YouTube's Unspoken Linking Policy For Copyright Infringers

Hackajar writes "Valleywag has an interesting post detailing YouTube's new way to deal with copyrighted music videos, removing embed tags and linking it to the official content on site. What's significant here is the lack of video removal by YouTube staff. From the post, "Uploads of music videos from the band by non-official sources now carry a link reading "Contains content from [insert studio here]"". They use a Modest Mouse music video from a third party to illustrate the new change."

Comments

Don't forget...

[Ethan Allison]

The official videos are usually better quality, anyway.

Re:Don't forget...

[Ethan Allison]

...Allow me to retract my previous statement.

Re:Don't forget...

[Rei]

Well, sometimes it's about making videos that are not about the music. For example, I once made a vid to poke fun of Man vs. Wild, the "Desert Island" episode (back when they were still pretending the show was legit), where I mixed clips of the show with clips of videos found on YouTube that people shot from the same locations on Maui that he pretended were "deserted" (the low res of YouTube makes the comparison not as good, unfortunately; on the hires you can see that every rock and tree matches down to the last pixel). Naturally, the song I set it to was "Loser" by Beck. ;)

Just a couple weeks ago, I got a notice from YouTube stating that the label had made a copyright claim on the audio to my vids. YouTube said that they would remain up, but that the copyright holder would have the right to advertise on my vid pages. I didn't contest it because while the video aspects were clearly within my rights (parody and criticism), I wasn't parodying or criticizing the music, so it wouldn't be as likely to be covered by Fair Use.

Re:Don't forget...

[Ethan Allison]

I think (hope) they're just doing this for unofficial uploads of official videos.

Re:Don't forget...

[Ethan Allison]

Rei's video

Re:Don't forget...

[Spy der Mann]

I'd just LOVE to see all the advertisement links on AMV Hell 4! :D

Re:Don't forget...

[Ihmhi]

AMV Hell 4 (and the others) fall under fair use, since most of the clips are less than 30 seconds. They wouldn't have a chance in hell in making a claim. Besides, you can not fit the entire video on the site - you would have to split it up.

Re:Don't forget...

[Hojima]

The official videos are usually better quality, anyway. That's the first thing that comes to my mind. Who the hell uses youtube to pirate besides retarded teens who don't know how to configure a firewall to make bittorrent run fast? I'd much rather have it download in my sleep and watch in in HD when I wake up. Now as for episodes of funny shows which don't really need good quality to be enjoyable, there is no shortage of sites that can accommodate you.

Re:Don't forget...

[sskagent]

You must be new here

Re:Don't forget...

[Rei]

It wouldn't be covered by Fair Use at all - you've no legal right to use the music.

The four tests (which you don't have to pass all of them to qualify), are:

1) The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes (whether it achieves the goal of copyright law to stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public or whether it seeks to merely supersede the original for personal profit)
2) The nature of the copyrighted work (for example, Time, despite buying the Zapruder film, wasn't able to enforce its copyright because it was deemed in the public interest)
3) The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
4) The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. (This is regarded as the single most important element of fair use.)

1) Passes. 2) Fails. 3) Fails. 4) Passes (half a dozen people actually inquired as to what song it was; it generated interest).

As stated, it is my view upon receiving the notice that it wouldn't be as likely to be covered by Fair Use. Which is why I didn't contest it. That doesn't mean that it inherently *isn't* fair use; that would take a court determination.

I don't see the link in the video example...

[argent]

Perhaps the link only shows up if you're using the new YouTube Beta?

Re:I don't see the link in the video example...

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Damn! And I bought VHS!

Re:I don't see the link in the video example...

[Ethan Allison]

Shows up either way. It's right here.

Re:I don't see the link in the video example...

[argent]

Obviously I need to upgrade my bifocals, thanks.

YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[iamacat]

Recording your own music video to a popular tune and for non-commercial use should be considered fair use. It's unlikely that you are competing with any official distribution of the song or its derivative products. On the other hand, such use is essential for a society to have any kind of culture. If you can not record a video of your 1 year old son dancing to a well-known song, your ability to participate in the society and extended family is seriously curtailed.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[vux984]

If you can not record a video of your 1 year old son dancing to a well-known song, your ability to participate in the society and extended family is seriously curtailed.

What if you can do it provided you license that well-known song for the purpose for which you intend to use it?

I'm not saying I agree with this at all... but its basically the RIAA's position. They are more than happy to whore out their content.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[LandDolphin]

"If you can not record a video of your 1 year old son dancing to a well-known song, your ability to participate in the society and extended family is seriously curtailed"

Society changes...

We did not always have YouTube, and Society will adapt if we remove the ability to record a video of your 1 year old son dancing to a well-known song.

