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YouTube Identifies Birdsong As Copyrighted Music
New submitter eeplox writes "I make nature videos for my YouTube channel, generally in remote wilderness away from any possible source of music. And I purposely avoid using a soundtrack in my videos because of all the horror stories I hear about Rumblefish filing claims against public domain music. But when uploading my latest video, YouTube informed me that I was using Rumblefish's copyrighted content, and so ads would be placed on my video, with the proceeds going to said company. This baffled me. I disputed their claim with YouTube's system — and Rumblefish refuted my dispute, and asserted that: 'All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content: Entity: rumblefish; Content Type: Musical Composition.' So I asked some questions, and it appears that the birds singing in the background of my video are Rumblefish's exclusive intellectual property."
"All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content."
Complete bold-faced lie.
When will this copyright madness end?
Dear Rumblefish,
I see that you are using my music without proper authorization.
-- God
p.s. I could use ad's, hmmmm... Naa, Smite works just as well...
1. Go to the woods, record birdsong.
2. Make a bunch of videos and post to YouTube
3. Wait for takedown
4. Sue Rumblefish in small claims court for the ad revenue they got from Google.
5. Profit!!!!
Copyright is STRICTLY for the benefit of society. If we didn't think it profited us, we'd just steal all of everyone's crap (and, in some cases, society would vastly benefit; anything having to do with music, not so much). Mark my words, industry: copyright means NOTHING if it's abused and it justifies my attitudes on the subject (y'all know what i mean)
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
I've always said copyright is for the birds... (Well, someone had to say it!)
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
1) Strip the audio track,
2) Host the video with the audio track somewhere else,
3) Add a link to the audio enabled version into the description.
Ezekiel 23:20
Could we find any lawyers to take this case on? Surely if this is happening often enough some type of class action suit might be able to come out of it?
Of course I'm also sure that none of this has anything to do with the fact that YouTube gets a cut of those ad proceeds. And that a small user posting original content would probably opt not to insert ads, such that YouTube would be then getting a cut of zero.
I'm also willing to venture that after going through the figleaf of a process of he-said, she-said, he-said, that there is little recourse. My guess is that any future attempt by a little guy to appeal/refute/re-dispute a big copyright holders' refutation of the original dispute will fall down some big black rabbit hole of non-responsiveness from YouTube corporate bureaucracy, complete with lack of any personal points of contact for trying to actually resolve this.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
A mockingbird, could it?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
YouTube: Blurring the line between the RIAA and Monsanto.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
Huh... I have reviewed, say, The Hurt Locker, and I confirm that it's in the public domain.
I explicitly release the above into the public domain.
You're legally in the right but is it really worth your time to fight it? Just delete the video from YouTube, edit the audio on your original video with some voice annotations or something to change it up a bit and re-post.
Or, just audio-swap your video to Dreamscape by 009 sound system, like everyone else on YouTube who gets the copyrighted audio notice. Warning: May infuriate your viewers.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Rumblefish owns that as well.
And you know you're going to have to pay through the nose on that one!
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I think you're confusing copyright with patents. There's no prior art on copyright.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Maybe it's just me, but when I thought about this I thought about companies that are trying to patent genes. Shouldn't you have to have created something to be able to declare it as your IP? IMO that applies to this and to naturally-occurring genes.
You can use them if you choose to fight this in court to establish both "prior art" or "not the unique property of Rumblefish".
Contact your US senator and House members. It won't do any good, but it is very easy to do. If enough voters do this it can have an influence. It's like voting; if you don't bother to vote you have abandoned your right to have an opinion. Posting on Slashdot will get you exposure, but I don't see how it will help much.
Why is Snark Required?
is a Metallica song with birds in the background.
Lars, meet Rumblefish. Rumblefish, Lars.
Who's got the popcorn for this show?
I'm sure Olivier Messiaen would have something to say about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messaien#Birdsong
(were he not dead)
You own the copyright to the original recording you made of bird songs from nature.
