Newest YouTube User To Fight a Takedown: Lawrence Lessig 154
onehitwonder writes "Lawrence Lessig has teamed with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to sue Liberation Music, which recently demanded that YouTube take down a lecture Lessig had posted that features clips from the song 'Lisztomania' by the French band Phoenix (on Liberation Music's label). Liberation claimed copyright infringement as the reason it demanded the takedown, but in his countersuit, Lessig is claiming Liberation's 'overly aggressive takedown violates the DMCA and that it should be made to pay damages,' according to Ars Technica."
Stupid comment... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Rhetorical question ahead)
Why do we never hear what the artists, the ones who actually made the song or tune, have to say about this "infringements"?
Re:Stupid comment... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Stupid comment... (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly it. No matter how much effort you put into music, most labels retain copyright over the works. Smaller indie labels don't tend to do this, but the big players all do it.
Then again, most of these synthetic bands/artists don't write their own music or lyrics, they're just glorified cover bands. Not to say Phoenix is like this, I quite like their music, but I'm not sure how I feel about their label now.
Re:Stupid comment... (Score:4, Insightful)
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You're looking in the wrong places. There are lots of real musicians out there, but they're not multi-millionaires (and why should they be?) and their music isn't played on commercial radio stations or popular tv shows. You'll have to go watch them in a small venue like we used to before there was a music industry.
Re:Stupid comment... (Score:5, Informative)
There are a number of musicians who still get screwed over by the major record labels, even if they haven't made their millions. Sometimes all they do is simply play songs perhaps for a wedding or bar mitzvah and then jam in a local park for fun most of the time.... and they still are required to pay fees to ASCAP or other similar "industry groups" even if they are performing original music they wrote themselves.
Life sucks sometimes, and it is hard to be a musician in America or even most of Europe right now and avoid getting entangled with the music industry at some level.
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It suggests, to me, that musicians are stupid, myopic, and desperate.
"Gosh, feller! You're gonna make me a super rock star if I sign over all ownership and rights to my music for eternity? Where do I sign?!"
Writers are in a similar position of being in a profession that everyone wants to be in, having a high rate of competition, having little bargaining power because everyone is so desperate to be published, being in a creative field, and wanting to be famous against all odds . . . and yet they still manage
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or require that rights to their material return to themselves after a certain period.
The standard contractual rights end when the book/work goes out of print.
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Oh, I don't know. Put together some low-brow supernatural love story bullshit with characters you don't care about, get it on a bestseller list, maybe make it into a triology, get a movie deal, then become rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Ditto for "popular music."
Doesn't sound like a bad deal to me.
Hmm, just need to figure out what the public's going to fall all overthemselves for after A Song of Ice and Fire is finished.
Eh, on the other hand, self-pubilshing seems to be becoming more viable, leading t
Re:Stupid comment... (Score:4, Insightful)
In that case, "intellectual property" doesn't mean a whole lot because the intellect from which the work came into being is no longer a party to the property.
It's a truly twisted system, being abused by some very powerful people, who didn't create a goddamn thing.
I don't think that was the original purpose of copyright.
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who didn't create a goddamn thing.
They created profit. That's all that matters
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Do you know the original purpose of copyright? You should look it up. It will clear up your misunderstanding of what it's supposed to do.
There's nothing about the original purpose of copyright that includes "protect the endless profit stream of some guy who bought the rights".
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Very good. So what's changed? Well, we're no longer talking about the 'creator' of the work, because we've already established that most intellectual property is NOT owned by the person who did the work.
Second, the "set term" is a thing of the past. Do you know how many public works entered the public domain last year? None.
The United States has effectively made copyright eternal.
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Second paragraph should read "Do you know how many published works entered the public domain last year? None."
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That's a little misleading.
If the creator profits from letting someone else control the copyright, even though the creator took a one time lump sum payment, he is still profiting from the monopoly created by law.
Also, you should look into who did what to copyrights. The US has always lagged behind Europe on the length of copyright terms. Most of the adjustments to the terms or time a copyright is valid is due to a treaty already taken up by our European Friends. While US companies might be leading the pack
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And how many times removed does it have to get before we've exceeded the bounds of copyright's original purpose?
