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EFF Lawyer Calls YouTube ContentID Worse Than DMCA

Posted by timothy on from the take-toys-and-go-home dept.

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."

10 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Alternative? by seeker_1us · · Score: 5, Insightful

    An alternative is giving the giant middle finger to the RIAA and using ONLY independent music in your YouTube videos. Go creative commons, go attribution only, etc, and fully credit those artists so people can discover them and realize they can get good or better music without the RIAA

  2. If you can give a convincing fair use argument by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's called the dispute button. It leads you to a page listing several categories of valid and invalid dispute reasons. One of the valid options is "this use does not require the copyright owner's permission"; select the radio button next to that and you'll get a text box for further information. Put a Twitter-length explanation of why you believe your use is a fair use under the Copyright Act, and you just might win if you have a decent case. I won the only dispute filed against me, which was for the use of "Take Me Out" in this video explaining how it sounds like an Animal Crossing song.

    1. Re:If you can give a convincing fair use argument by mabhatter654 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  3. Is there a solution by nicolas.kassis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whatever google does is going to end up being bad, including doing nothing. The online user submitted content arena is a total hell hole. I would not touch that stuff with a 10Gbit/s foot tube.

  4. Accidental plagiarism by tepples · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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).

    1. Re:Accidental plagiarism by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ding Ding Ding! I had a situation at work where people used Happy Birthday as a melody for an iPhone music app. They were shocked to find out that it is copyrighted. The problem is that there is so much content out there that you can argue with just enough credibility to get into court that creative work A infringes on random creative work B. Despite all efforts by creators of A to be original. Not sure where I heard it, but this was one advice to future creatives types that stuck with me: "If you want to make a movie, do it in an empty white room with your two closest friends. Everything else opens you up for copyright claims."

      The point is that culture thrives on copying, modifying and playing with existing content. The harder corps will try to come down on small infringement, the less people will like the overall idea of copyright itself. One possible outcome is that WarnerBros gets everyone to turn into mindless consumers. Another possible outcome is that people get so pissed off that they manage to convince their congress critters to change copyright law in their favor. And I'm not sure the former is more likely than the latter.

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
    2. Re:Accidental plagiarism by TheFaithfulStone · · Score: 5, Funny

      "If you want to make a movie, do it in an empty white room with your two closest friends. Everything else opens you up for copyright claims."

      Sounds like a THX1138 ripoff to me.

  5. What a bunch of sour grapes! by sweatyboatman · · Score: 5, Funny

    They don't like YouTube, they don't like Obama... does the EFF like anything?

    Seriously, write a press-release about how much you love little puppies or something. Your grumpiness is making me depressed.

    --
    It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
  6. Scale of the takedowns by hack++slash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  7. Re:Alternative? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Probably the dog...