We participated in society and with our extended family extended family before YouTube, and many of us still do without YouTube right now.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[iamacat]

What if you can do it provided you license that well-known song for the purpose for which you intend to use it? If such a license was practically feasible for an average citizen (who can afford perhaps $20 for perpetual right to distribute the video to interested audience, which is likely to be family and friends), it would remove my objections to make such licensing mandatory rather than allowing license-free fair use.

This licensing would have to be neutral to opinions/cultural values/etc expressed in the non-commercial derived work and encapsulate all cases in one fee. If I distribute a home video of my dance performance to 5 songs, I do not expect to pay $100.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[iamacat]

Yeah, in Saudi Arabia you can not even watch movies or listen to music and the society adapted. But, do we want to live in an oppressed society where medium-income individuals can not contribute to popular culture?

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[LandDolphin]

I just don't think having a video of your child dancing to song XYZ is that important to society...

As for Popular Culture, a quick definition: contemporary lifestyle and items that are well known and generally accepted, cultural patterns that are widespread within a population

Seems if Medium-Income, or less, individuals cannot participate then it would cease to be popular culture.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[owlnation]

What if you can do it provided you license that well-known song for the purpose for which you intend to use it?

While this is indeed the RIAA's mercenary position, that doesn't make it fair or reasonable. The OP is correct. It should be fair use to use a piece of music in the example quoted, provided there's no intent to make money from it.

Those bastards in the RIAA want to have their cake and eat it too. They practice payola to promote songs so that they get heard, and then once they get heard they charge radio stations for playing them.

While they are slowly dying as a result of failing to adapt, there's still much to be done to make the record labels die faster. Take wikipedia for example -- it feels like every second page has a sentence or paragraph that promotes some band, or song. You know the "The Blahblah, wrote a song about the French Revolution, it's on the XYZ album" Yep... That's spam. Wikipedia is absolutely full of it. Even most music articles (that actually have sources) quote sources that are media articles derived from RIAA press releases, or direct to the band's own marketing devices such as their MySpace or Website. That's how the Record Labels make more money. That sort of crap needs to be stopped.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[Trailer Trash]

Oh don't worry, you can record a video of your one year old son dancing to some music. Sure.

And then we'll sue you and crush you like the bug that you are in court.

Sincerely, the RIAA

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[ady1]

A society is not oppressed when you don't' have the freedom to watch movies or listen to music. It is when you can be held indefinitely without any trial.

Living in Canada, I don't see any difference between US and Saudia in this regard.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[Ethan Allison]

Actually, that probably is fair use.

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include: the purpose and character of the use ... and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. –17 U.S.C. 107

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Alternatively, how about we define a standard set of metadata to describe Copyright Status Assertions, and use those those in place of the current (lame) DMCA takedown -> counter-notice process?

The point is to give the uploader a chance to assert a Fair Use claim *beforehand*, and subsequently have the conflict automatically transferred to him/her instead of automatically taking the content down. This would still be imperfect, of course, but it would prevent some of the suppression-oriented DMCA abuse that the current setup facilitates.

In the case of Item 1 below, the clip would stay up, and the person filing the complaint would be referred to the uploader to haggle over the Fair Use claim. Item 2 would be rejected up-front, and Item 3 would get taken down and possibly land the uploader in hot water as well.

Uploaded Item 1 - item from TFA:
+ Track 1: Video
        Copyright: 2008, Joe's Hillarious Parodies LLC
        Disposition: Poster's Original Work
+ Track 2: Audio Track
        Copyright: Third Party
        Disposition: Fair Use
        Assertion: Used for Parody Purposes

Uploaded Item 2 - Ripped/transcoded SNL clip, poster describes honestly:
+ Track 1: Video
        Copyright: Third Party
        Disposition: Totally Ripped Off
        Assertion: Ha Ha, Try and Catch Me
+ Track 2: Audio Track
        Copyright: Third Party
        Disposition: Totally Ripped Off
        Assertion: Ha Ha, Try and Catch Me

Uploaded Item 3 - same SNL video clip, uploader used bald-faced lies:
+ Track 1: Video
        Copyright: 2008, Me
        Disposition: Original Work
+ Track 2: Audio Track
        Copyright: 2008, Third Party
        Disposition: Licensed, Used By Permission

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[tm2b]

On the other hand, such use is essential for a society to have any kind of culture. If you can not record a video of your 1 year old son dancing to a well-known song, your ability to participate in the society and extended family is seriously curtailed.

Good god, that sounds dire.

How did people ever participate in the society and extended family before YouTube (never you mind before home video)?

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[iamacat]

So, just because I will have my day in court with RIAA and have my life's savings taken away "in reasonable time", I should consider myself living in the free society?

