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Warner Music Forces Lessig Presentation Offline
An anonymous reader writes "Larry Lessig, known (hopefully) to everyone around here as a defender of all things having to do with consumer rights and fair use rights when it comes to copyright, is now on the receiving end of a DMCA takedown notice from Warner Music, who apparently claimed that one of Lessig's famous presentations violated on their copyright. Lessig has said that he's absolutely planning on fighting this, and has asked someone to send Warner Music a copy of US copyright law that deals with 'fair use.'"
Reader daemonburrito notes that the (rehosted) "video remains available at the time of this submission."
Lessig is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet when it comes to US law on fair use.
Ooooh they're gonna get creamed. And I will be laughing like a drain!!
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
WMG contact form: http://www.wmg.com/contact
----
Sect. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A [17 USCS Sects. 106, 106A], the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
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Yeah, and he's already had his ass handed to him court at least once.
Difference between theory and practice and all.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Too soon?
My work here is dung.
He uses a 50 second clip of The Muppet Show's "Ma Na Ma Na" which is a very short skit track of about 2:29 minutes. He shows it being set to an Anime Music video mash up of Vampire Hunter D Blood Lust. I can't seem to track down who would be the rights holder of this track but I'm guessing it's Warner. I have only seen 15 minutes of his presentation so it's possible there are other violations.
Larry: Non-free Audio Fair Use for music constitutes 10% or 30 seconds of a song (which ever is shorter) and it must be in a low enough quality (didn't investigate the audio on this video to find out if it satisfied Ogg quality of 0 rule). For the rest of the 15 minutes I saw you looked fine but this stuck out at me. Pick your battles wisely and adhere to this rule next time.
My work here is dung.
Larry Lessig, also known as the guy who defended Obama's vote on the FISA bill, saying, among other things:
(emphasis mine)
I'm afraid I lost a lot of the (considerable) respect I had for the guy up until that point.
Yeah, and he's already had his ass handed to him court at least once.
Difference between theory and practice and all.
Sigh.
References please.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Lessig is not against copyright. He's a fundamental advocate of copyright, "especially in the digital era", he just thinks it is "out of sync" and "needs an update".
Whereas people like me are advocates of just scrapping the whole damn thing because the potential benefits of doing so are way more interesting than the deprecated business models that it will finally put to bed.. and because I believe it is fundamentally the right thing to do, from a "you don't tell me what I can and can't do and I'll do the same" sense of what right means.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Lessig is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet when it comes to US law on fair use.
But apparently not good at communication?
and has asked someone to send Warner Music a copy of US copyright law that deals with 'fair use.'
Did they take down his email, fax line and ban him from the post office too?
Dual Opteron < $600
See his Legal Affairs Article: How I Lost the Big One.
Bruce Perens.
http://news.cnet.com/Supreme-Court-nixes-copyright-challenge/2100-1023_3-980792.html
Lessig argued that repeated extensions were unconstitutional because they ran afoul of the Constitution's "limited times" requirement and also conflicted with the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech.
But just moments into Lessig's opening remarks, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor interrupted and noted Congress had repeatedly extended the duration on copyrights, with no intervention before by the Supreme Court. What, O'Connor asked, is different about this case?
Lessig then continued to ramble on and the supremes continued to roll their eyes and wonder what the hell he was on about. He later said that, in retrospect, he should have shut up at that point and addressed the point made.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So now we're officially at war -- Copyright vs. Fair Use vs. Piracy or Lobbies vs. People vs. Pirates. Oh boy, this is going to be good. I wish I had popcorn. Free popcorn.
There's a really good chance this resulted from automatic claiming tools that make use of things like acoustic fingerprints. YouTube or a filtering partner will have a catalog of Warner tracks that new uploads are checked against. Warner may not even have known about this until it blew up. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.
how does a drain laugh?
I don't blame Lessig for ignoring her though, when reading the minutes of the case, I think its pretty cleat Sandra was attempting to derail his argument with a tangent.
Further more, if what you said was true, this just shows that judges had already made up their mind on the case and never cared about Lessig's argument to begin with.
FYI... The 'ma na ma na' song IS NOT MUPPETS, or JIM HENSON, but was written in 1968 for an Italian Porn movie and has been in several movies since then. The muppets used it LOOOOONG after its creation, while that does not ensure that Warner doesn't own it now.
http://www.geocities.com/pieroumiliani/
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Your visuals should enhance your point, not distract people from them.
Yep, they are gonig to learn the HARD way that Lessig is Moreig.... He'll be the enigma wrapped in a question packaged in a sledge hammer and he'll defignally CRUSH them. Game Over.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Lessig then continued to ramble on and the supremes continued to roll their eyes and wonder what the hell he was on about.
then the supremes said; "Stop! In the name of love, before you break my heart. Think it over."