If I am the guy who bought the rights from the guy who bought the rights from the guy...times ten...then should I expect the same protections as the creator and his original benefactor? Not if the original intent w
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It can be removed as many times as necessary for the original creator to profit originally.
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So, you agree that copyright protection should only extend to the first purchase? Because that's the last time the original creator profits originally. After that, the original creator no longer has any interest, because he sold it.
It sounds like you're advocating for eternal copyright. There has never been eternal copyright, because from the very beginning, they knew it was counter-productive.
I think your beliefs
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Let's not make the mistake of thinking the creative work is the same thing as the rights to the creative work.
That's where copyright absolutists go wrong.
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Copyright is much older than the secondary market for it.
And people purchasing your "intellectual property" inflate the value, they do not create a true market. They can only create artificial shortage.
Re:Stupid comment... (Score:4, Informative)
Untrue in France at least (since the original band is French). In France, the original artist of a piece of art *cannot* sell 100% of the rights on the work of art. They retain a minimum of 50%.
That said, the problem doesn't really change as the label owns 50% of the copyrights and hold the band by the balls anyways.
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Because most artists have no say.
Re:Stupid comment... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure they do, and they used "their say" to sign a contract.
Luckily we live in a society where contracts are taken seriously.
Re:Stupid comment... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless the contract ends up hurting a corporation, and then they just really get thrown out. Ask people who have lost their pensions.
Seriously... anyone that doesn't understand the practicality of this is being a corporate sycophant. The way that the legal and legislative system is right now corporations wield a HUGE amount of power.
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companies with pensions have to honor them. its the law. if a company should fail and not be able to pay its pensions there is a government agency that insures them and will replace the money stream such that hte pensioners still get most of their benefit.
now, they can sell (techinically its not selling though...) them to a management company, such that that other company now takes the risk. legally, the original company is still"honoring" it. but its now handled by this other company. and if THAT company f
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When that happens, the pensioners generally get a small portion of what they were promised, and there are few, if any, consequences for not properly funding the pension plan. Now, if there's fraud involved, the people committing it might end up in a minimum security prison, but the people who were supposed to get the pension are out of luck.
Suggesting that the protections in place are sufficient to guarantee that the obligations are met, is disingenuous as the amount the government pays out after taking ove
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They weren't really underfunded. The rules covering pension plans got screwed over in the 1980's when companies were allowed to co-mingle funds from pensions or be able to set unrealistically low minimum requirements and then take the excess. This turned into a corporate merger mania where a "leveraged buy out" became a common term where many companies were purchased explicitly so their pension funds could be taken and used to pay off any loans used to acquire the stock to buy the companies in the first p
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I am saying that the pension plans once upon a time were more than adequately funded, and furthermore those funds were untouchable and couldn't be spent on other things (like bonuses for CEOs or board members).
Unfortunately the U.S. Congress got involved and screwed it up. Congress changed the rules and basically turned all of these pensions into "free money" that could be spent wildly and changed the guidelines. If anything, I would dare say that when these rules changed, this is when CEOs started to hav
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They sign a contract for two albums then the label refuses to release the second one until they sign a contract for more. Since they signed the contract they can't release their music any other way.
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we did, a while ago, when Lars Ulrich claimed that most young people who had ever heard a Metallica track had downloaded it from a bootleg site.
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Lars Ulrich
"James blew up for you!"
"Fire Bad!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIuR5TNyL8Y&list=PL9E7AEDA7441D07E7&index=1 [youtube.com]
--
BMO - blast from the past
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because they don't have time to do everything and that is why they sign record company contracts. they are essentially outsourcing a lot of their work.
most businesses have net profit margins in the 5% to 10% range. just about what a record company contract gives you
Re:Stupid comment... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sort of, what you're failing to account for is that the contracts themselves are crooked and the labels don't generally release the sales figures without being sued. For example, the artist pays for the studio time and the record label gets paid for that again on the back end. The label also frequently gets to charge breakages of discs to the artist, and that includes cases where the case of MP3s was dropped when the movers were taking it out of the truck.
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Unfortunately, no sarcasm. Breakage is taken from the artist for digital sales. So, while there isn't technically such a thing as a case of MP3s, that doesn't stop the labels from taking money to cover the cost of breakage for an item that's indestructible.
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Re:Stupid comment... (Score:5, Interesting)
Artist checking in.
