Copyright Takedown Requests to Google Doubled In 2013 117
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Last month, a company working on behalf of the publisher Random House, asked Google to remove links to a free copy of Stephen King's Carrie from search results. Google complied for three out of the four requested links, but didn't remove Kim Dotcom's new website Mega.co.nz as requested — for even if Mega is hosting pirated copies of Carrie, they sure aren't on the homepage. But leaving that link up was an exception to the rule. More and more, copyright owners and the organizations they employ are cutting off where the websites and the public meet — the search engine. Google's transparency reports show that requests to remove links to copyrighted material rose steadily in 2013. The search giant received 6.5 million requests during the week of November 18, 2013, which is over twice as many as the same week a year ago. Google said it complies with 97 percent of requests."
I know someone who had his original work taken down by a Warner Bros DMCA bot (without recourse, naturally, since only lawyers are people nowadays).
New Search Engine (Score:5, Interesting)
We need a search engine that only searches DMCA takedown requests.
Google is halfway there, publishing every(?) takedown request they get.
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/ [google.com]
Re:New Search Engine (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, that's where I usually find the best torrents. I do the search, hit the take down request and thanks to Firefoxes "right-click open link" I can download them right off the DMCA request. It's awesome. If I have to look through the google links, most of them are scams or spam... the DMCA requests give me a nice consolidated list of content I'm actually interested in.
Watching the media industry try and fight file sharing is like watching someone you really dislike struggling in quicksand... with a snake wrapped around them... they keep spitting at you and throwing rocks, but that just makes it all the better as you watch them slowly sinking towards their ultimate doom. Actually, I'm prolly pull out someone I really hate... the media industry however can die.
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Assuming you can ID me by my IP
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Use parents open WiFi.
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Court are never reference for what is right or wrong, they are only tool to enforce fascisms
Right, which is why people in countries without stable law & order are doing so well compared to the rest of us...
Your anarchist trolling needs work.
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Right. So really you're just using the word 'fascism' in a very unhelpful way, and are ultimately saying very little.
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Play the odds. Participate, and don't sweat about it.
You have a greater chance of being killed in an auto accident, or struck by lightning, than ever being hit with one of those infamous copyright shakedown notices. They've abused the John Doe suit process too often, as well as several other legal avenues, and the courts have gotten tired of that. There's growing recognition that piracy is not something the law can stop, and that trying to do so is a waste of the public's money and time. There are eve
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So, if it dies, which new movies will you enjoy?
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>> the media industry however can die.
So, if it dies, which new movies will you enjoy?
Gosh, whatever will I do with 2,729,202 unwatched hours of Netflix content. I'm not sure I'll be able to find anything within the 2,714 genres...
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Really there is a lot I can do without exposing myself to the rot that is TV/Movies. There are a few interesting shows here and there but nothing I'd miss.
With games and books plus the existing media, I can't believe I'll be totally bored. And push comes to shove, I can take a motorcycle ride and just enjoy the sights without the big black border around it :)
[John]
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just like tech employment: no one wants to pay american rates anymore and so the foreign market steps up to fill the void.
same with films and music: if the 'big players' can't be bothered anymore, smaller guys will step up and fill the void.
we will always have music and movies. and if the big guys go chap 11, it will be a Good Thing(tm) in disguise.
Re:New Search Engine (Score:5, Insightful)
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What about Pinewood studios in the UK?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinewood_Studios#2000s.E2.80.932010s [wikipedia.org]
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That's what's happening here - our government (BC, Canada) decided to not do the race to the bottom in film tax credits (in order to compete with other provinces
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So, if it dies, which new movies will you enjoy?
About as many as I currently do. Basically none.
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All of them.
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Enjoy a new movie, what is this the 20th century?
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Capitalism has a really neat way of figuring that sort of thing out for us. I need not bother.
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On that note, is there anything to stop someone creating and archive and search engine of Google's published DMCA takedown notices? Effectively a site that acts as a DMCA archive and provides easy access to all taken down URLs and their associated request details?
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They would then DMCA that site. You'd have to put it somewhere friendly to copyright law. Also, there's no real way to index it. It's just a bunch of links.
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Still sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
Upshot: to this day, they've never gone back to finish that video, and publish it. And if you talk to them about synthesizing music, instead of happy pride, you hear panicy shuddering and unhappiness.
I think there's a serious imbalance of power when legitimate owners have to prove their innocence, and the spawners of that notice get off with no consequences. How do we fix this?