They own the copyright to their recording of bird songs from nature, but not to yours.
For them to claim copyright to your recording, there must be an original artistic element they created that you have actually reproduced.
I wouldn't take copyright advice from someone who doesn't understand the difference between that and patents.
... as a clear example of why SOPA and PIPA would have been a disaster for the Internet.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
IANAL - but the core point is "this existed before Rumblefish existed, so Rumblefish has no claim to this as an unique piece of work."
What's not explicitly mentioned is whether the bird sounds were recorded at the same time as the video, or whether they were dubbed in after the fact.
If the latter, it's entirely possible that he's using a recording that was made, and consequently copyrighted by someone else.
Movie and TV producers have been dubbing in bird sounds for decades, including one infamous time when CBS backed a golf match with the sounds of birds that have never lived anywhere near the game's location.
Anyhow, the point is that while you can't (yet!) copyright a bird song, you can copyright a specific recording of a sound.
(none of this should be taken to mean that Google does not have it's head up its ass.)
Three Squirrels
Nevermind. I didn't RTFA. Looks like the birdsong is ambient noise from the original recording.
IANAL, but it seems like this could apply:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference
Okay, sorry... But someone has to ask this...
Where did the clip of the birdsong come from? Is this something the OP recorded himself? Or did he use an audio clip from some other source?
And if the OP recorded himself, did he make sure the birds were indeed singing a song that is in the public domain?
While birds aren't people and can't own a copyright, a flock of birds is more like a corporation and therefor a person.
I've had the same with public domain Christmas carols I.e. Silent Night from some wacky company. It seems like a new business model, first patent trolling...but lawyers get expensive, falsely report copyright infringements on YouTube automatic money, and almost no risk.
I'll be scared to talk on a video now, I might find I'm copyrighted by someone else.
If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?
The core point doesn't work. If bird songs are copyrightable, then different people can hold copyright on different bird songs. If someone patented the idea of recording a bird song, you could claim prior art by pointing to anyone who recorded a bird song before the patent.
Sue them and use crowd funding.
https://www.crowdtilt.com/
Make it clear in your project description that you will not settle.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You can spend lots of money suing. Even of you win you'll probably see little compensation for your efforts. Such is our judicial system.
Or spend $10 on gasoline. Sadly, they've just about pushed it to this point.
Rumblefish is really cutting the bird a break by not coming after him.
-Dave
Assuming that your video was recorded in the wilderness, you can sue for "slander of title", like in SCO vs. Novell. All conditions are met: A false statement was made to a third party, claiming that you are not the copyright holder. The claim is malicious since they cannot reasonably believe they are the copyright holder. And finally there are special damages, since ads are added to your video and the revenue is sent to them.
Sure there's a solution. Abolish copyright. It no longer serves its purpose and should be discarded. That's what you do with things that are used up: discard them.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
All your base are belong to us
-- Rumblefish
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just stop using Youtube. Post the video on your own site. Case closed.
Before it was the copyright owners getting ripped off left and right by the users.
Now it's the copyright owners getting ripped off left and right by scam artists and larger copyright owners.
A friend and I wrote this bit of silliness years ago: http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~dzubera/riaa_sues_birds_whales.txt The time between parody and real life continues to shrink.
submit this to boing boing and the agitator. They'd probably love this.
A species-action lawsuit. Maybe Harvey Birdman will take the case..
Seems to me that if they're claiming copyright on your video, and claim to have reviewed it, and they're receiving *your* ad revenue, then they're guilty of fraud.
But I'm not a lawyer. Anyone want to pretend they are one and weigh in?
I'm afraid it's not the nose you'd be paying through.
I'm all for using the wrath of the Internet to burn a false copyright claimer to the ground, but I see no timestamped text or screenshots of notices from Youtube or Rumblefish posted by eeplox. The video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPBlfeuZuWg was uploaded on 2/24. Before we all jump onboard and make an effort to force Rumblefish to disconnect their telephones and move their offices out of the Pacific Northwest, can we get some verification that the notices were received and replied to and refuted after 2/24 and were in reference to that same video and not a different one?
