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More DMCA Censorship at Yahoo!
Thomas Hawk writes "Once again a Yahoo! user has found themselves on the short end of the DMCA stick. Video blogger Loren Feldman recently found that his video mocking (read parody) the Village People and blogger Shel Israel was removed from the Yahoo! service after Scorpio Music served Yahoo! with a DMCA takedown notice. The video in question contained a very brief fair use parody snippet of the Village People song YMCA as performed by a puppet. What's more, Yahoo! threatened Feldman with the termination of all of his Yahoo! services including the revocation of his Yahoo ID."
Oddly enough, my friend had a video removed from Youtube last month of four Robosapien RS Medias dancing to a Village People song.
eclecti.cc
people still use Yahoo?
'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
Finally, Yahoo reveals that the way to delete a Yahoo ID is to commit serial copyright violations!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Since Yahoo! is in the delicate stage of being bought out by Microsoft, they're trying to avoid any lawsuits that could cause the buying price to be pulled lower. This is probably the reason that they are acting like consummate assholes. Normally the yahoos couldn't care less about pissant grandstanding through dubious legal stunts, but...this is a delicate moment in the take-over process.
Maybe Microsoft is behind this in order to use a barrage of picayune lawsuits as a justification for lowering their bid offer. Goodness knows, Microsoft's staff of eager-beaver Ivy League lawyers do live for this kind of thing.
Unless the Village People own Scorpio Music, it's their handlers getting their panties in a twist and not the performers themselves.
Young man, there's no need to feel down.
...
...
...
...
I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground.
I said, young man, 'cause you're in a new town
There's no need to be unhappy.
Young man, there's a lawyer I know.
I said, young man, who can get you some dough.
You can sit back, and I'm sure you will find
Many ways to ruin others good time.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
You can get yourself mean, you can have a good deal,
You can get folks to settle for whatever you feel...
Young man, are you listening to me?
I said, young man, what do you want to be?
I said, young man, you can make real your dreams.
But you've got to know this one thing!
No man does it all by himself.
I said, young man, put your pride on the shelf,
And just look there, to the D.M.C.A.
I'm sure our legal team can help you today.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
They have everything that you need to enjoy,
You can hang out with all the lawyer boys
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
You can get yourself mean, you can have a good deal,
You can folks to settle for whatever you feel
Young man, I was once in your shoes.
I said, I was down and out with the blues.
I felt no man cared if my band were alive.
I felt the whole world was so jive
That's when a lawyer came up to me,
And said, young man, sign this release.
There is a law called the D.M.C.A.
They can start you back on your way.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A.
They have everything that you need to enjoy,
You can hang out with all RIAA boys
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A
Young man, young man there's no need to feel down
Young man, young man pick yourself off the ground
It's fun to sue with the D-M-C-A
Young man, young man are you listening to me?
Young man, young man what do you wanna be?
you'll find it at the Y-M-C-A
no man, young man does it all by himself
young man, young man put your pride on the shelf
then just go to the Y-M-C-A
young man, young man I was once in your shoes
young man, young man I said, I was down and out with the blues.
My comment has too few characters per line and I'm really hoping that this brings up the average - though I don't know that it will be enough. Apparently not on the first try- though I did bring up the average an entire character. Let's see if this was sufficient. Wow - it did go up another word but still too few. This could take a while. And of course the entire joke is ruined now. But I've got a stubborn streak in me that just kicked into full gear. Holy cow- 26.2 characters per line is not enough. I'm gonna have a novella down here to go with my funny (or not funny - we'll see) lyrics. Or maybe I'll just go down in flames as off topic for this section. Oh the suspense. 28.4 is not enough. For crying out loud. I like Slashdot, I really do, but this is annoying. If there are going to be ads in the comments then I ought to be able to at least post song lyrics - or should I say parodies of song lyrics. And while I hate to play this card, if that's not possible for the hoi polloi, well it'd be a nice bonus for the um you know - paying customers. I mean I don't think that is asking too much. Time to check again. Oh really - 32.6 is too few? There has to be something more to it than that. I've posted lots of comments that were shorter than that. The one I'm looking at right now above mine isn't that long. There must be something else in the formula there. But I'm not giving up. I'm going to keep at it until this thing gets past. On the bright side, no fear of seeing "Slow Down Cowboy!" now is there? I'm an eternal optimist. And I really feel like I'll be making the world a better place once this goes live
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?
File a counter notice. You've got rights. Exercise them.
Again a DMCA notice... this is not the first time it happens to a user. Also non-USA citizens are subject to this crazy law, when they post material on a US based server. Or not even necessarily that it seems, do legal reverse-engineering or encryption related work in your own country, visit the USA, get arrested, it's possible, no? But leave that discussion for later.
What actually surprises me is that there are no similar portals in e.g. the EU. All major portals and sharing sites are US based - Yahoo!, MSN, Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, MySpace, you name it, they are all in the USA, I can't think of anyone based fully in Europe. And as such they are subject to the US's draconian copyright laws.
This again makes me wonder why none is being set up outside of the US jurisdiction. How about a facebook.de, or a youtube.nl, fully hosted in that country, and incorporated there as well. What is holding the Internet back? It is not that Europe doesn't have the IT infrastructure, on the contrary. It may be better than what's available in the USA. Same accounts for the people. I may assume there as much business sense on both sides of the pond.
Yet all these video-sharing and other creative enterprises on the Internet seem to sprout and flourish mostly in the USA. The world is really a wonderful place.
WOW! Yahoo is acting as if Microsoft already owns them! ;)
They probably should since they could then bill the offending parties for the resources spent investigating their frequently bogus notices. Sure you'd have to do some manuvering to setup a MS technical support style system. But set up as a credit card hold that will be refunded should the apperatus involved find the content indeed infringing, Yahoo could probably make money on it. In the mean time jackasses like Prince, KISS, Madonna, and apparently the Village People would be diminished and in fact paying to improve everyone else's service experience. The beauty of a setup like this is that it's in Yahoo's interest to set an extremely high barrier, and maximize the number of credit card charges.
Then in the instances where they have to go to court, their countersuit remedy should ask that the supposedly infringed work in the public domain in the event they prevail. One company engaging in that sort of brinksmanship winning one time would make all the other paper people better corporate citizens.
a very brief fair use parody snippet of the Village People song YMCA as performed by a puppet.
Isn't "fair use" for a court to decide?
Yahoo! threatened Feldman with the termination of all of his Yahoo! services including the revocation of his Yahoo ID
Isn't it great having everything integrated into one easy-to-use service? Pictures, searching, games, dating services, emai--oh fuck--they just canceled everything in my entire life.
Same goes for Google everything. If one company controls all the services you use, all it takes is one idiot at that company to make your life hell.
There's no place like
Mod this post up, dammit. The performers in the Village People have *never* owned the rights to their music, their videos, or even their images. If you only have the typical /. understanding of the entertainment business, then please keep the vitriol bottled up until you do a little reading, okay? I promise to do the same thing next time there's an article that demands a cursory familiarity with C++ or PHP or Web Ruby on Rails 2.0...