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Corporate Claims On Public Domain YouTube Videos
esocid writes "Cory Doctorow has written a Guardian column, 'The pirates of YouTube,' about how multinational copyright-holding companies have laid false claim to public domain videos on YouTube. The videos are posted by the nonprofit FedFlix organization, which liberates public domain government-produced videos and makes them available to the world. These videos were produced at public expense and no one can claim to own them, but multinationals from CBS to Discovery Communications have done just that, getting YouTube to place ads on the video that deliver income to their coffers. What's more, their false copyright claims could lead to the suspension of FedFlix's YouTube account under Google's rules for its copyright policing system. This system, ContentID, sets out penalties for 'repeat offenders' who generate too many copyright claims — but offers no corresponding penalties for rightsholders who make too many false claims of ownership."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
I disagree they have *no* standards. It's apparent that Google wants to make money off content providers and is kissing their giant smelly ass. I think if there is any standard, it's to kiss up to the movie studios, the record labels, and any other big content organization so they can get their itunes/amazon prime equivalent up and running.
Yea, how dare Google cater more towards the people who pay them actual money than the people who use their service for free. I mean, I gave them my zero dollars and all they gave me in return was something close to but not exactly what I want. I hope those bastards rot in hell goddamnit.
See, the loophole is right there in the text: "with fraudulent intent." How often is something intended to be fraudulent? This law was written to be undermined.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Youtube has no standards AT ALL for this kind of stuff... it's why you can't use them to seriously host anything. But then again, it's a free service... so...
They have standards... filing a takedown notice results in a takedown. Filing a false takedown notice theoretically carries the penalty of perjury (theoretically because in spite of plenty of instances of false takedown notices, it's never been enforced). You may file a counterclaim to put it back up.
These are the standards put forth in the DMCA, and the ones which they follow.
Something tells me that Viacom has enough money to prolong any legal battle until such a time when FedFlix is no longer solvent and has to give up the fight regardless of whether they are right or wrong.
Did you perform the music? If you're using someone else's performance of a PD piece I would assume they retain ownership of that performance.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
What part of "free service", "no SLAs", "no guarantees", "use at your own risk", ad naseum do you not understand?
You are defending a company for stiffing their entire userbase in exchange for cash from a third party.
It's a dick move for ANY business to make regardless of whether it is profitable or not.
Sounds good. Get on it. Oh wait, you meant someone else do it, didn't you?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
I believe New York ruled a few years back that there was no such thing as "public ownership" and that "public domain" does not exist, so there has been a steady deterioration of public rights for some time.
When I retire, my plan is to buy some woodland (if there's any still left) and put up notices "trespassers will be served tea and cookies". The total lack of discussion on the idea of Common Land, the total lack of awareness in many places that such a thing could, or ever has, existed -- these things horrify me. Private property has a place and a time, and that's good, but it shouldn't be the ONLY place and time you're ever allowed to have, whether it be land, ideas, whatever. The exclusive existence of private ownership is a monoculture and we know that in EVERY field of endeavor that monocultures are toxic. We NEED discussion and awareness, even if the conclusions from that are that public ownership has no place. If we don't discuss it and it simply bleeds away, as it is doing, we won't have a choice in the matter and we won't have an opportunity to seriously examine if it is the appropriate mechanism for avoiding the lethality of monocultures.
At the present time, there is a prevailing belief that ownership is everything - that what isn't owned doesn't exist, that if it exists, it's owned. I have seen no studies, no analysis, no proofs that this is either necessary or even useful. Without a methodical approach to the issue, what you have is not modernization but religion. It is merely an article of faith, until the actual legwork is done to establish if the belief has credibility or not. We should not be running a 21st century (AD) country on articles of faith. 21st century BC, it might be more excusable. If the stone-age tribes of Papau New Guinnea or the Amazon wish to run their societies by articles of faith, well, that seems fine to me. It suits the culture and technology they're using, so it's appropriate to do that. I like balanced societies where all aspects are working at the same level. By the same logic, a modern, high-tech, scientific culture, to be balanced, has no business picking the rules of society from political theology. Regressing science is stupid, so advance the culture.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What part of "offering a free service doesn't grant you the right to be unethical" do you not understand?