I believe that part was removed from the official dialogue on the record.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
According to TFA, the presentation has been reposted here: http://blip.tv/file/1937322
After watching the first three minutes, my impression is that
(1) Should be clearly in favor of Mr. Lessig. Nonprofit, political speech, should have pretty strong First Amendment protection. One can argue if he really needs the photos (see point 2), but the character of the use doesn't get much more fair.
(2) He uses photographs that are probably copyrighted as backdrops for his lecture
(3) Depends on the source(s) - many small samples or all from one source?
(4) I don't see how the use of some photos in this lecture can substantially hurt the sale of the original collections. Especially since the "subtitles" get in the way of reusing the photos from the lecture elsewhere.
C - the footgun of programming languages
thats crap and you know it... ever hear of Patents?
Patents expire 20 years after filing. Trademarks don't expire, and in practice neither do copyrights.
Regardless of whether or not the DMCA takedown notice has any actual validity, just think about it - there are loads of this sort of violation out there. This is just one among many easily findable instances. Why does Warner not ignore this one too? The course of action they have chosen certainly does not help their reputation for being trigger-happily litigious.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
I learned a long time ago there are two types of people at a bar:
Those you can fuck with.
Those you don't fuck with.
Now I am no genius, I admit that, but I have gotten pretty good at sizing up people. There are just some people you don't fuck with. For instance fat guys with tattoos of cartoon characters. THERE IS A REASON THEY HAVEN'T HAD THEIR ASS BEAT AT THE BAR AND YOU DON'T WANT TO FIND OUT WHY!
They just fucked with the wrong guy. So I am going to discretely walk out of the bar and go to my car because when the fight starts, its never the two guy that are fighting that concerns me, its the stupid shit their friends do.
And I can clearly say, I am a hell of a lot more afraid of Lessig supports then I am of the Media Mafia. Lessig has waaaay more supporters and waaay more "digital firepower." This calls for a "Don't you know who I am" moment?
Needless to say, they went after the wrong guy on this. It's like going up and punching baby Jesus in the face... you're just gonna piss everyone off doing that no matter who they are. You just don't punch baby Jesusessss...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
The bits that may have caused them to go apeshit probably starts at 9:07 in the video under the heading "Remix"
It starts with a clip from The Grey Album and then moves onto various other remixes
Copyright doesn't exist to protect corporate interests. It exists to protect authors... it's the same thing that keeps you from writing a book (or whatever), changing a few things, and publishing it under their name.
No, you don't need copyright for that. All you need is anti-fraud laws, because plagiarism is a form of fraud. Abolishing copyright wouldn't suddenly make it legal to lie to your customers.
Any open source license out there---GPL, BSD, Apache, MPL, CC, etc---are built on copyright.
Many of us believe that the most useful part of those licenses is the way they use copyright against itself, giving users (and other developers) back the rights that copyright law took away in the first place. Without copyright, there wouldn't be much need for those licenses; if someone didn't give you source code, you could freely reverse engineer it and distribute it yourself.
But, if you want to tell me that my works must also be unrestricted public domain works: well, you're doing exactly what you claim to be against.
Not really. If I tell you your works must be public domain, that doesn't actually force you to do anything, or restrict your freedom in any way. Copyright, on the other hand, does restrict the speech of everyone who doesn't have permission from the author to make copies.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Can one read the constitution as saying:
i.e. it's purpose is to grow the public domain, the rest is just mechanism and a choice about how to trade off public good against private good.
The copyrighteous act like a kid who is happy to take the pocket money but not happy to do the chores. They employ Orwellian newspeak by referring to the whole balanced copyright trade-off as 'their property'. They focus only on the protected monopoly and do everything in their power to extend their monopoly duration (even for already created works, no incentive is big enough to change the past) and stop works falling into the public domain.
.
Or prove them right more efficiently?
First of all consider Lessig's point: Copyright Law needs to face today's realities. Now Warner is suing Lessig for some few seconds of the video, that are meant to illustrate this stupidity. Could they prove the stupidity any better?
Also the fact that the industry is acting like the late Soviet Union trying to stop events, as their world was collapsing around them. Extreme, isn't it? Until you see them trying to shut him up with this lawsuit.
Second the speech itself was an obscure event, one of Lessig's many activities. Could it be promoted any better by trying to suppress it? Because of this the speech gained worldwide attention. I mean their best option is probably to withdraw the lawsuit, and pretend the talk does not exist. Except it is already too late. For the suppression of the talk and for the fate of their "business" practices.
Reader daemonburrito notes that the (rehosted) "video remains available at the time of this submission."
What I'm about to say is, I'm sure, redundant. I'm saying it anyway:
Warner,
I am pulling a copy right now. It's going in my mystical hidden repository of stuff fools think they can stop me from seeing.
Here's how this rule works: You try to suppress it, I will get it, and I will keep it forever. That is possible because we are better at this than you are. We will always be better at this than you are. The best among us will never work for you, so you will always epic fail. You cannot stop us. Every time you try to kick us, you are going to get a couple broken toes, and we will just get more ornery.
