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EFF Lawyer Calls YouTube ContentID Worse Than DMCA
Richard Koman writes "Warner Music Group is apparently blocking everything YouTube ContentID comes up with as potential infringement. We knew that, but this piece by Jason Perlow shows that they're also spewing out DMCA takedown notices for some pretty clearly fair-use stuff. In my interview with EFF's Fred von Lohmann he talks about how, as bad as the DMCA process is — and it's pretty firmly against fair-use — YouTube's process gives remixers and digital creators even fewer options to assert their right to speak through the fair use of copyright material. While EFF is negotiating with Google and the studios, he suggests that users boycott YouTube if they won't stand up for fair use."
Learn to play an instrument, write something
And get sued for accidental plagiarism. George Harrison got sued and lost (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music). Michael Bolton got sued and lost (Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton).
Earlier this year when YouTube started silencing user posted videos in response to WB, someone posted this link which did a search for silenced YouTube videos.
Right now there are over 22,000 search results, the highest I've seen it was 300,000+ search results, meaning overall YouTube appear to have silenced over well over 1/3 million videos (and probably then removed most of them).
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
unfortunately, you're at the mercy of whatever low-paid operator they have looking at those.
Other posters are correct though, the DMCA is too broad by miles, but Google couldn't run YouTube without the compliance laws. As long as Google continues to take down THEY stay out of court.
I think Google might be planning a coup soon though. Remember things like ContentID are designed for studios to police there own works because Google wasn't doing "enough". Google's making it dead easy to identify copyrighted works, but on the other hand they're setting the content publishers up to take a big fall. They say 37% of the DMCA notices are inappropriate or incorrect... the CONTENT OWNER is expected to know fair use rules too. Once Google can demonstrate a clear pattern that publishers aren't respecting fair uses they can take that mountain of data to court with them... with all those companies names on it and put some feet to the fire to get the laws changed.