Have you ever smelled his farts?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Put the bastards out of business. Please Include Google in the suit.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Get a lawyer. Get him now, because there are deadlines and the law takes deadlines very seriously. Ask the EFF or ACLU, they often love cases like these, and they have a couple really good lawyers.
Have your lawyer send them a cease & desist letter. You will need that later.
From what you describe, you should start in small claims court, which will very likely result in a default judgement in your favour, because most companies don't bother with defending themselves. If they cease&desist, sue them for whatever ad revenue they illegally made. If they don't c&d, sue them for the lot.
With the default judgement in hand, escalate. Sue them for copyright infringement, fraud and whatever else your lawyer comes up with.
Don't forget that copyright infringement is a criminal offense, too. And thanks to the content mafia, the penalties are considerable.
The one thing you shouldn't do is lie down, do nothing, or delete your video. On the contrary, why didn't you post the link? A quick /. effect later and there'd be many thousand views and the damages for your case would be there.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
So when will one step up and make a name for him/her self and stop this crap once and for all?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This was actually a wild bird doing a cover of Burr Dee's breakout hit "twitter tweet". But still a copyright violation.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
... mother nature her inspiration from artists
Read 'through' as 'by' for the intended meaning.
Obviously Rumblefish has birds for clients. They must have noticed you illegally recording their song, and had Rumblefish track you down. Next time, you'll remember to write and perform your own warbles. Poor birds, everyone trying to make money off the material they've spent centuries perfecting...
Having actually read the text at the links in the post (astonishing, isn't it?), it sounds to me like this is all done automatically with no human review.
The posts in the YouTube forum refer to copyright owners submitting Content IDs to YouTube. Apparently Google does some sort of audio and video analysis on all uploaded content to look for CID matches. An automated notice is then sent to the entity that submitted the CID. That entity is then supposed to have a human review the video to see if the analysis got it right. If the entity confirms to Google that they own all or part of the content, then ads are added to the video, with proceeds going to Google and the content owner. If the uploader of the video disputes the claim, the ads are stopped until the dispute is resolved.
One poster claims that Rumblefish automatically confirms a copyright violation with no human review. It seems to me that the YouTube/Google end of the system is working well enough. The point of failure is Rumblefish.
Its called "slander of title". Get a lawyer, tell them this has happened, and mention "slander of title". The damages could be worth as much as a direct copyright infringement.
C|N>K
screw youtube. time to look for a non-US affiliated video sharing site run by people again.
You need to host your own content, so that you're receiving actual DMCA notices and no one is in a youtube-like position of voluntarily taking things down.
Since apparently Rumblefish contacted you about this particular video, I assume (though I realize this is getting iffy) you've made some sort of contact over there. Tell them about your new host, to make sure they know about it and that you have not changed the soundtrack in any way (so that it'll still be "infringing").
At this point, you win. Either they will abstain from taking action and your publishing continues without any opposition. Or they fight back with DMCA notices. Then you counter-notice and sue them for any expenses.
Right now you can't do that, because you're not owed anything, and it's Youtube voluntarily refusing to host your video, rather than it being any sort of matter concerning laws. No one has yet been harmed by Rumblefish's fraud (except perhaps Youtube themselves, and they don't care), so there's nothing yet to fight about. Even you haven't been harmed or had your speech impacted, because you have only lost one particular middleman, and not forcefully, rather than all middlemen or your speech itself.
It's like if if someone goes to Tomas Paine's printer and says, "Paine's a liar, you shouldn't publish Common Sense," and the printer says, "I don't care if you're right or wrong, but as a courtesy to you, my friend, I will tell Paine to print elsewhere. It's not like he was paying me, anyway." It's ugly and based on a deception, but also all very polite and consensual. Consent goes a long ways.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
If you want to compete with the big boys, you have to think like the big boys.