You know, I don't violate copyright because I haven't made up my mind about it yet. I gotta tell you though, it gets more tempting every time you pull some shit like this.
And if you think you can stop me (let alone the next generation of tech naturals) from watching whatever we want, whenever we want, on whatever platform we want, well, you are really stupid. The more you fight, the more practice we get, and the harder we laugh when we pee on your leg.
Try being nice to your customers some time. It might not do you much good, but it won't do you as much harm as what you're doing now.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Justices have for decades attempted to derail arguments with tangents, and they do it to both sides. Liberal justices will demand justification from attorneys representing a liberal side just as conservative justices will do with those representing a conservative point, and all question^W grill the representatives on the points while bringing up seemingly unrelated points, interrupting them at their pleasure. It takes nerves of steel to stand up in front of the Supreme Court, because they do know what they're talking about and they absolutely will cut off the unprepared at the knees, and continue moving up until there's nothing left, and woe unto the attorney who gets combative with the justices.
Remember that the justices have already read a great deal of case information by the time that oral debates have started, so they are often already leaning in one direction or another. However, there's also a great deal of work that goes on afterward as the justices debate the case internally, one of the reasons that the opinions take so long to come out in most cases. This is mostly a secret process, but there have been indications from some justices that a few debates have escalated to serious arguments with logic sometimes being tossed out the window. Traditions have developed over time to deal with those circumstances and allow the justices to at least end each term with civility, if not going home each night or weekend with some friendliness.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Eldred v Ashcroft?
That case was not about the fair use provisions already on the books; it was about the limits of the enumerated power of Congress to establish copyright, which is not a question here. In all probability, he will hand Warner's ass back to them, as this sort of matter is probably well-explored, whereas the scope of Congress' power was not.
... take no prisoners. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200. Do not deal out of court. Get that judgment and force them to lose their way all the way to SCOTUS.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
No way!! here should be the big government!
ROFLMAO -- I wish I had mod points :D
This is the funniest comment I've read on slashdot in weeks
I believe that part was removed from the official dialogue on the record.
After a DMCA takedown request, no doubt.
Ah, the perils of broad brush litigation..
This is a risk implied in doing things in volume, it is statistically a given that you will eventually hit someone you should really, REALLY avoided in your legal abuse. Small aside question: has anyone heard of a judge being sued yet? No? Given the "quality" of their research I think there must be *some* sort of end filtering taking place. Anyway, back on topic.
I think this mistake is akin to jumping in shark infested waters while bleeding from an over-vigorous morning shave: very likely to end in tears.
Applause. For fun value this almost beats the recent $329'000 it-looks-like-9/11 New York flyover..
Note no myself: record who the lawyers are here. They may be worth avoiding.
Insert
> if someone didn't give you source code, you could freely reverse engineer it
This is mostly true now, but eventually, when CPUs have embedded public-key encryption/decryption this will become harder and harder.
*click* *thunk* *click* *thunk*
Steady...
Steady!
*BANG!*
OW, MY FOOT!
His presentation may be willingfully at the fringe between Fair Use and Copyright violation.
He may want to have this case brought to court and use the opportunity to show his whole presentation to the court in order to educate the judges.
Lobbies vs. People vs. Pirates.
And let me tell you, the **AA hates us for our freedoms!
(scnr)
Geocities is dying, such valuable information would be lost forever if not archived at all...
This site is the example of what the Internet really is... or was?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
In theory, perhaps - although I doubt it. In practice, he has the savant tendency to disregard that the law is implemented by humans, and the one thing that humans can't stand is a wise ass.
Is about as close as he's come. And yet even after saying that... somehow he didn't change careers.
Well, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for tenure, eh?
Tweaking aside, Lessig's experience is like that of a virgin with a giant porn collection. So I can see why he gets a lot of sympathy around here. Tweaking aside.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
put it on the torrents!
It's guttural, now shut yer grid !
He is also the best example of why Creative Commons isn't a viable license for making money. Just check out what license he released his latest book under, it wasn't the one he pushes so hard for others to use it is released under the most restrictive license possible. Why would he do this?
The Lessig.org site is inaccessible (to me at least) today.
Damn, this reminds me of poor old Stingray Steve.
"Roight, this here's a law professor who's made a career of making stupid lawyers look like fools. If I screw up here my careers gonna bleed out all over the ground. So what I'm gonna do, what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna prod him in the arse with a stick. Let's see what happens!"
Such usage usually leads to others buying the works. It's really free advertising.
Sure, the government extended copyrights without *consulting* the people. Copyrights are for *everyone*, just not big business. Just because the government extended copyrights doesn't make it right, and the courts should have been nailing the government for over reaching it's legal rights. But, this is the US of A, where big business rules, and the little bloke gets fucked over. Let's consider the freebie handouts to rescue the fucking banks and others who spent without consideration or thought. I say get your hands off public money and go bust like you bastards deserve.
Dave
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.