to the original owner, which is wayyyy more effort than a lot of the Youtube videos that get marked are worth fooling with, and also requires you to give your real name and everything. Besides, in my case, that person is not only long gone, but obviously is not going to give a crap about me having a bad mark on my account in the first place since I bet they're responsible for it being there.
Youtube makes it way too easy for people to be jerks. They didn't even check the video in my case, or they would have seen it was blatant parody with very little source material. I ended up removing two other videos I had spent a lot of time editing which contained content that could be disputed because I simply can't risk losing my whole account from such bullshit. I can't imagine what kind of crap that people with professional channels must have to deal with on Youtube. And look at how many of them have even had their accounts shut down occasionally from it, even if just temporary. If those people are Youtube partners (which some of them have been), that's costing them money.
And didn't I hear before that some company was filing copyright claims against people for posting video game footage now too? If you go around killing all the Let's Play and video game reviews, then half of Youtube will be gone overnight.
So basically, fuck companies hiding behind the DMCA to protect their image or content or whatever ridiculous excuse they want to use. They only encourage me to want to pirate them out of spite. It's about like what happened to Metallica several years ago. Their music sucks, but a lot of people went and downloaded it for spite to them during the whole Napster debacle. It shows that people tend to react the exact opposite way you want when you start turning into a jerk about something.
Re:It's only fair use if you go to court... (Score:4, Interesting)
So what you're saying is that no one else is allowed to produce a Round-Up-resistant crop?
The only way to develop a resistant crop without genetic engineering is to hit your crop with Round-Up and see which plants die. Thus, experimentally killing off your crops is a valid way to develop a Round-Up-resistant strain. Different plants will have different levels of resistance. Cross-breed the plants that lived, and you'll get crops that are progressively more and more resistant.
In effect, if Round-Up won that battle, unless they proved that the farmer was aware that a neighbor was using a patented Round-Up-resistant strain, the court ruling effectively says that Monsanto has a right not only to their particular gene sequence, but every possible Round-Up-resistant strain, regardless of how it was derived. That's just not what the law says, so either the farmer's lawyers were incompetent or the judge was crooked. You pretty much can't have it any other way.