Sue Rumblefish for $150,000 for each time your video is played with their advertising on it.
Even better, file as a class action, that way you and your lawyer get paid for every case of Rumblefish doing this, and everyone else gets a coupon.
paintball
The sun's energy output will increase until there will be no liquid water on the surface in about 1 billion years (unless there's some kind of intervention). Personally, I think we should plan on moving spaceship Earth before then.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
This isn't a DMCA notice, or a case of someone filing (under penalty of perjury) a notice that they own the material and demanding you take it down.
This is an issue of YouTube's user agreement and the way YouTube shares revenue.
When you upload content to YouTube's site, you obviously agree to allow them to show the video.
YouTube also has a separate revenue sharing program, where you can get revenue from your videos - but YouTube is NOT obligated to do this. They could simply run ads on your content, say screw you, we're not giving you any revenue share, and keep all the revenue for themselves.
What YouTube has done is put in place a program where content owners can have YouTube automatically match content on their site with the content owner's content. YouTube has chosen, in the event such a match is made, to give the content owner the OPTION of allowing the infringing content to stay on the site and getting the ad revenue share instead of just having the content removed entirely.
So you're in a grey area - no one is asking your content to be taken down, so there's no DMCA request. YouTube has just agreed with the 3rd party to share the revenue from your content with the 3rd party - which is YouTube's perogative since they can do whatever they want with their ad revenue. If you don't like what they decide to do with your ad revenue, your recourse with YouTube is simple: Don't put your content there.
I'm guessing that YouTube really just didn't think through how their program actually works when bad actors are introduced (ala rumblefish). If YouTube were smart, they would realize Rumblefish is a bad actor and kick them out of the program and force Rumblefish to submit DMCA notices instead.
paintball
1 - It is not the same situation. In this case the corporation did something wrong, and he has all the data to prove that. On your example it never gets clear if the data sharer is really guilty, and proof can only be gathered after the case goes to court (that means, there is no proof of anything in settlement time).
2 - Even if it was the same situation, it would be a "tit-for-tat" advice. Let them suffer from the law system they brought.
3 - Even if the corporation in case was completely honest before that, it can be argued that corporations have less rights than little guys.
4 - Now, finally... Punishing the guilty and (maybe) compensating the victims is the sole goal of the law system. Why do you call it "abuse"?
Rethinking email
That's why nice guys finish last. They play by the rules when clearly the opposition does not.
My songwriters are working day and night to write every song. When we finish, y'all better start sending fat checks, or else you're in a heap o'trouble.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Perhaps RumbleFish could change names to that or perhaps ZambiShark?
Quoting from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_shark]
"The bull shark, Carcharhinus leucas, also known as Zambezi shark or unofficially known as Zambi in Africa and Nicaragua shark in Nicaragua, is a shark common worldwide in warm, shallow waters along coasts and in rivers. The bull shark is well known for its unpredictable, often aggressive behavior."
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
Copyright dinosaur-song, then sue them for prior art.
Hey all,
I'm Peat Bakke, the Lead Architect at Rumblefish. I write a lot of the code that manages our music catalog, as well as interfaces with our partners (like YouTube), so I'm intimately (painfully) familiar with how all of these pieces fit together, and who's responsible for what.
First things first -- eeplox, I'm sorry this has been a shitty experience. Clearly something has been missed, and I want to make things right. Please contact me directly at peat@rumblefish.com, so we can sort out exactly what's happening with your video.
Automated content identification is a hairy problem, doubly so when mixed with synchronization (soundtrack) licensing. YouTube's system is one of the better ones out there, and even so, we get a ton of false positives coming out of it every day. The biggest source of false claims come from covers and samples, where it's particularly difficult to determine if the soundtrack for a video is or isn't in our catalog.
That said, we do listen to each disputed claim that reaches us, after YouTube has gone through their (rather terse) automated resolution system. We're working with YouTube and our other partners to make the process simpler and less legally threatening ... but we're the small fish at the table.
