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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."
They must have gotten carried away. Quick guys, copyright your wedding videos and personal amateur porn before they do!
you have to break a few eggs
they don't care if there is a little collateral damage in this war against 'piracy'
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
If you elect to send us a counter notice, to be effective it must be a written communication provided to our designated agent...
So this means that the media companies can falsely claim copyright to *any* material and the publisher is provided an email by youtube. However, in order to counter, you (the publisher) have to send a snailmail to them and wait how long before something is done about it? Are you even guarenteed a response?
This is complete and utter bullshit. As we have seen in other articles this only provides the media companies with the means to takedown *anything* posted on youtube or any other similar site for that matter for any reason whatsoever. Talk about Freedom of Speech and anti-trust* issues.
* -- If I don't like something that is said about my product online... I can simply have it taken down with the DMCA.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
"All your base are belong to us!" Sincerly - Viacom
The original generic sig.
Apparently Viacom owns the rights to a few people eating dinner as well.
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.
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"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.
There happens to be a 1972 album by Klaus Schulze that is also called Irrlicht which was originally released in 1972 and then re-released in 2006. Perhaps Viacom owns the rights to this album and their search bot mistakenly flagged the video as a copyrighted work.
I wonder if by firing off a C&D letter you're committing perjury if you're found to be wrong?
Most of us do not have a rectal-capital fountain, and so we can not afford to sue if this happens to us. Here's an even better idea, get rid of the DMCA and go back to the tried and true "innocent until proven guilty." The DMCA has always been a tool to help the largest players in the entertainment industry control their market.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
Look, I'm not trying to flame here... but if you're not a lawyer, and don't have any other knowledge... don't try to render a legal opinion.
Irrlicht doesn't need to sue Viacom. Because Viacom isn't trying to 'muscle out a smaller company'. To anyone - ANYONE! - in this thread who thinks Viacom should be sued, answer me this - What damages is Irrlicht suing for? Did Viacom really try to destroy their business - to 'restrain trade'? Did they prevent Irrlicht from selling their product, from promoting their wares? THEY TOOK AN EFFING VIDEO OFF OF YOUTUBE. Not only that, but a video they had at least SOME basis to believe infringed on their copyright material. And the DMCA - despite the HUGE problems with that piece of legislation - does at least provide a remedy for this stuff. It takes about ten minutes to kick off an email in response.
Show me damage. Show me Viacom acting in bad faith, rather than merely negligently or recklessly. THEN talk about lawsuits and restraint of trade. Until then... this is just not a big deal. The DMCA has a million huge problems - and this is somewhere around 950,000 on that list.
I dissent.
This sort of problem is exactly one of the primary reasons the DMCA should never have happened in the first place, and should be repealed.
Any individual claiming to be a copyright holder can have anything removed from a server based on nothing more than mere assertion. The Safe Harbor provision of the DMCA leaves ISPs and server operators little choice. Once the takedown notice is presented, the ISP either deletes the material or responds that it believes in good faith that the takedown notice is in error. If they do neither, they risk criminal liability.
Note that nowhere is anyone required to verify the validity of the claimant's copyright, that the named material is at all related to the claimed copyright, or that the named material falls within the scope of Fair Use or not. It's either take it down or risk getting sued. The law requires that takedown notices be served in good faith, but there are no penalties prescribed for willful or negligent sending of erroneous notices (and lotsa luck finding a D.A. willing to prosecute).
This kind of unaccountable censorship was intended by the DMCA's authors. You should not have to provide papers that you are "allowed" to speak, and that's a principal reason why the DMCA needs to go away yesterday.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
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
Most people will be upset by my post subject, but it's a question that needs to be asked. What are the actual damages here? Viacom's not claiming ownership - they fucked up. If their fuck up causes damages, there is legal recourse for this. If this is the case, then the victim should seek those legal recourses. Or STFU.
Getting a few thousand Slashdotters all hot and bothered may feel good, but it's a purely masterbatory exercise. If the victims are that pissed off, they can sue. And don't give me that shit about "oh, how can poor tiny little us possibly prevail against the mighty Viacom?!??" IANAL, but it looks like it's a pretty open-and-shut case. The victi,s could do all of the legal work and filing themselves, and with a little extra work can probably find some lawyer to make it all nice and pretty pro bono. Unless the damages are significant, I'd be halfway surprised if Viacom even sends anyone to defend it. If the judge finds in the victim's favor they might try filing a complaint against the attorney that filed the DMCA takedown notice with the relevant bar association - Viacom's lawyers may have committed perjury. If the victims can find a prosecutor that thinks it's in their political interest to beat on Mighty Corporate Viacom vs. The Little Guy, then it's a nice high-publicity case for them.
Other than that, the rest of us feel badly for the victims and wish them the best (fuck Viacom and all that), but let's be real - it's not like we're going to stop watching South Park or anything.
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While you're right to put things in perspective as far as there being worse problems with the DMCA, this is indeed a blip on the radar, and the solution is not as simple as an email. According to the protocol stated in the email (and I presume by the law), the submitter is required to send a response with snail mail, not email, in order to argue a good faith belief that the content is non-infringing. So thanks to the DMCA, any copyright owner can send notice to any hosting provider that so-and-so is violating their intellectual property, and if the hosting provider doesn't want to become liable then it must react right away. Meanwhile, the submitter is penalized a few days while the mess gets cleared up. That can be just enough time for a major corporation to control a leak or a publicity disaster. It also provides a means to, in a limited way, DoS anyone you choose to.
Are such abuses of the DMCA prosecutable? In theory, probably. But it's not as if the owner of the Irrlicht video can afford to fight a corporation over this kind of thing - not that I'd recommend it anyway for something so small. The point is that this clause of the DMCA shifts the balance too far towards the copyright owners rather than, well, everyone else.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Per Groklaw - Slander of Title would apply to this, if you can show some sort of malice. If there were a pattern of the types of videos they 'erroneously' had taken down, it would go a long way towards establishing malice. However, if there is just a bunch of random crap thrown into the legitimate claims, then it's unlikely that you would be able to persue a Slander of Title claim very far.
They have obviously failed to check on the actual status of the Copyrights for the video, which would set them up for a negligence suit. Since it's a tutorial on using a companies software, you might sneak it in under 'Tortuous Interferance' - ie. their actions are causing harm to the company's business and are not related to competition by VIACOM itself. [irony]MS couldn't claim interfierance by Apple just because Apple sells an OS. If Apple were to blackmail/bribe software houses into not developing for MS, then there would be a legitimate suit.[/irony]
Of course if you want to be boring, you could go with
Depending on how many of the videos they asked to have taken down were not infringing on their copyrights, then this might be a prime target for a CAS against Viacom. That would rattle their chain - and might give the other big distributors a pause before they sent out mass takedown notices as well.
YouTube and Google are not supposed to demand proof. The DMCA is very specific: The party who believes their copyright has been infringed must send a signed statement stating that the copyright is theirs, under penalty of perjury. Once that has happened, the ISP must take down the content if they don't want to risk being held liable for having the content.
So if Viacom sent the DMCA request, then the beef of the actual copyright owner is with Viacom, not with the ISP.
paintball
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 ]
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
Can you put the company in prison? Or just the guy who signed the statement?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.