The Algorithmic Copyright Cops: Streaming Video's Robotic Overlords

thomst writes "Geeta Dayal of Wired's Threat Level blog posts an interesting report about bot-mediated automatic takedowns of streaming video. He mentions the interruption of Michelle Obama's speech at the DNC, and the blocking of NASA's coverage of Mars rover Curiosity's landing by a Scripps News Service bot, but the story really drills down on the abrupt disappearance of the Hugo Award's live stream of Neil Gaiman's acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script. (Apparently the trigger was a brief clip from the Doctor Who episode itself, despite the fact that it was clearly a case of fair use.) Dayal points the finger at Vobile, whose content-blocking technology was used by Ustream, which hosted the derailed coverage of the Hugos."

Obama, repeal the DMCA!

[Nirvelli]

President Obama,

The DMCA has deleted your wife from the internet! You must repeal it immediately!

Sincerely,
A Concerned Internet Citizen

Re:Obama, repeal the DMCA!

[Mashiki]

In Soviet America, bot deletes wife!

Re:And why is the technology to blame?

[azalin]

Shifting the blame by the use of facts, away from "big media" companies to (dumb) festival organizers, is not allowed around here. It relies on common sense, complete fact checking and considering both sides. Therefore it must not be tolerated and opposes groupthink. Sorry about that. /sarcasm
Let's check facts first before we start ranting. Otherwise we (and our legitimate issues) look silly.