It's worth mentioning that Rumblefish isn't a subsidiary of a major label, media conglomerate, or rights organization. This is a very small company, founded and owned by an independent musician, and half our staff play in bands or work in independent film. We've focused specifically on independent artists who want their music to be used in soundtracks ... and for what it's worth, yes, there are several tracks that sound like birds chirping. :)
Regardless -- the media licensing industry is a horrible, horrible mess. No question about it. Our mission is to make it easier for independent artists (music and video alike) to make a living doing what they love, and it genuinely sucks to hear when people are let down.
I'm happy to answer questions about how we do what we do. IANAL, of course ... but I am a geek. :)
Thanks,
-Peat
Neither the article or the Google thread says this. All that it says is that's a video of "basically just me walking and talking, outdoors, away from any possible source of music." Maybe you can also hear birdsong behind him, maybe you can't, or maybe he added it after the fact. We don't know.
Three Squirrels
Whoops - my bad. He does say "There are birds singing in the background in the video".
Three Squirrels
Keywords for the NSA overthrow oppressive regime true believers marathon Manhatten the financial district blueprints I
Use Vimeo instaed. Cut YouTube out of the loop
Note: IANAL.. You should definitely talk to a lawyer before taking this on. A class action suit is possible, if you can find more people suffering from this kind of misappropriation.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Sue them in
Unless the 'artist' is "God", in which case the copyright is indefinite (presuming that you're not an atheist).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Unfortunately by the time we get the technology to move the Earth any workable plan to do so would rely on patents that make it prohibitively expensive to execute. We're pretty much screwed.
Contact your US senator and House members. It won't do any good, but it is very easy to do.
Au contraire, mon frere; if your local constituent services rep,is half the ball of fire mine is, you should get results Nothing lights a fire under the drones like an actual threat to expose their sham of "service". I mention the appropriate regulatory agency early in my calls to any sort of service person and it beats all hell out of trying to go up to supervisors, &c. If threats don't do it, then a friendly inquiry from the office of the local congressman seems to settle matters nicely. They are following the path of least resistance. You've got to make doing their job correctly look like a good option.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
We _do_ have laws on the book that supposed to be just - that is, whoever does the wrong thing will be punished - but then, how many times do we see the laws being applied to the RICH & POWERFUL??
Laws - especially those news laws that were created in recent years - were created to benefit the RICH & POWERFUL - and TFA is just a case in point
If bird chirping in the background can become the property of anyone - I say it's the property of GOD - but in this world we live in, someone always come up and takes the place of God
In this case, Rumblefish thinks that it's God, so it claims the bird chirping as their property
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
My guess is that this is a problem with an automated system trying to deal with roughly 800 million videos generating so many false positives that the cost of having a human look at every disputed video is cost prohibitive. Until Rumblefish sees a consequence, I doubt they're going to change their process. It's offensive to me that they don't treat other people's copyrighted works as well as they would like their client's work to be treated, but they probably see inserting ads as harmless.
I did send both Rumblefish and YouTube an e-mail expressing my disappointment. YouTube is now removed from my ad blocker exclusion list.
There are alternatives to YouTube : http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/02/20/5-video-sharing-alternatives-to-youtube/. YouTube/Google may see their advertisers as their customers, but you have to have a worthwhile demographic looking at the ads to make them worth anything.
I started poking around Vimeo and was impressed. No Tosh.0 material, but quite a bit of interesting viewing. Of course the amount of content can't compare with YouTube, so I'm probably still stuck with it when I'm looking for something specific, but when you're looking for something randomly interesting it's worth a visit.
...for a company that stole its name from an S.E. Hinton novel.