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Use a media sharing service that does not care about DMCA notices. May I suggest several alternatives. [google.com]
Re:Still sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Every time a copyright claim is made against a Youtube account and it turns out to be false, the company that made the claim needs to be punished in some way such as a fine. Maybe Google can send them bills for every false claim. This could force them to make sure the copyright claim they made are legit.
Either way, something needs to be done to stop them from claiming anything and everything right off the bat.
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We need a button for Media Company takedown.
Everytime someone pushes it, it VOTES down the server of the media company. Now if a whole lot of people were to ping..er..I mean vote, we could keep media companies off the internet until they get with the program, change their ways and release all the artists from contract, come out with their hands up and their pants down and kiss our asses till the cows come home.
I think that's only fair for the tolerance we've exhibited for their existence so far.
Hey, it's ti
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They should actually be grateful to google for helping find the files on the internet that they claim infringe. They can then contact the web hosts that have the files to get them removed. They are not my files, I did not put them there, stfu.
But a lot of the time, they don't really care if the content is available -- what they care about is whether they've got a cut of the action. Google, by linking to the sites, is acting like a publicist and distributor -- and that's exactly the role that publishing houses are in. Therefore, Google is the competitor, and must be silenced. After they're silenced, then the publishing house can approach the hoster and talk license fees.
Pass more laws? (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't worry content providers will just buy some new laws...
Maybe we can have a "war of the robots"? Google's web crawler finds stuff and the content providers have faster automated DMCA takedown notices?
This entire thing is a mess and only getting worse:
- YouTube scans music and sometimes mismatches public domain material with "copyrighted" material (public domain guitar solo of Bach comes to mind).
- "fair-use" is out the window.
- Selling "ringtones" for songs you already paid for (yeah, separate licen
Can we find and kill the idiot (Score:1)
who decided a link can be infringement?
Mod parent up (Score:3)
Ultimately this is where it all started to go wrong, when we lost the war as to whether a link could or couldn't be infringing.
We need a roll back and a retrial that determines that a link can't be any more against the law than pointing at someone's open front door can be incitement to rob the place.
If the media industries want to go after unlicensed content then it should be simply about them going straight after people who have the actual content on their hard drives and nothing else. If they can't do tha
THE SOLUTION ! (Score:5, Funny)
The final solution...
Since Google complies with 97 percent of the requests, we start a crowdsourced effort to digitize every law firm letterheads in the world, and start sending bogus takedown notices for EVERY Film Preview, Trailer, Announcement, everything the majors, publishers and media giants dare to put online.
With a little organization and templates for the letters, we can paralyze this nonsense, flood it and render it useless.
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False takedowns under the DMCA are kind of a federal offense, unless you're a huge media corporation apparently.
Re:THE SOLUTION ! (Score:5, Interesting)
That depends on how you do it (though the fake letterhead is improper).
If you hire someone to send in the requests, then they are allowed to trust that you are making the request in good faith. Their's no penalty to you for lying to them. So nobody violates the law, and you can accomplish the same goal. But you probably do want to use incorporated safety nets, so that the target of the takedown notice can't get anything by suing you. So you're likely to need a lot of throw-away corporations. Each one, of course, should have it's own letterhead. (Why fake someone else's letterhead, anyway. It's not as if it's difficult to mock up a letterhead with the Gimp, Simple Scan, and Inkscape. Takes a couple of hours for the first one, and 10 minutes for each change.
But, IIUC, the DMCA makes no requirement that the originator of the takedown request has a good-faith reason to believe that it is correct, merely that the person who files the request has a good-faith reason. And it is quite apparent that lawyers are always filing requests for someone else that have no validity or plausibility, and which they have reason to know have no validity. And NONE have ever been prosecuted. (Well, I've never heard of any being prosecuted.)
Re:THE SOLUTION ! (Score:4, Informative)
If you hire someone to send in the requests, then they are allowed to trust that you are making the request in good faith. Their's no penalty to you for lying to them. So nobody violates the law, and you can accomplish the same goal. But you probably do want to use incorporated safety nets, so that the target of the takedown notice can't get anything by suing you. So you're likely to need a lot of throw-away corporations. Each one, of course, should have it's own letterhead. (Why fake someone else's letterhead, anyway. It's not as if it's difficult to mock up a letterhead with the Gimp, Simple Scan, and Inkscape. Takes a couple of hours for the first one, and 10 minutes for each change.
You might want to seek legal advice before attempting this. Get a photo of the lawyer's face on hearing your plan.
But, IIUC, the DMCA makes no requirement that the originator of the takedown request has a good-faith reason to believe that it is correct, merely that the person who files the request has a good-faith reason. And it is quite apparent that lawyers are always filing requests for someone else that have no validity or plausibility, and which they have reason to know have no validity. And NONE have ever been prosecuted. (Well, I've never heard of any being prosecuted.)
