Google Sends Repeat Infringers To Copyright School

maczealot writes "Google is launching a new 'Copyright School' for use as a re-education tool for offenders on YouTube. The apparent purpose being to head off additional legislation, lawsuits, regulation and other negative impacts to the site. They even have campy cartoon videos for this school."

Comments

Finally.

[BitterOak]

Finally, a sensible approach to copyright infringement. Instead of suing everyone in sight into oblivion, they've decided to follow the model used by traffic police. Force violators to attend "school" and try to educate them about the law and the dangers of violating it, instead of the shoot first, ask questions later approach.

I'm sure this won't work for everyone, but hopefully it will save a good number of people from being bankrupted.

Re:Finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Force violators to attend "school" and try to educate them about the law and the dangers of violating it

For copyright infringement? what dangers?

Re:Finally.

[bieber]

Neither solution makes any sense. Mandatory traffic school is no better a remedy for traffic violations than this "copyright school" is for copyright infringement. Not that the two are really comparable, because no one is going to be forced to watch these videos in lieu of being fined, but lets go with the analogy for now. People don't violate traffic laws because they don't understand them, they violate traffic laws because they don't think they'll get caught. Same goes for copyright. "Educating" infringers about laws they almost certainly already understand isn't going to do anything...well, I guess in the case of traffic violations it makes for an effective transfer of money from citizens to the companies that run the traffic schools...

Re:Finally.

[WrongSizeGlass]

For copyright infringement? what dangers?

The danger of being sentenced to watch those hybrid Rick Roll & Tube Girl videos. [shudder]

Re:Finally.

[bunratty]

The danger of being sued.

Re:Finally.

[countertrolling]

Pffft! The only sensible approach now is an alternative to youtube that's more resistant to this bullshit. Some 'distributed' format maybe. Gotta be encrypted, or at least well hidden.

Re:Finally.

[bzipitidoo]

There are further, and quite massive differences. Speed limits are a good idea, and, barring things like speed traps, are mostly fair. They make our roads safer. We have studies showing that there are fewer fatalities when speeds are lower. Saves gas too, which was the original intent of the national 55 mph speed limit.

Copyrights on the other hand, are legal fantasies, largely unenforceable on individuals. They are blatantly unfair. They cause more harm than good. What of all the works that were removed from the public domain without any compensation whatsoever to the public, each time copyright terms were extended? Robbery! Many of us understand this about copyrights, and no cheesy "educational" film is going to persuade us otherwise. I'm sure Google understands these films are nothing more than bad jokes at best, offensive to our intelligence and common sense. The propaganda is so badly done it should be obvious to any reasonably intelligent kids. Couldn't be any better than Capt. Copyright! It's little better than forcing rape victims to watch films implying it is all their fault because they didn't dress appropriately. But if it serves to appease the idiotic copyright extremists who might well be the only people on the planet who actually believe these films will win others over, while backfiring by helping to persuade more people that copyright laws are crazy, Google likes that. And so should we.

Re:Finally.

[Baseclass]

Better 'Tube Girl' than 'Tub Girl'.
I'll spare you the link.

Re:Finally.

[orangesquid]

"The danger of being sued." Exactly! And the first critical lesson in copyright school is... Don't upload anything involving Metallica in any way, shape, or form.

Re:Finally.

[somersault]

People really don't understand copyright - I've seen hundreds of videos with things like "I DO NOT OWN THIS SONG", "No Copyright infringement intended" etc. Admitting you don't own a song does not make it legal to copy it, and you are taking part in copyright infringement just by uploading a video you don't have copyright on. Whenever I've tried to point this out to people, I get the usual Idiocracy "you're a fag and your shit's all retarded" type responses from morons.

Re:Finally.

[LordLucless]

Lack of attribution is a subset of copyright - it involves you copying it and passing the copy off as your own. People intrinsically see this as wrong - as opposed to copying, which is intuitively (and naturally) moral. It's only when you get governments handing out artificial monopolies that it becomes problematic. The fact that people's first reaction to defending themselves against copyright is to explicitly include attribution shows what people in general consider to be the most important - and the disjunction between the people's idea of morality and that of the legislators.

Re:Finally.

[sco08y]

I get the usual Idiocracy "you're a fag and your shit's all retarded" type responses from morons.

I call bullshit. Even on the odd chance one of them didn't abbreviate "your" as "ur", no one commenting on Youtube uses apostrophes correctly.

Re:Finally.

[bunratty]

Copying another's actions is something else entirely. If someone else picks coconuts and sells them, and you also pick coconuts and sell them, you're simply competing fairly and equally. If someone else writes a book and sells it, and you get it for free and give it to others for free, that's not competing fairly and equally. It took you less work to copy the book than it did for the author to write it, so you need little or no compensation for your meager effort.