Pirate my music, its out there to be enjoyed so do it, just don't sell it without asking me first, and please don't make copies of my shirts (The stuff that actually DOES put food on my table).
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Why do we never hear what the artists, the ones who actually made the song or tune, have to say about this "infringements"?
Because the artists aren't the PR/legal department. Honestly, you may as well complain that the latest coke advert wasn't written by the CEO of Coca-Cola, or even anyone within the Coca-Cola Corporation, instead being outsourced to *GASP* an advertising agency. If I was a recording artist and I was expected to handle all the copyright stuff and comment on every takedown request, I'd seriously wonder what I was paying my label for...
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Getting dropped by the lable is usualy a godsend, a disaster is having a multi-record exclusive contract and tje label will not produce your last record.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Pffft...got this beat... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had Warner Media try to takedown a video that was a conference/lecture at Duke on Fair Use by an artist that had been sued by U2; all because it contained a song that was at the center of the dispute, which was what that section of the lecture was about. I have rarely had as much fun as handing them their ass simply by pointing out that it was a *lecture*........about Fair Use..... in regards to *that* song. They never tried again.
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I have rarely had as much fun as handing them their ass simply by pointing out
FYI, 'pointing out' rarely counts as 'handing someone their ass.'
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Would that happen to be Negativland? If so, one of the greatest examples of parody and fair use, ever.
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If it's Negativland you're talking about, didn't they already settle that out of court, and allow them to use the song? I recall it being available for download from their website some years ago.
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Unless you got damages, big fucking deal. After being hassled, you were just allowed to do what you should have been able to do in the first place.
tldr (Score:5, Funny)
Lawrence Lessig laments Liberation's 'Lisztomania' limitations. Litigation likely.
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Lawrence Lessig laments Liberation's 'Lisztomania' limitations. Litigation likely.
TL;DR
8L
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FTFY: Oh, own openness.
Oh wait, that's not alliteration, that's assonance. Careless composition can commonly cause confusion.
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Unfortunate for the artist as well... (Score:2)
My take on where we are so far (Score:4, Funny)
When a li'l old professor made fair use of a small clip of a band's music, maybe giving them free PR in the process, the band's label turned into Big, Bad Bullies and slapped a Big, Legalistic Testosterone-Fueled DMCA Notice to said professor.
Well. It so happens, that the l'il old professor is an expert in Internet Copyright Law at Harvard Law School. And according to his complaint:
17. Professor Lessig has been named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries
So, said professor turned into a Big, Bad Bully and slapped a Big, Legalistic Testosterone-Fueled Civil Complaint Seeking Damages against the band's record label.
Remember... we're the good guys here!
Re:My take on where we are so far (Score:5, Insightful)
So, said professor turned into a Big, Bad Bully
Wrong. Standing up against a bully doesn't turn you into one.
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So, said professor turned into a Big, Bad Bull
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Hmmm. I dunno. "Testosterone-Fueled"... Isn't rabidly protecting your babies from even minor harm more likely to be an "Estrogen-Fueled" thing? I mean, if we're going to be sexist assholes let's at least apply labels realistically.
set a precedent (Score:4, Interesting)
I do hope they manage to set a precedent with this case and pry open the door to a flood of such awards. even if they're small amounts, it'll at least fool me into believing that maybe the system sometimes works?
What an idiot... (Score:2)
He clearly forgot to add one of those notes on the YouTube video, like "All rights belong to their respectful owners" or the amazing "Under the copyright act of 1976, this video may stay up (if democracy still exists) as it is for DEMONSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY".
Just search for your favourite artist name + "full album" on YouTube for more gems.
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It wasn't put in public domain, it was deleted. I.E. taken out of print. Big difference.
People copy the hell out of KLF music and I don't think that Bill Drummond cares, though, which might be the reason someone is think it is in the public domain.
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ok.. thanks for that. I always thought deletion was simply not selling it anymore.
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Initially The KLF's earnings were to be distributed by way of a fund for struggling artists managed by the K Foundation, Drummond and Cauty's new post-KLF art project, but, said Drummond, "We realised that struggling artists are meant to struggle, that's the whole point."[11] Instead the duo decided to create art with the money.