Prosecution is pretty rare. Still, if you have a person acting on your behalf, claiming you can act in bad faith is like saying you can get away with burglary if you manage to convince some else to break in to a house under the pretence that it's your house and you forgot your keys. Again, suggest this to the lawyer and check their facial expressions. The consultation will cost money, but the resulting photos could form a new meme!
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I agree morally with your viewpoint. I just don't think that's the way the DMCA is written. (You might want to start by looking into the way Warner Bros. admitted in court that they had no valid reason for their takedown claim.)
OTOH, IANAL. Perhaps they can get away with it because the system is totally corrupt. But in *this* case I think that it has to do with the way the law was written. (Guess who wrote it.)
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It's illegal to claim copyright for something you don't own the copyright for. It isn't illegal to mistakenly identify something else as the thing you have copyright for.
So it would be illegal for me to send a takedown notice for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPVWy1tFXuc [youtube.com] claiming that I owned the copyright for "The Hobbit" films. But I could send a takedown notice claiming that the film at that URL was actually video I took at my friend's wedding (which I legitimately do hold the copyright to). The part th
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But I could send a takedown notice claiming that the film at that URL was actually video I took at my friend's wedding (which I legitimately do hold the copyright to).
All the better; if you own a couple hundred copyright works -- and claim something in the video as an infringement, because it contains elements "strikingly similar" to your video footage of trees and grass, and your audio recordings of various nature sounds.
A single frame, or sound is enough. The more works you list alleged to be in
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Or... Legally...
1. Stop watching/buying the shit they put out; and
2. Tell your friends why you feel they should stop watching/buying it.
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Don't do that, you're going to upset The Job Creators!!!
The Google jobs creators, that is, since 3% of "6.5 million requests during the week of November 18, 2013" means they need a whole lot of Google employees to process and deny so many takedown notices.
Because this is a delicate legal process which has to be done carefully and could not be automated for fear of mistakes or overreach, you know.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Interestingly, if you don't copy the name or logo of the brand, you can sell a perfect replica (or "unsafe cheap junk") without any "intellectual property" laws standing in your way. Only trademarks are considered IP in fashion. All of fashion, much larger than all the copyright industry put together, survives with rampant "piracy" and no laws to stop it, let alone massively abused over-regulation like DMCA.
Hell, the shoe industry alone is 40% larger than the entire global music industry.
[Actually footwear
DMCA Counter-notice (Score:5, Informative)
Really? [lmgtfy.com]
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Even if Lamer thought that was a de facto no-go, he could've just reported the details on some tech news site like...oh I dunno...TechDirt?
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5. Google doesn't profit from your Google Ads on your website.
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You missed the post he was responding to. If no one can find the website, no one can view their ads
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You need legal standing to do that, and that means they have to get your name right when they take it down... otherwise, you have to prove you are actually the creator before filing the counter notice. And, since an individual doesn't have a legal team, it's effectively been made impossible. The legal system is a joke at this point...
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Even if you file a counter-notice, it is still taken down... if you counter-notice it remains up until the matter is resolved
Did you mean down?
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Re:DMCA Counter-notice (Score:5, Informative)
Previous music distribution site owner here(www.hulkshare.com). Dealt with this kind of nonsense all the time. Hundreds of DMCA bots sending thousands of notices daily - and not just to us but our bandwidth providers as well. DMCA takedown bots are best countered with identical tactics.
Example: User signs up for you to host their files. Part of the EULA is that the owner in good faith asserts his or her content is theirs, or legally distributable by them. This allow you to automate responses to the DMCA bots, the moment the takedown notice comes in, your automation sends the appropriate rebuttal informing them that you also act in good faith that the content is legally able to be distributed via your site. This gives the original DMCA sender N days to challenge your own DMCA challenge. The act(and documentation of the act) of sending this response nullifies their request. You always CC your upstream bandwidth provider as well. Once you get these notices, you have 24 hours to react - and you can be reasonably sure they also received the same request you did. If they don't see you handling it, they will cut your access off(and presumably your entire site) to avoid legal action against them for not complying with the request.
When I ran things, we employed someone full time to sift through DMCA notices to find counter-notices to our original rebuttals. Those ones you actually had to act on, or you'll lose your ass in court - and they _will_ take you. Grandma and Grandpa may just get nasty letters and requests for money - but once they know they have a business with pockets (deep or not) on the hook, you can expect civil filings. If you ignore a 2nd notice in response to your rebuttal, you'll get a notice for obstructing their original notice by sending a false rebuttal - and a notice that a civil case is pending against John Doe. Shortly after expect a 1) summons 2) request for discovery of 'John Doe', and finally 3) a 'deal' you can settle for to avoid your sites' name ending up in civil court.