Sometimes I think these things are completely random. I uploaded a video of what basically amounts to Audacity-generated noise and static and I got this notice:
Your video may include content that is owned or administered by this entity:
Entity: Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society Content Type: Musical Composition
I just had a public debate on this very topic with Anjali Malhotra, YouTube's manager for Music Content, and didn't make much headway. (see the last 5 minutes or so on http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=2927 ) My main gripe was that, under YouTube's current system for such disputes, since the supposedly infringed content is never identified, there is no way to make an informed counterclaim.
Either way, making a false claim about owning the intellectual property in order to get money from it (through Google's advertising revenue) is obviously against the law.
On the other hand, there's the question about whether the person who posted the video gets to sue, or only the bird whose song was used in it...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Interesting, after listening to a bit of your noise-loop, I realized automated YouTube audio tagging is like spam fighting was in its early days -- too many misses, either way.
Filter too much out (false positives), customers screamed "you're blocking my mail";
filter too loosely (false negatives) customers screamed "do something, I'm buried in spam".
Not an easy line to navigate :-/
If it's a pre-canned response, it could be something as simple as a:
Response has a link stating "has your review determined that this video contains copyrighted material, yes/no" (or a multiple choice therein)
Where the "yes" button response with said canned response, and somebody either clicked the wrong response.
As somebody who has misclicked stuff on the internet before, hit CTRL+enter (or was it ALT+enter?) and prematurely blasted off a half-baked email, and many other things... it could just fall into the "crap system+dumb mistake = oh shit" type of situation.
And then refute it. One of you has the be the copyright owner (of the video), right?
i was having trouble with youtube flagging all my uploads of original live material as warner and other shitty faceless corporations properties every time i sent emails to the companies and youtube requesting the exact time of the video and infringing song after about 1000 emails, 1 got 1 reply, pointing me to an exact time in a video, so i listened to their track and the 22 seconds of my video my 22 seconds was a bass drum playing on every beat with a white noise filtered with a lowpass filter, no melody, no music (and there was nothing similar in the pointed song besides there was a kick on every beat) so i decided to test the content ID, i uploaded 15 minutes of ONLY a 909 bass drum playing on every beat (not even a 8th bar 4th beat 1/8th note, juste plain four on the floor it was flagged by 13 entities (my most flagged video ever) and they ALL confirmed their claim to my 909 playing alone while i was preparing supper that proves that: 1- the content ID system is crap 2- nobody ever listens to the content when you make a counter claim 3- youtube sides with the "record companies" and shit in their users face
Live Electronic Music
Well I contacted Rumblefish about this, and this was their reply.
On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 6:50 PM, xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How do you go about copyrighting sounds from nature?
Do you have to pay royalty's to the original artist (the bird, or a babbling brook for instance)?
If so how do you know you have the right one (in the case of the bird) or molecules (in the case of water)?
If you are not paying the artist aren't you stealing from them?
Hi Richard,
You have a completely legitimate question here. How would we pay this bird...seeds perhaps?
This was an obvious mistake by the YouTube content ID system. When we became aware of the problem, we acted quickly to release the claim. We have contacted the video creator to explain and to apologize for the mistaken attribution made by the YouTube content ID system. The whole situation is a little embarrassing and we certainly did not mean for it to happen. We just want to fix it, so we thank you for helping bring the problem to our attention.
We are serious about paying artists (have been for 15 years), and about letting bird songs remain in the public domain. There are enough people robbing the natural environment; we want the birds to feel free to sing without copyright claims filling up their nests.
Sincerely,
-Ben
ben@rumblefish.com
No, not a cheque for the revenue generated. He's clearly entitled to from $750 to $150,000 per infringement. The award could then be reduced to $2,250 per infringement, just like for Jammie Thomas.
Arrest the birds, and watch the catfight between RIAA and PETA.
Whoever loses. We win.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Here are my experiences with YouTube and content owners attempts to defraud me of my own original content. I posted this a week ago:
The US recording industry is stealing from ME!
This seems to be a big (and getting much bigger) problem with YouTube as it tries to suck-up to the big content owners in a way that is starting to seriously impact other original content creators.