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http://www.libraryofmu.org/display-resource.php?id=315 [libraryofmu.org]
there's a video somewhere as well which expands on the press statement as read on stage by Drummond, I think it's on the full uncut version of "Fuck The Millennium" under the name "Blacksmoke" (runs around 20 minutes and is mostly extremely caustic jazz)
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Informative)
Fair Use is pretty well defined, in a nutshell you can use 30 consecutive seconds of audio before it becomes an infringement, or the entire track in the case of a narrative... if I use multiple fades and ...
Wa-huh?
We're talking US law, right?
Fair Use is covered by Title 17 of the U.S.Code, section 107: "Limitations on Exclusive Rights: Fair Use". [cornell.edu] Note that the law does not talk about 30 consecutive seconds of one type of clip or entire lengths for other types of tracks. You are confusing details from a mish-mash cases with the actual law.
Fortunately Lessig is a lawyer, and knows the details of copyright law better than most anyone.
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I wish others felt that way. I'm currently in a polite-yet-heated civil discussion with some neighbors.
They are convinced that because a corporate-printed banner says something, and because they have seen police involved, that it absolutely must be the law.
It doesn't matter that both the actual law says something different, that the supreme court has already ruled on the issue back in 1988 and declared it legal, and that when I researched the actual times police were involved in PACER and discovered that
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Informative)
Where does this come from and why can't it ever be debunked once and for all?
When I was studying broadcast, one of the first things they teach when talking about copyright is that fair use is more complex than you can "use 30 seconds of this" or "300 words of that." It's another tricky legal concept defined by "we know it when we see it."
The "300 words" misconception is mentioned directly on the Fair Use wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Common_misunderstandings [wikipedia.org]
And here is a good article about the non-existent 30-second rule (which probably comes directly from someone morphing the 300 words rule) http://studentpressblogs.org/nspa/the-non-existent-30-second-rule/ [studentpressblogs.org]
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Informative)
Where does this come from and why can't it ever be debunked once and for all?
I would call it a Meta Rule. A rule that is not what copyright says; but was proposed once as a guideline, and took on a life of its own through the power of word of mouth -- with various institutions codifying it. With various degrees of strictness --- if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time and use 31 seconds of a media recording; I suppose you might get expelled from some school, because you're over the limit.
Examples:
Halldavidson: This copyright chart form was designed to inform teachers what tehy may do under the law [halldavidson.net]
Music: Up to 10% of a copyrighted musical composition may be reproduced, performed and displayed as part of a multimedia program produced by an educator or student for educational purposes. ---- Authorities site a maximum length of 30 seconds. See notes by congressman below.
Temple University: College of Liberal Arts: Fair Use Policy [temple.edu]: .... .... Motion Media
Up to 10% or 3 minutes, whichever is less
Educators May use their projects for teaching, for a period of up to two years after the first instructional use with a class.
Music, Lyrics, and Music Video Up to 10% but no more than 30 seconds from any single musical work Any alterations shall not change the basic melody or fundamental character of the work.
WILEY: Permission requirements [wiley.com] .... . A single quotation or several shorter quotes from a full-length book, more than 300 words in toto. ..... A single quotation of more than 50 words from a newspaper, magazine, or journal. .... Material which includes all or part of a poem or song lyric (even as little as one line), or the title of a song. ...
The Law of Fair use and the Illusion of Fair use Guidelines [osu.edu]
Pikes Peak Community College: Copyright Portion Limits; Rules of the road [ppcc.edu]: Music, lyrics, music video - Up to 10%, but no more than 30 seconds Arlington Independent School District: Copyright: Portion Limitations [aisd.net]
CCSJ: Copyright Fair Use: 'Allowable portion for fair use' [ccsj.edu]
Public Schools of North Carolina: Copyright in an Electronic environment [state.nc.us]:
St. Olaf College: Copyright guidelines [stolaf.edu]
Music, lyrics, music video: up to 10% but in no event more than 30 seconds of an individual work
MolStead Library; North Idaho College [macminicolo.net] The amount of work to be copied is based on the “portion limit” set for that “medium.” [....] In general, you should never use more than 30 seconds or 10 percent of a piece of recorded music. Ball State University, guidelines for educational media [bsu.edu]:
4.2.3: Music, Lyrics and Music Video : Up to 10%, but in no event more than 30 seconds, of the music and lyrics from an individual work. No alteration(s) of the music and/or lyrics are allowed.