The original freedom to watch a movie or listen to a song is not important. However, once I grew up with an artist, it is important for for me to be able to show his/her works to my children to let them see my cultural perspective.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[LordNimon]

If you can not record a video of your 1 year old son dancing to a well-known song, your ability to participate in the society and extended family is seriously curtailed.

-1 flamebait

You can record a video of your son dancing to a well-known song. What you cannot do is post that video to an international web site where millions of people can download it. And why would you want to do that anyway? I only want to share my home videos with family members. So I post them to my personal web site and email a URL.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[urcreepyneighbor]

Living in Canada, I don't see any difference between US and Saudia in this regard. BC Bud strikes, again!

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[zenkonami]

Recording your own music video to a popular tune and for non-commercial use should be considered fair use. I agree.

It's unlikely that you are competing with any official distribution of the song or its derivative products. So long, of course, as you aren't posting it for all the world on a content sharing or social networking site. See there's the rub. If someone puts the original recording of, say, an OK Go song on their video and shows it to their friends when they come over, that's fine. If they post it on YouTube for all the world to see, people who want to hear the song can now just go to YouTube and hear the full quality song.

Which of course raises the question...why didn't the record companies find a way to preempt this a few years back by coming up with a legal income stream for doing just that. Instead of lobbying lawmakers to press in legistation to sue everyone over "improperly distributed music", why not just change the rules so that if you post what is ostensibly a full quality version of the song, you are also required to prominently provide a link to the artists / label's homepage, or a valid store where the song / album / original DVD can be purchased?

Perfect idea? Maybe not. But the RIAA and co. need to start thinking about diversifying...that or just dying off and letting the new paradigm decide how we'll do things in the future. Either way.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[colmore]

There's a basic problem here. Should laws and practices govern the interactions of people or the interactions of vast financial legal entities?

Because it doesn't seem possible to have laws that blindly treat both as equals and come out with something that both works for citizens and for businesses.

The licensing process assumes that the one making the request for the license is doing so in order to make millions of dollars off of the property. Thus *anyone* avoiding the licensing process is willfully circumventing a 6-8 figure business transaction with the content owner. And that really is how they see it AND

It's how they have to see it.

Otherwise people could get rich off of their property for cheap.

This is a big problem, and I don't think the current system can solve it with just some small changes.

But I'm a radical. My response is that people have been very creative since the dawn of time. Well before any kind of profit motive as we mean it. You're provided a right to try to get rich off of whatever, but you're not provided (or shouldn't be provided) any guarantee of getting rich off of anything in particular. So get rid of intellectual property. The broadcast creativity of individuals and organizations immediatly becomes culture. If I can't say or write whatever I want about culture, I don't have freedom of speach at all.

Maybe there could be a way of certifying things that actually DO come from the creator, for those that care or want to help.

Yeah this would collapse Hollywood, kill the big recording companies, and make art about live performance and commission rather than selling product. Whatever. More to gain than to lose on that front.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[colmore]

You are aware that recording eventually put the majority of musicians out of business.

Every fancy restaurant in the country, not to mention every hotel, every dance, every social gathering that wanted to have music HIRED a full band.

Before the movies and TV, every town had multiple Vaudeville and Theater houses.

People used to go to school for music because it was a *smart career move*

If things changed and the people creators sell their 'rights' to no longer had monopoly control - society would adapt. The current models for profiting off of works would mostly fail (though not small performers, they by and large sell their recordings & films at cost to generate attention for live performance) you're not allowing yourself to imagine our society becoming something very different from what it is.

Which it of course has been doing continuously.

Also you don't know what you're talking about re: Saudi Arabia and you're full of crap.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[TheLink]

Well if they keep making popular movies people will still _pay_ to watch them. Iron Man is going to be profitable after just a few weeks, so I don't see a good reason they'd need copyrights that last for longer than say 7 years.

With modern day technology and advances, any movie or album that isn't profitable after being in the market for 7 years doesn't deserve further protection anyway.

Microsoft has made plenty of money from Windows 2000 already. If it comes out of copyright now, and competes against Vista, well they should have made something much better than Windows 2000, instead of some crap like Vista right?

If you're an artist and you need 100 year copyrights on your _single_ album just so you can buy food etc, I'd say get another job, and do that "artist" thing as a hobby.

I think 7 years is more than long enough for a monopoly. Any longer and you are just holding back the pace of progress.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[packeteer]

What if they considered licensing the songs out to users in that way and decided against it? What if they calculated it out and found it is not a good business decision? Should the government then force them to distribute their media in a way that harms their business?

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[MrMr]

So, essentially you mean you don't mind being defrauded of your rights once, but you do start to develop objections after about five consecutive attempts?