Put another way, if you wrote for a living and depended on that income to pay the mortgage and feed the kids, would you think it's intuitively and naturally moral for others to get and share your book without compensating you for your work?

Re:Finally.

[NotQuiteInsane]

Nah, the first lesson is not to watch or listen to anything which involves Metallica in any way, shape or form... :)

They should use this link

[mysidia]

To professor Eric Faden @ Bucknell University's video, A Fair(y) Use Tale

As their copyright school

What they should do...

[Haedrian]

Is force copyright owners who flag videos for no reason whatsoever to watch that as well.

Re:Founding Lesson

[Barrinmw]

Hey now, no author will write a book unless they and their family will be able to profit from it for their life plus 70 years, its true, just look at history before copyrights lasted that long, no books were ever written.

Don't infringe copyright (unless you're a megacorp

[syousef]

"Hi kids, today's topic is copyright law and how we're allowed to copy anything we like because we're a multi-billion dollar company and can afford more lawyers than God, while you're just a schlep at a computer who's going to have their ass sued and thrown into jail.

By the way have you heard of Google books....that's right if you can't find it at a used book store, chances are we've copied it to put online.

So remember kids, don't infringe copyright. Let us do it for you, and enjoy the ads!"

Pot Calling the Kettle Black

[Eightbitgnosis]

Like when a certain company decides they have the right the republish every book? Where's the cute little cartoon for that lesson

Viacom

[Dunbal]

So are they going to send MAFIAA members to school too, when they claim that videos are infringing when actually they are making fair use?

Re:Viacom

[Elbereth]

Very, very few people understand what "fair use" really is.

I'd estimate that for every hundred ignorant, entitled teenagers screaming about their fair use rights being violated, there's one person who actually does have his fair use rights violated. In my mind, that's an extremely generous and optimistic statement, because just about every single one of the screaming idiots I've seen so far thought that because they attributed the music in their video, it was now fair use. Sorry, but that's just not the way it works.

What really gets me is that all you have to do is ask permission. Write to your favorite band, ask them for permission to use a song that you love, and, chances are, they'll give you permission. Instead, people just take without asking, then get all offended and start screaming about their "rights". I really hate this entitlement complex that's spread through American society, where anyone can simply take whatever they want, without asking permission. Personally, I blame advertising, because, for fifty years now, we've been blasted with the message that we can't possibly live without having the latest pop culture crap that's been mass produced by media conglomerates. Now that people are finally starting to believe this, it's biting the media conglomerates on the ass, because they've got legions of pop culture-addicted morons pirating everything in sight. I think the two deserve each other: the pirates has a hole in their lives that never be fulfilled by anything but gigabytes of soulless pop culture, and the media conglomerates are going berserk hopelessly trying to capitalize on the pirates. It's like something out of Dante's Inferno.

Re:Viacom

[tepples]

just about every single one of the screaming idiots I've seen so far thought that because they attributed the music in their video, it was now fair use.

Is it probably fair use if 1. you attribute the music, 2. your video includes only 20 seconds of each song in question, and 3. it is specifically about melodic similarities among multiple songs?

Re:Viacom

[russotto]

What really gets me is that all you have to do is ask permission. Write to your favorite band, ask them for permission to use a song that you love, and, chances are, they'll give you permission.

Chances are they don't even own the rights, and so can't give you permission.

Good Idea

[MarkvW]

Many people unknowingly confess to copyright violations in their You Tube postings.

They say things like: "I don't own this. It is owned by ViaNBCBS." That is like a total admission of guilt.

They need Copyright School to keep them away from civil liability!!

Happy Tree F(close page)

[The Archon V2.0]

[Opens video.]
[Sees Happy Tree Friends.]
[Closes video damn fast.]
Watching the occasional campy video at work, I can get away with. Watching something with a rep for being NSFW no matter what the content of the actual video? Not so much.

Re:Happy Tree F(close page)

[DJ Particle]

Actually, this one is SFW. Seriously. The worst that happens is some off-screen vomit and a cannon explosion without gore.

Irony

[PeeAitchPee]

I guess when Google ignores authors' rights and digitizes millions of books at a time, it's OK, but God forbid if someone downloads a few .mp3s. The duplicity is shocking. Just another example of a fucking corporation having more rights than the individual.

Re:Because it's free

[LordLucless]

Meh, and I think people that believe copyright is the way things ought to be are brainwashed by the status quo, and lack the imagination or intellect to think beyond the current circumstances.

Things spread "virally" all the time. Someone tells a joke, which someone repeats to a friend. Should they go back and pay the originator a shiny nickel for the privilege? The only reason we think they should when it comes to books and music is that we've artificially commoditized those things via legislation. Jump back only a handful of generations, and musicians, writers and artists wanted their work copied. They were paid by their patrons to create, and the more widely their work was recognised (ie: viciously stolen and copied) the more likely they were to attract a more generous patron.