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The 30 second rule is based upon some case law (numerous cases here) that have basically said that 30 seconds or 10% of a work clearly is on the righteous side of fair-use. In other words, if you are using about that amount of material, you are clearly doing something legal and any lawyer claiming otherwise should have their head smacked real hard by a judge and be told to sit in a corner to shut up. Ditto for the 300 word rule used for printed works.
It says nothing about the 31 second penalty that you ar
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No intelligent lawyer would dare claim that a 31 second clip where that extra second actually conveys some important information (thus why it still needs to be included) is in violation of copyright just because it is 31 seconds long and not 30.
But if 31 seconds is fair use, surely a 32 second clip is too as one second can hardly make a difference. Then someone makes a 33 second clip because hey, when all these 32 second clips are fair use... and so it goes. It's hard to say which little step crosses the invisible boundary from fair to non-fair use, but if "the amount and substantiality of the portion taken" is the deciding factor in the four factor test then one of those steps will be one step too far. And you won't actually know until you've gon
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You miss the point. It isn't the length of the clip but rather how it is being used. There are other factors involved.
The point is these administrators and non-lawyers are trying to be lawyers and are in effect passing legislation and changing the law into something it simply isn't. I'll also point out that one thing lawyers almost never do is say "this is legal". They always hedge their bets and say "this could be illegal" or "this likely is legal". Part of that is because judges and juries are made o
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The 30 second rule is based upon some case law (numerous cases here) that have basically said that 30 seconds or 10% of a work clearly is on the righteous side of fair-use.
Nonetheless... a 20 second clip can fail to be fair use -- due to what it contains and its use; meanwhile, a 90 second clip for the right purpose can be fair use.
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Keep in mind that the rules of thumb used in the Wikipedia and elsewhere as examples of the boundary that should not be crossed when using copyrighted material according to "fair use" are conservative. The theory is that if you use these rules you're highly unlikely to be sued (except by copyright trolls who ought to be hunted down and disemboweled alive by real trolls). An author can probably get away with using more. ANY use of copyrighted material runs the risk of an infringement lawsuit. But then pr
Re:Fair use "exemptions" (Score:5, Informative)
from the fine article:
So, he had video clips of people dancing to underscore the point of the presentation. People dancing in random parts of the world is the original content, and material (hell, the point) to his presentation. The non-profit/no-loss part is COMPLETELY relevant, as it is two of the four tests used in determining if something is fair use:
--United States Copyright Office [copyright.gov]
finally, you could just watch the presentation and judge for yourself. [blip.tv]
Re:Fair use "exemptions" (Score:5, Interesting)
The non-profit/no-loss part is COMPLETELY relevant, as it is two of the four tests used in determining if something is fair use:
Yeah, but that's only one component of the case here. The video can get reinstated fairly simply under fair use provisions, but Lessig will have to prove the rightsholder sent the DMCA takedown in bad faith to win damages.
The DMCA makes illegal the process of knowingly abusing the takedown notices. The 3rd party must oblige the DMCA notice and take the vid down, then a counter notice by the alleged infringer saying they want the video back online can cause and reinstatement of the video by a 3rd party who is no longer culpable for the alleged infringement being that they complied with the DMCA. At that point the alleged infringer has taken responsibility for the content.
I want Copyright abolished, but this is actually a part of the DMCA that I like -- It gives you a warning instead of a lawsuit right out of the gate, and a chance to not re-instate the video. My issue, and it seems Lessig's issue, is that these takedown notices are being sent apparently without review of the alleged infringing content -- Any fool copyright holder would realize a presentation about copyright law shouldn't be DMCA'd, that's asinine. I mean, sure it might be found infringing because fair use is so fuzzy, but it's dumb even from a PR nightmare standpoint...
Additionally, the 3rd party often times provides no means for the alleged infringer to reinstate the video, thus the 3rd party often complies with only part of the DMCA takedown procedure, omitting the reinstatement procedure, and given their TOS they can refuse to display content at their discretion. IMO, that may weakly classify as a form of editorial oversight of the content -- Videos sent takedowns staydown... Were I a judge I would strip Safe Harbor protections from such entities that don't treat both sides of the DMCA dispute equally by implementing the full process of takedown and restoration.