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There is also an implied, "do the right thing" clause that, when violated, can get a real nasty backlash. Its human nature, not contract law, get used to it.
Google is an ad company. They're not stiffing their user base, they're delivering product.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
God, I am so sick of seeing this "observation" trotted out in every conversation about Google. Google is not only an ad company.
"You aren't the customer, you're the product" contains some truth, but it's facile. The whole truth is that Google is engaged in a triangle trade with two different groups of customers. It sells services and content (search results, video, email service, etc.) to Internet users in exchange for their attention to ads, and it sells that attention to advertisers in exchange for money. We belong to one group of customers. The advertisers are another group of customers. Both groups are getting something good in the bargain and both have the right to be treated fairly.
The initial comment to which I was replying said the following "how dare Google cater more towards the people who pay them actual money than the people who use their service for free" (note the sarcasm).
/dev/null ... in which case that would actually show Google doesn't care about its users as much as people expect (note I'm not saying that this is happening, I'm just following the argument).
I was exposing the opinion that just because some people pay Google to do something, it doesn't offer a free pass on Google to do "something" (where something is actually something "bad"). Any money > $0.
If we use the logic in the initial comment that "a service provider is correct in doing what the customer that pays more demands" then we can extrapolate it to a situation where a murder victim doesn't have enough money to counter the offer of a killer's client and is shot in the head instead.
Of course that is an extreme situation in that it doesn't make any sense. Nobody would say the killer was correct... and I can anticipate some criticism that "Google is not killing anyone". It is not.
On the other hand, for your argument to make sense we have to believe that Google actually doesn't know it's infringing harm to innocent people (that shared public domain videos which were claimed my corrupt big labels as theirs exploiting the law). I find that very hard to believe.. because to believe in that I would have to accept the fact that all complains Google receives go to
What would be "right" of Google to do then? I guess that actually placing a human being with a brain and some experience in copyright claims to handle the complaints from big labels would make sense instead of blinding trusting a greedy corporation to the detriment of a single user trying to share something useful with the rest of the society.
So perhaps it was not obvious what I meant about unethical behavior and that adjective could be out of place but it doesn't change the fact that Google is not doing the "right thing" (tm).
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"You're the product, not the customer" is a slogan created by astroturf marketing trolls to allow the old guard (like Microsoft) to attack companies (like Google) that offer products in competition with theirs, but for free.
Which isn't to say that Google is perfect. But let's take the specific example in question: The law makes it so that there is a large legal incentive to take down videos upon request, and basically no legal incentive to question the take downs. Now, in theory, Google could hire an army of lawyers to review each of the thousands of take down requests they get every day, and try to contact the poster of the video to get their side of the story, etc. But let's face it, that's prohibitively expensive. And even that creates a much higher risk that they make a mistake, refuse to take down a video that it turns out was actually infringing and then end up having to explain it in court after getting sued by some Hollywood asshats like Viacom. The situation is messed up, but it's caused primarily by stupid laws, not stupid Google. You can blame them for not doing more, but it's not like they're going out of their way to screw you over. They just don't have any good options.
And that's the problem for Microsoft and their ilk. People like Google. They're not perfect, but they're less imperfect than most of the alternatives. And public opinion matters, so "the alternative" needs some talking points that paint competing companies with "free" products in a bad light. Hence: "You're the product, not the customer."
How is this hyperbole? The videos in question are of government origin, produced using your and my tax dollars, paid for by us (if you are also a US Citizen and taxpayer). Google is allowing people to fraudulently claim stuff you and me paid for and have paid for a legal right to see. Yeah, it's not their entire user base, it's only the entire taxpaying population of the US and of any foreign power who also signed the Berne convention. It doesn't include North Korea or Burkina Faso or wherever , but it sure as hell includes literally billions of people, so again, how is this hyperbole? And while you're at it, you can give away your rights all you want, but please stop being so eager to give away mine.
Who is John Cabal?