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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 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.
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.
That's nothing more than a safe harbor. To really find out whether something is fair use, you have to evaluate all four factors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Only one of the elements is how much was taken.
I'm not going to do a full analysis. Indeed, even if I did, a court's analysis would probably look much different.
The truth is that most people cannot afford to pay the lawyers to go to court and make the fair use argument to find out whether something is fair use or not.
So most people stick with the safe harbors.
In this case, Warner Brothers picked on the wrong guy. Lessig has both the resources and the inclination to go into court and make a fair use argument.
I would love to see that case. Unfortunately Warner Brothers is going to cave very quickly and there will never be a court case.
The RIAA / MPAA will make sure that when they go to court, they have a defendant who will not garner public sympathy.
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 ?
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
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.