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[Faylone]

If you can make an exact duplicate of my car(girl? HA!) without depriving me of mine, sure. You'd probably have to deal with the car maker for infringing some patents of theirs, but that's not a problem to me.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[pimpimpim]

In the early days, music videos were called "promotional clips", because that is what they do, they help sell the music. Actually, if you make a video to a piece of music you are doing just that, promoting the music to others. Why the hell wouldn't they want their free advertising? It's a mad world. (Please listen to Gary Jules or Tears for Fears (depening on when you were born) while reading this post)

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The troll mod is completely unfair, as the parent brings up a good point (in a manner less inflammatory than the average +5 insightful post). The money that someone else makes off copyright infringement is completely beside the point. Economically level-headed artists don't care that you're making money, they just care that you're distributing copies; copies that people use instead of buying from the artist.

Also, can we please stop squeezing the "troll" trigger as soon as someone mentions "theft" in a copyright thread? It doesn't have to be defined as stealing to make it morally wrong.

Re:YouTube's unspoken policy for fair users

[OnlySlightly]

You can record a video of your son dancing to a well-known song. What you cannot do is post that video to an international web site where millions of people can download it. And why would you want to do that anyway? I only want to share my home videos with family members. So I post them to my personal web site and email a URL.
Some folks (myself included) have a cheapo web-hosting solution with limited bandwidth (just for posting personal photos and stories). When I share my videos, I upload them to YouTube and then embed them on my site. At that point I'm no longer taking the bandwidth hit. None of my videos are highly public on YouTube, but they are available if you know what to search for.

embedding not really 'disabled'

[Sirius25]

It's funny that they say "Embedding disabled by request".

They removed the ready-made embed tag, but you can still easily embed it using the video ID from the URL.
Like for this Modest Mouse video, just copy the embed tag from a non-disabled video & replace it's ID with HLkC8l3nJro ....

Re:embedding not really 'disabled'

[ruinevil]

This is so websites that embed the "illegal" video in their website don't get stuck with a broken link. This allows Google to make more advertising revenue off of the video.

Remember kids, Google never forgets...

No Embed? Fixed that for ya...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HLkC8l3nJro

becomes

http://youtube.com/v/HLkC8l3nJro

Enjoy.

--AC

Re:No Embed? Fixed that for ya...

[EmperorKagato]

Leave it up to slashdot readers to crack a system within minutes.

Re:No Embed? Fixed that for ya...

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave it up to slashdot readers to consider changing URL parameters cracking.

--Robert

Re:No Embed? Fixed that for ya...

[EmperorKagato]

"Circumvent the system"

Leave it up to slashdot commentators to take every word literally.

Re:No Embed? Fixed that for ya...

[spyka]

Not quite.

Yes, the video will still appear to embed - the player will show and the still of the video will be displayed. However any effort to play the video just results in:

We're sorry, this video is no longer available
And this isn't anything new

OT: Mod Correction

[Froze]

undoing errant interesting mod on eff'n rickroll

Of course not.

[raehl]

I'd like to live in a society where high-income individuals are prohibited from 'contributing' to popular culture.

Nobody should take your cultural influence seriously unless your rent is a couple months late.

Goodbye Youtube

[Snaller]

High precision lawsuits incoming ;)

That's one way...

[themushroom]

...to get videos and songs online that the labels linked to haven't bothered to make available for sale. Call it win-win. People get to see/hear this stuff, and the labels get interest expressed in something they'd presumed there was no further profit in offering.

Goole

[espowbattery]

so many people do jobs to improve there website listed on the google http://www.espow.ca/

Re:Of course yes!

[BonzinoMuschweshe]

woohoo, indeed. mod up!

Not the only change

[LordSnooty]

They're trying to bring all the copyrightable music stuff into line, I've heard of people being contacted by Youtube over their hosted music video clips (editions of a Famous British TV Music Show in fact) and telling them that they can carry on hosting the files if they agree to give up certain rights and allow ad revenue from the vid's page to go to the record company (Sony/BMG in this case, I think). At least they're not taking them down, I imagine that they know they will never stop it. These programmes are actually interesting for the programme itself as well as the music vids it contains.

YouTube's Automatic Detection isn't bad

[Glenn Rubenstein]

I've uploaded original videos privately to test them before, and then had the video flagged as duplicate when I uploaded it to post on a public account. But I've also seen that system beat by simply re-encoding the video.

It's good that YouTube is trying to get a handle on copyright infringement though.

Free Eyeballs

[writerjosh]

The music companies shouldn't complain too much. After all, YouTube is giving their artists free advertising and distribution. Seeing an artist video could result in sales on iTunes or CDs --- all for Free!