Note: It's been a long time since I had a DMCA takedown of a Youtube video, so I'm not sure if Google now has some facility in place to get the vids back online or not, but such didn't used to exist...
It's a hard case to make that the DMCA takedowns were intentionally abusive or in bad faith. I would say that those rights holders that use automated detection and filing of DMCA takedown requests MUST know the possibility exists that such notices can affect Fair Uses. That means it's known in advance that some DMCA takedowns are going to be fraudulent. That means violation of the DMCA.
As long as all the DMCA takedowns are against infringing users no one can make the case that the system is being used unfairly (no harm = no foul). However, once the takedowns sent with little or no human review DO affect Fair Use then said user can bring a case of DMCA abuse against the rights holder.
Of course, I'm just speculating on Lessig's probable case. The main point is that it's a hard case to make because the rights holder filing DMCA takedown notices can say, "Well, I didn't know for absolute sure the notices were fraudulent." IMO, there's no way they could not have known some would be fraudulent, and here is the fraudulent DCMA use they knew might happen, and did. It will be up to the courts to decide. Such erroneous takedowns have occurred many times; I'm just glad someone is actually taking a stand against them at all. I couldn't have picked a better guy for the fight than Lessig.
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The largest problem I've ever had on YouTube is having the commercials and banner ads stripped off of a video because I didn't include proper links to where I obtained licensing for supposed copyrighted content. Basically I had to cite everything or clearly claim that all of the content I was producing was original. By making those citations (including noting what software I used to create the video), YouTube didn't have a problem and accepted my videos.
Yeah, YouTube does have the system to put things bac
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...(including noting what software I used to create the video)...
I've never uploaded anything to Youtube, but what does it matter what software you used to make your video?
As weird as it sounds, if you use some software to produce copyrightable content (computer software, music, movies, etc.), the author/publisher of that software has a claim upon your work. People who produce such software would wisely add a license that permits unlimited use of anything you make with that software, but none the less there is a copyright claim to be made.
Strangely this claim was originally asserted by compiler developers who established a precedence that they had a copyright claim upon any
Hanlon's razor (Score:2)
Wow, that was a tortured vortex. I was losing track of which puppet hand had grabbed the microphone, or if it was just one especially wishy-washy devil's advocate.
If the bar is bad faith, we've got a problem, commonly known as Hanlon's razor:
The party being sued just needs to slit their own throat with Hanlon's razor (duh I'm stoopid) and your case melts away. Unless it takes confessing to a level of stupidity sufficient to get the
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Of course, I'm just speculating on Lessig's probable case. The main point is that it's a hard case to make because the rights holder filing DMCA takedown notices can say, "Well, I didn't know for absolute sure the notices were fraudulent."
It seems that is going to be one freaking hard claim for them to make, given that they went on and threatened to sue Lessig after they got his counter-notice. From TFA:
The fact pattern is different [from an earlier dispute involving the EFF]: Universal immediately backed down over the Lenz video, but still got slapped with an EFF lawsuit. Liberation, by contrast, threatened Lessig with a suit even after getting his counter-notice, which convinced him to keep his video offline until he was prepared to go to court.
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It's a hard case to make that the DMCA takedowns were intentionally abusive or in bad faith. I would say that those rights holders that use automated detection and filing of DMCA takedown requests MUST know the possibility exists that such notices can affect Fair Uses. That means it's known in advance that some DMCA takedowns are going to be fraudulent. That means violation of the DMCA.
There's no evidence that the issue in question here is about automated notices. But the big controversy hanging over automated takedowns is, as I understand it, far more interesting than mere "bad faith" provisions. A DCMA takedown notice is supposed to be a sworn statement from an individual stating, essentially, "I am the copyright owner (or an authorised agent thereof) of material I believe has been infringed upon". The DMCA is supposed to be safe from abuse, because a sworn statement that is known false
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"Why should I pay a sum to licence some music when there are a bunch of other videos using it for free".
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As it's not clear how long the clip was
Fair Use doesn't specify what percentage is ok. In some cases 100% of the original can still be fair use.
or how it was used
FTA:
... and snippets of that song featured prominently in Lessig's lecture. According to the complaint, Lessig showed clips of different groups of amateurs dancing to the song in Brazil, Israel, Brooklyn, Latvia, and Kenya.