I post regular gaming clips. Which i know are copyrighted works, but recently a fallout new vegas play-through of mine was nipped by a company called "IMG media UK" for visual content. Well, i made sure to check every owner of copyright associated with fallout new vegas and sure enough they have nothing to do with he game. One dispute later the claim was removed. Only to have they put the claim back after a week as if i would not notice. I file another dispute and the claim disappears yet again. I was told the companies know what they are doing in claiming your videos but most are smart enough to remove the claim if you dispute it BECAUASE of the illegal nature of the business. No, they don't think they own the copyright on your video. They just want $$$
Have you stopped to consider that they might actually own the rights to bird song? What if they signed god?
From rumblefish.com: "The basic criteria are a sizeable artist roster, both master and publishing rights available worldwide, an artist-friendly reputation and a proactive approach to collaborating."
Artist roster - just about every major European composer ever. And every animal, of couse. And yes, I know composers are animals too.
Publishing rights - I seem to remember that the church had exclusive rights to publish. Music or anything else.
Artist-friendly - Sure, I'm not even going to talk about all the Michelangelos. When composers wanted money, hymns arose. I'm not too sure about the castrati thing though.
Proactive collaboration - well, I think throughout history we've seen people inspired by god collaborate to do some pretty incredible things. Richard the Lion-heart had many fellow collaborators who went on to spread content to other markets.
It's wouldn't be the first time that god took sides, you know?
They could go to the "powered by Rumblefish" site http://www.friendlymusic.com/#nav=Lw%3D%3D
download their entire catalog, and make a torrent out of it.
Not that I suggest actually doing that. That would be wrong, Almost as wrong as claiming music you don't own.
That's just rediculous. Based on my projections, there will be 2 billion lawyers on earth by that point, and all they'd need to do is blow some hot air in the opposite direction to shift the earth's orbit. Problem solved!
Bye!
YouTube is somewhat draconian with enforcing reparation on its users. I've been a YouTube user for years, but just recently had two takedown notices originating from a non-existent email account (I know because I politely contacted the guy to ask what the problem was and suggest maybe he'd made a mistake). YouTube accompanied this with much legalese about "three strikes and my account will be closed". WTF? After years of good standing, three takedowns from a false email address could close my YouTube account?
Thanks to the slashdot effect, Rumblefish has now released my video and their ads were removed! It's good to know that these intellectual property management companies are capable of doing the right thing (when a ton of public scrutiny rains down on them). I got this message in my Youtube inbox: "Hello, it's Paul Anthony...the CEO & Founder of Rumblefish. Hey there. I just personally watched the video of yours that you posted about on Slashdot where you're picking and eating a wild salad. There is clearly no music in your video and I just got off of the phone with our tech lead who I asked to release the claim that was made by the YouTube system and associated with Rumblefish. We're not sure why the song was ID'd. My apologies to you for the inconvenience that this has caused you. I'd like to help make that right for you in some way. I have been spending the last several hours responding to posts on Slashdot and emails that countless people have sent to our email addresses b/c it's important to me and the team at Rumblefish that we always do right by content creators, the ones that we represent and the ones that we do not. My apologies again and best of luck to you. If there's anything else that we can do to help make things right, please do let me know. Here's my email address: paul@rumblefish.com All the best, Paul Anthony Founder & CEO, Rumblefish Sent to: eeplox"
But I might use some copyrighted words... Maybe thinking of comments is already copyrighted. What do you think ? Should I have posted this as AC ?
Hi there...
Just confirming for my notes:
"YAAL" aka You Are A Lawyer, and want to possibly represent the wronged little guy in these types of digitial property cases?
Regards,
--Tao
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I put this out to provoke discussion only. I does not represent our views, which take no stand on the questions raised below...
Nearly every book you read, every song you sing, every poem, thesis, play, movie, dance, audio recording, painting, drawing, sculpture, photograph, radio and television broadcast, and even the software on your computer "belongs" to somebody. All our academic knowledge is locked behind paywalls. Your entire culture has been commercialized and sold to the highest bidder. Did anybody ask you if this is what you wanted?