The only way to fail with DMCA takedowns is to ignore them. After 24 hours without either 1) removing content, or 2) sending appropriate challenge: they will have your upstream bandwidth provider cut you off(and be within their "legal rights" to do so, whatever passes for those these days).
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You need to move your business outside of the US, to somewhere with a saner legal system. Then when you get a DMCA request you can just respond with "not applicable in this jurisdiction" and perma-block the address. Maybe report it to some anti-spam blocklists, since that's all it is.
Seriously, who would be crazy enough to run any kind of media stream/file storage/innovative website in the US these days?
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You don't need a law firm to file a counter-notice.
Beg to Differ (Score:2)
My experience with lawyers has really been contrary to this statement.
Change the business model (Score:1, Troll)
Re: Change the business model (Score:1)
Re:Change the business model (Score:5, Insightful)
I really couldn't disagree more. It is one thing to claim that "information wants to be free" and disavow copyrights altogether, but simply pointing to a location and saying "this is what exists at website.com" should always be protected speech under all circumstances. I really can't think of any justification for preventing someone from pointing out a true fact about where something is located. Not even if it were something much worse than a bootleg copy of a concert video or a copy of a Hollywood DVD - like something really both illegal and immoral, such as kiddie porn.
That is all that google does. "Hey, you can find a web page that contains the words "banana hammock" at this address". I don't care what words you substitute for "banana Hammock" and what content you actually find at the web address, simply pointing to it should in all cases be a protected expression of the right to free speech. I don't care if you earn 8 trillion dollars for saying it, or it costs you three bucks and a half-eaten snickers bar to say it, the financial arrangements around your speech are perfectly irrelevant to your right to speak.
Re: Change the business model (Score:1)
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Free speech is a real right. Copy"right" is a synthetic one. Free speech trumps copyright each and every time.
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That can't possibly be true. If free speech trumped copyright every time, there would be no copyright since it restricts my ability to copy and book and print it myself (which is considered speech).
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How does "fair use" come into play here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
If i make a video of my cat and lay down an audio track should this fall under "fair use"? Will youtube flags it as a copyright violation?
This sort of thing is "copyright escalation" which gradually chips away public rights in favor of rights holders.
Cant remember the link, but i was looking for royalty free music the other day for youtube to avoid this sort of problem. Someone recorded a Bach song on his guitar and warns you ca
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Cant remember the link, but i was looking for royalty free music the other day for youtube to avoid this sort of problem. Someone recorded a Bach song on his guitar and warns you cant use it on youtube as it will be flagged.
Bach (21 March 1685) getting royalty checks as the composer? Did the person who recorded his song and manage to protect it pay Bach a royalty?
It seems commercializing the public domain is a disturbing trend.
The music isn't copyrighted, but the specific performance of it is. If you want to record your own performance of Bach and use it on your video, have at!
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Agreed that simply posting links to hosted content is less of an issue than hosting it on YouTube directly, but it still amounts to facilitating rights violations. I don't know if doing so should be illegal per se, just that doing so should hurt Google's bottom line, in such a way that they proactively try to prevent it.
Let's try explaining it by absurd example.
I don't know that Scowler complaining to his friends about the drug dealers that hang out behind the 7-11 should be illegal per se, but it still amounts to facilitating illicit drug use. I'm not saying he should go to jail, just that providing information about the location of drug dealers should hurt Scowler's pocketbook, in such a way that he'll proactively try to prevent it.
Substitute any other behavior you'd like for drugs in this silly vignette and you'll see
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I don't know if doing so should be illegal per se, just that doing so should hurt Google's bottom line, in such a way that they proactively try to prevent it.
I don't think it should be illegal at all, personally, but courts have ruled repeatedly that linking can and often does constitute contributory infringement, going back to the original 2600 ruling. Bottom line nothing, Google is legally obligated to comply and the courts could get really nasty with them if they just refused.
(Disclaimer: I am a Google employee, but that has nothing to do with this post. I've been fascinated with online copyright law for decades, and you can find many examples of me saying
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This model is wrong, and unfair. Google+YouTube should have a much stronger financial disincentive in place against facilitating rights violations, at least to the point where they are more proactive about it and don't simply wait for takedown notices to flow in. In other words, yes, the DMCA actually doesn't go far enough.