Looks like it was pretty clear how it was used.
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Fair Use doesn't specify what percentage is ok. In some cases 100% of the original can still be fair use.
The situations that permit 100% content reuse are pretty narrow and typically fall under either personal fair use (it is legal to make personal copies of something you own as long as you don't give it to somebody else) or educational (such as a teacher making a hand-out in a classroom or showing a video to the class). These applications also have all kinds of weird exceptions to exceptions and is a minefield to walk through if you aren't careful. A great many times I've seen assertions of fair-use privile
Re: Fair use "exemptions" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Fair use "exemptions" (Score:5, Interesting)
IAs it's not clear how long the clip was or how it was used (was it the subject of the lecture? was it background music? Was it intro music?) we're probably missing the most important facts. Fair use doesn't mean you get free backing or intro music, for it to be fair use, there has to be original content involving that song.
You ought to read the actual complaint. Lessig went over every single one of your points in detail, including how it was used, how long it was used, and went point by point over the Fair Use Doctrine about why his use of the clips were very clearly fair-use.
He even went further to state that Liberation Music has lawyers who are well versed in copyright law and practice that particular specialty of law on a full time basis, thus they should also be well versed in the fair-use doctrine in particular (or be made fools in front of a judge for their decided lack of knowledge in regards to that topic). Essentially, he wants to teach these guys an expensive lesson in copyright law and have a judge be the lecturer.
I would say every single complaint you have made here is based off of your own ignorance, not anything that Mr. Lessig failed to provide. Frankly, these guys stepped into the wrong bear trap here and went after the wrong person. For crying out loud, Lawrence Lessig has argued copyright cases before the effing U.S. Supreme Court. I'd say he knows what the hell he is talking about. He certainly would be willing to meet in person members of that court again and knows how to get a case there if necessary.
The best thing that Liberation Music could do right now is to simply drop the stick and back away real slowly..... with a million dollar donation to the EFF if they would be so kind. Otherwise, they are royally screwed and clueless as it sounds.
Re: (Score:2)
That probably isn't something you should admit at all, and especially not in a forum chock full of people who are actually educated on the subject matter.
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As it's not clear how long the clip was or how it was used (was it the subject of the lecture?
If you read the article, it was clear he did not use the whole song but only parts of it.
we're probably missing the most important facts. Fair use doesn't mean you get free backing or intro music, for it to be fair use, there has to be original content involving that song.
The original content was the Lessig's lecture.
The non-profit / no loss to the record label doesn't seem relevant.
A common fair use is for non-profit educational purposes. Providing a free lecture falls under non-profit educational use for sure. If Lessig had charged then it's a gray area of education or for-profit purposes.
That could protect you against damages or criminal prosecution but not against a takedown.
In Lenz v Universal a court has already ruled that the copyright holder must take into account fair use before issuing a takedown.
It would also be trivial to argue that even if he didn't make any money from the lecture and putting it on youtube, it serves as a valuable bit of self promotion that could help him make money.
Lessig could also be an 12 dimensi
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What's next?
For an encore they should spitball Chuck Norris in the back of the head at a steak house.
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Try to read the dissenting opinions in that case too. They are pretty powerful stuff, and with the kind of split decision made by SCOTUS, it definitely opens an opportunity for the concept to be revisited and the decision overturned in a future case. I'd call that something huge, even if it is just a modest victory after a fashion.
I'd also say that if Lessig ends up back in the Supreme Court, particular on this issue, he will be much better prepared and just nail the case. I seriously doubt he will even
Limited Vs Perpetual (Score:2)
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The problem wasn't the law, as the law itself was the thing being challenged in Eldred v. Ashcroft. The law was very specific with regards to how many years would pass before copyright was expired.
Also note the constitutional restriction on the laws, and what authority Congress had to pass the law:
The Congress shall have Power To:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
-- Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 8
Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially ruled that meant Congress could essentially make that limited time the heat death of the universe minus one day and would still therefore be "limited". It would
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I dont see anywhere where it says , No bill... shale be passed... except when talking about Copyright. Did they just make that part up on a whim? I know that they have made up things in the past, like declaring that somehow there is a "separation of church and state" in the constitution where that phrase never is mentioned in any founding document. Not only did they have to go outside of the any of the founding documents to declare this clause p