At Universal's Request, YouTube Yanks News Podcast Over Music Snippet 287
Snaller writes "Tech News Today does what the name says — it's a podcast reporting on Tech news, Monday to Friday. They, like Slashdot, reported on the Megaupload vs. Universal copyright dispute. But during their coverage, they played a snippet of the music video and immediately Universal Music Group had the news podcast yanked from YouTube. Tech News Today has outlets other than YouTube, but should a music company have the right to have a news podcast removed on copyright grounds, when it's not even clear that said company has had any copyrights violated?"
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
Just to be clear we, at Tech news Today have posted a counter-notice and YouTube requires our show to stay off YouTube for 10 days to give UMG the opportunity to decide whether to take us to court or not. We also did not submit this story to Slashdot.
MegaUpload Video (Score:5, Informative)
They did not have the copyright to it.
Re:Punish unjust copyright claims (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Punish unjust copyright claims (Score:5, Informative)
No, Universal does not have copyright to the music involved, which was what made it newsworthy.
Re:Punish unjust copyright claims (Score:5, Informative)
From the U.S. Copyright Office [copyright.gov]:
"Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
The nature of the copyrighted work
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work"
Sounds like this snippet met the third purpose. It also seems the rights holder would have a hard time demonstrating the fourth factor, though they would essentially shut YouTube down if they could demonstrate the first factor was a commercial nature, and claimed Google was the commercial beneficiary of that.
The 'amount and substantiality' factor leads you to think that a short clip could violate that, but could we argue in court that a short snippet would actually enhance the market or value by further popularizing the original work and driving even more audience and buyers that might otherwise not be exposed, and did not recieve a substantive portion of the work, therefore impelling them to purchase?
Or more simply put, having heard a short snippet, some of those YouTube viewers might actually buy the damned song that would not otherwise be aware of it at all?
We need to do a lot of work on this, starting at the ballot box.
Re:And this is why SOPA is so terrifying (Score:4, Informative)
They'll still call that copyright infringement.At least according to youtube it is: http://www.youtube.com/account_monetization [youtube.com]
Examples of videos that are NOT eligible: You are only singing words of your favorite copyrighted song
Re:And this is why SOPA is so terrifying (Score:5, Informative)
As to a news report using a clip, that has been specifically listed as allowed and fair use in the laws, so is explicitly legal.
ianal (obviously)
And if anyone actually wants to see/hear the song, go to megaupload.com, they have it posted.
Re:Punish unjust copyright claims (Score:4, Informative)
The law may be interpreted that way by legal scholars, but it isn't enforced that way in practice, and most people do not have the resources to make a Fair Use defense in court. Much easier just to take down the offending work and hope it goes away.
Re:MegaUpload Video (Score:5, Informative)
This clip was in no way owned by UMG. Megaupload solicited and paid the artist for the comercial, has releases from the artist to prove it. Megaupload holds the copyright to the video. UMG filed the takedown notice on the clip without holding the copyright, which was the story covered by TNT. TNT showed a video of the clip, without audio, and spoke over the clip. At the end, to show how bad the song was, they played less than 3 seconds of the end of the clip. UMG is being taken to court by Megaupload over the takedown notice for the original video. I was the original broadcast of TNT. UMG is censoring the news, and acting anti-competitively.
Please stop being a shill and think. Spread FUD elsewhere.
Re:And this is why SOPA is so terrifying (Score:5, Informative)
Posting a full song online is not illegal. Illegal specifically means against the law. They are trying to change and pervert the law all the time, so who really knows when even thinking about a song without authorization is actually against a law, but today posting a song is not illegal.
Copyright law structures the copyright and enumerates and defines the rights (legal entitlements). If you have violated copyright law, which meets the definition of illegal, it is because you have improperly constructed a copyright or some other equivalent.
Posting of the song is infringement of a copyright, not a law, which is very different in several important ways.
The prevalence of the terms illegal, theft, stealing, etc. in regards to copyright is merely a disingenuous attempt to characterize what is essentially a civil dispute over contractual violations in a legal agreement constructed through copyright law.
Since it requires too much work, and money, to take actual responsibility of your legal rights, there has been a movement to appropriate authority that was usually reserved for criminal acts and actual crime and abrogate any legal entitlements the consumer thought they (quite reasonably) had.
In addition to the propaganda campaign that includes the redefining and perversion of the words theft, steal, illegal, copyright, fair use, etc. Big Content has actively engaged in activities that are unlawful, unethical, and an effective bypass and nullification of the Judicial system. After all, participating in the Judicial system costs real money. Same exact principle behind deeds of trust for real estate, which is excusing yourself from any meaningful participation in the Judicial system and eliminating any chance of the other party seeking remediation through law.
While the emergence of digital technologies and communications, that were once the realm of Sci-Fi, has utterly destroyed the barrier to entry for copyright infringement, that does not justify the serious harm against society.
The mere fact that a large corporation can act as judge, jury, and executioner against 3rd parties with no legal or contractual basis of any kind, without consequence, and without regulation, is evidence that the system is broken.
So with respect, and I do not apologize for being pedantic, it is not illegal. It is infringing.
Any case of infringement, especially these ones, are within the jurisdiction of the courts and must involve due process.
Due process is the bane of Big Content. The reason should be obvious. If they had to actually explain and justify their actions... they would lose. They can't explain why if a customer paid them money they should not be able to enjoy the work in any form they want and back it up. They can't explain why using portions of the copyrighted work for educational and journalistic purposes should be barred, or how it even harms them.
They don't want to explain or justify anything. Just control it without opposition at any cost. Society be damned. After all, they need to afford those hookers, blow, and expensive toys some how.