Slashdot Mirror
Viacom Claims Copyright On Irrlicht Video
stinkytoe writes in with the news that Nikolaus Gebhardt, developer of the cross-platform game engine library Irrlicht, recently had one of his video tutorials taken off of YouTube. A thread on Irrlicht's forum contains a copy of the takedown notice. From Gebhardt's blog: "Viacom, the corporation behind MTV, DreamWorks and Paramount is now claiming they own the copyright on a video of an Irrlicht tutorial. Which is completely ridiculous, of course: The whole thing has been written by me and the Irrlicht team, even textures and skins and logos have been created by me, and an Irrlicht Engine user... simply filmed and published it on YouTube.com. Here is a screenshot of the tutorial, it's really just a 2D GUI rendered using the 3D engine, nothing special at all."
Can't he sue them? Surely they are appropriating something that is clearly not theirs?
I give you, courtesy Wikipedia, the List of Assets owned by Viacom.
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 17.1).Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 17.1).Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 17.1).Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 17.1).Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 17.1).Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.6).Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.6).Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.6).Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.6).Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.6).Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.6).Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.6).
"List of assets owned by Viacom." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 25 Jan 2007, 23:34 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 6 Feb 2007 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of _assets_owned_by_Viacom&oldid=103256937>.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Isn't Viacom the company that just told YouTube to remove something like 100,000 video clips of its stuff? They probably just ran some searches and came up with yours by mistake, although it'd be nice to know why.
IANAL, but I believe that they can simply file a DMCA Counter Notice and make Viacom put up or shut up--hopefully that would be enough to make them realize that they've misidentified the clip as being something of theirs.
That is how the DMCA works. The point is that it holds the carrier (in this case, Youtube) harmless as long as they comply. Generally, the carrier of the alleged copyrighted works will comply and give the "owner" an opportunity to fight it. The point is, you can fight it, and should within the law. If they throw a bureacracy at them, show them you're merely a concerned citizen with too much time on his hands and fight back. Hell, if they don't back down, file a federal lawsuit and demand their evidence. Subpoena their CEO and force them to spend thousands to quash it. Settle only when they give you written agreement never to issue another takedown notice to you for the video or another other video covered by your produce.
Free speech doesn't include copyrighted material, and you should know that. But this type of thing shows yet another manner that the DMCA can be used to harass or silence legitimate speech.
As it is, they basically get to threaten anyone without any justification or consequence. It's getting absurd, really.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I wonder if by firing off a C&D letter you're committing perjury if you're found to be wrong?
So what? The point here is that Viacom should be doing more than running around demanding the removal of anything that might belong to them, they need to be demanding the removal of things that definitely belong to them. The burden simply can't be on regular people to have to fight Viacom legally for the right to have their own stuff up there.
Per Wikipedia Irrlicht was released on Ohr Records (some about them here - "Later OHR Records turned into the Cosmic Music label". There is an article on Cosmic Music. I found http://www.cosmic-music.com/ but the babelfish translation of the site's history page (browsing there left as an exercise to the reader) says nothing about Ohr, so I am forced to conclude that it is the wrong label (and it looked indie anyway.) So anyway I lost the trail here. Can anyone pick it up?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can attest to very similar situations as a service provider. We've dealt with member corporations of the RIAA sending us blanket takedown notices containing links to porn, and I don't think they do porn. Not yet anyways.
So apparently Viacom, DreamWorks and Paramount are sending legal spam, without verifying what they are actually sending out, and Google is taking them without verification on their part either. I guess DMCA procedures aren't good enough - censor now, ask questions later.
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
The uploaded version would clearly be a derivitave work, but I'm guessing that putting it into another tangible form would mean it's automatically copyrighted right then even if it wasn't originally.
This is actually a fairly interesting question, and IMO an important one. I'm not sure I share your conclusion that the uploaded version is a new work, though. Although it certainly could be, if you changed it (say, retouched, or even just cropped it), a straight scan+upload probably wouldn't be original enough.
It's an interesting question, because I recently scanned hundreds of old family photos and slides. Many of them, provided Congress stops extending copyright indefinitely, will be out of the original photographer's copyright relatively soon (as in, probably within my lifetime -- copyright, like geology, has its own relative time-scales). However, if the act of scanning the photo automatically makes a new work, then it's under copyright for another 120+ years, beginning 2006. Not really a concern to me, since I'd be the copyright holder, but of concern to a hypothetical other party who might want to use them.
I suspect that simply scanning a photo, in its entirety, and uploading it, does not represent enough of a creative act to warrant a renewal of copyright as a derivative work. Essentially, all that is happening, is that the older work is being "format shifted." However, if you were to do any type of alteration to the original photo that wasn't totally automatic, even something like color correction, I could see an argument for protection on the grounds that it was a creative act.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/03/011925 3
This really calls into question the validity of Viacom's claim that YouTube was hosting 100,000 infringing videos belonging to them. I wonder what the real number is. I wonder when the backlash hits YouTube over these "false positives" if they will start to require a little more diligence on the side of the claimants who request for videos to be removed. Shouldn't there penalties for making false claims of ownership over the copyrighted materials of others? YouTube's success was built on the shoulders of the little guy, not these giant media conglomerates. Will they do the right thing and help protect their legitimate users?
+0 Meh
If the big media companies keep doing this to quality, independent content producers, then the independents won't be so inclined to use sites like YouTube to distribute their content, since there's a good chance that it will be mistakenly taken down, and restoration takes a while and more effort than the content is worth.
Thus, Big Media poisons a new outlet that is outside their control, for media that is also outside their control.
(Not trying to be a tinfoil-hat-conspiracy-theorist, but raising a point of discussion.)
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
It's smashing in Viacom's itself face :
/script/ be allowed to sue someone ?
It's ridiculous.
Anyone remember the take-down notice for a 144k file called doom3.zip dating back from 1988 ?
The DMCA Auto-sue-bot strikes again !
A question :
A complain filed an a un-attended manner, without any human intervention, could it be considered valid in a court ?
As far as I know, only humans (themselves), corporations (with an employed lawyer) and the government (idem) may sue. No provision is made for robots or computers. And in this case, there's is a very good proof that Viacom's suits, no human were ever involved.
Where I live, even in case of animal abuses, a vet has to sue in behalf of the abused animal. Living animals. Now how could a
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Damages (as would be awarded in a civil suit) are irrelevant here. Upon issuing a DMCA takedown notice, Viacom did assert copyright over the material in question. They asserted this copyright under penalty of perjury, which is a criminal offense. Therefore, Viacom has committed a criminal offense and is subject to federal prosecution.
I hope there are penalties for fraudulent takedown notices.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
A pattern? Say, 10,000 Videos they don't have rights to? That's a pattern.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
IANAL
But this is what I would do:
Repost the video and send Viacom a Cease and Desist letter asking that they stop telling people that your copyrighted works are there's. Then, when they do it again, they cannot claim ignorance or that it was an oversight or whatever. Put up the video on a web site with an advertisement that pays you per page view, and claim that by lying to Google, they are causing you a loss of income.
So, essentially, they are lying about you, in writing, and it is negatively affecting you. Then you would probably have a better legal case. In addition, thanks to the RIAA and others like them, there is a great deal of negative coverage for people who engage in copyright infringement. So, now that it has been slashdotted, it could also damage your reputation...
Randy.Flood@RHCE2B.COM