Why? Would you like more ads, or perhaps you would like to pay a subscription fee to access Goole+YouTube? Labor is not free. How do you propose they pay the people who will implement your suggestions?
Also, so that myself and other copyright holders can empathize with you....what copyrighted works of yours have they abused? I mean, it would be rather illogical for someone who holds 0 copyrights to post your comment. Certainly you have created something of worth(that happens to be copyrighted), and you aren'
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you could just google for the dozens(hundreds?) of examples.
what part of error ratio and "millions per week" you don't understand?
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I know someone who had his original work taken down by a Warner Bros DMCA bot (without recourse, naturally, since only lawyers are people nowadays).
Really?!? That's the best you've got?
At least offer a SOURCE or a FRAME OF REFERENCE.
"I know this one guy..."
Fuck you. You are part of the problem.
No, YOU are a part of the problem. Why do you need more details? - Do you want to fight for this guy or something?
The details doesn't matter. There are millions like him out there. People recording themselves (thus owning the rights) playing classical music (which isn't copyrighted anymore) gets taken down daily. I've even heard of videos with no musical content - pure nature stuff - being DMCA'ed.
The system is severely broken and severely abused, yet it is still exceedingly easy to find any kind of pirated
I think i've solved the job problem! (Score:2)
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One can make an entirely reasonable argument that this kind of legal activity needs to be performed by a human, not a machine. [...] All we have to do is get a law passed saying that each C&D claim has to be reviewed by a real human
We may already have such a law. Since it's impossible for any current computer program to have "faith" or even "opinion", it's impossible for a bot to send a notice "in good faith". Likewise, the bot cannot legally "sign" or certify an automatically generated notice on someone else's behalf.
I wonder how you would stand legally if you just returned boilerplate Counter-Notices to boilplate Notices, "Pursuant to Title 17, chapter 5, section 512, subsection (c), paragraph (3), subparagraph (B), clause (ii) of t
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If that is the case you better patent this quick, you'll make millions...or would it be copyright and you can nail any one who uses that exact wording in a response without paying you [kidding]
Seriously, were that the case would it not have been considered by now? It does seem rather straight forward, if a human didn't process the request it is bogus and can be ignored. Is the counter to that, well a human wrote the bot that was sent out to find such content thus there was good faith in the development
Alternative take-down system (Score:2)
If notices are going to be sent and processed (then accepted/rejected automatically), followed by verbal fighting, why not simplify the whole exercise? Have a two-way corewars battle between the service and the complainant, winner decides if the link stays. Since the complainant is rarely the copyright holder and the service rarely provides the material, you can extend this to a four-way battle using crobots.
This is just as logical as the current system and has a higher probability of protecting original co
I have been on the receiving end (Score:4, Interesting)
I made a time lapse video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVbBfUWq3mU [youtube.com]
I used background music from ccmixer
Gave the full attribution too!
Music : Improvisation On Sunday, by Alex Beroza(http://ccmixter.org/files/AlexBeroza/...)
Uses : http://ccmixter.org/files/The3amAssoc [ccmixter.org]... again under the following license.
And got a notice that it matches. I filed a dispute, and haven't heard from them again, and my video is up and running. However, if they had filed a counter claim, they would have taken it down? My account gets a copyright strike? I dunno
anyways, I notified the actual music composer about the claim, and maybe he is also trying to get it removed from their DB.
But its scary, if somebody puts a takedown notice, I cannot seek recourse. I am not in the USA and that makes it even more difficult.
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way off topic, but cool video. I love seeing different parts of the world and that was one cool experience. Now had those asshats been able to take that down other people could not see such a beautiful place.
Thanks Bucc (Score:2)
I make time lapse videos as a hobby, and I spend hours searching for CC licensed music. After finding such music, I go through the license type to make sure I am not using the music in a way it was not intended to.
Yet, anybody can file a claim.
Remember that fiasco about the video that had no music, just some background of birds chirping?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/00152917884/ [techdirt.com]
It was so ridiculous that everybody from slashdot to tech portals picked it up, and the guy won. However, what about co
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As you like time-lapse photography, this came to my attention this morning. Not a well traveled environment so it is really something to watch. Enjoy.
A different view [slate.com]
To be taken seriously (Score:1)
This is something that must not be overlooked. This is becoming a plague on Youtube...especially on that platform and the people who are the victims most of the time are the people who put the video up on youtube.
For example, the video Day One: Garry's Incident video on youtube (the one released by TotalBiscuit...just search for it)... it was available to some poeple and then because the company got too much bad press on it cause the game sucked way to bad and it seems like the game was in alpha stage...