... the useful Arts", the interpretation of that has broadened to encompass almost all forms of expression written or recorded on some physical medium, utilitarian or not. This has produced a vast artificial economy that seeks to grow and perpetuate itself at the expense of the potential of modern technologies. The whole idea of parceling up the creative commons and granting monopolies on the fragments of our culture to individuals and corporations needs to be rethought.
While copyrights may have been a workable notion at one time "To promote the Progress of
We have lost our way. The institutionalized Ferengi culture imposed by copyright legislation has created a hideous distortion of human values. It is an anathema to genuine human culture, which is at its base freely shared experience and expression. We must renounce this mercantile obsession with profit and trade and find our way back to innocence and truth.
If copyrights were dismantled tomorrow, would people suddenly stop singing, writing books, or quit participating in the multitude of forms of cultural expression available? Do we need to provide financial incentives to grow our own culture? Is it heresy to ask such questions, or even useful? It certainly is useful as a thought experiment even if just to overcome the propaganda the rights groups have been feeding us all these years. Beyond that, though copyright is already enshrined in our constitutions, these rights can be pared back just as easily as they were expanded previously.
Please see our manifesto at http://whynotaskme.org/
All your bases are belong to us.
My psychic comedy powers fortell the future once more!
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2682747&cid=39109183
No but seriously any corporation can claim ownership of anything on Youtube. I could write, perform and record an original song, and some sleazebag could claim ownership of it, present ads over it, and make money from it, and I could go pound sand unless I want to (and have the money and time to) lawyer up. That's why I'll never upload anything to Youtube, Tribler is better as it is uncontrollable, in fact I've just decided that I'm going to close my YouTube account.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Well lets do the math:
1 Trilion copyrights infrigers (birds on earth)
X
10 000 infrigement counts per infriger (songs by a bird during its lifetime)
X
1 USD per infrigement
=
1 million billions USD
That's losses endured by Rumblefish because of birds. Looks like suing the birds is a sound(hah!) business plan.
No lawsuits required:
1. Falsely report copyright infringements on YouTube for tons of videos (especially popular ones). If the posters dispute it, dispute them back.
2. Make more accounts, report a shit load more bogus infringements
3A. Profit for you. Push it until it tilts into 3B.
3B. YouTube bans all your accounts, they realize their system is not working and change it so this cannot be abused anymore. Everybody wins, you are a hero and you also made tons of money.
As a charming side effect, Ramblefish's trolling Youboob business model is out the window. This is not a problem in any way. Its a pure win-win...-win situation.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
If there is a statutory damage of $150,000 per copyright infringement, then there should similarly be such a statutory damage cause of action for a false DMCA takedown, whether automated or not.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 8:49 AM, *********** wrote:
I'm sure this email will be read and responded to by an automated system, as apparently automated systems handle most customer-facing touch-points at Rumblefish.
Let me mention a few keywords that your text-mining software might include in the next monthly report as a word cloud that a human looks at for a few seconds before deciding everything is hunky dory:
idiocy
greed
repugnant
careless
bullying
Great job! Does your system recognize sarcasm?
- MadJeff
This face is not bold.
Copyright is STRICTLY for the benefit of society.
I have yet to see a single scientific study (sound methodology, peer reviewed) that found any sort of benefit to society from copyright.
Copyright is instituted by your feudal overlords solely for the benefit of their peers.
... as a clear example of why SOPA and PIPA would have been a disaster for the Internet.
s/would have been/will be/
Do you really think those provisions will not eventually pass?
Was to exterminate all the people like the RIAA.
No, these are bold-faced lies!.
But if you said that you are lying, then that statement is a lie, which means you speak the truth. But if you speak the truth then you are lying. But you cannot be lying because that would mean you speak the truth... ERROR -- ERROR -- NORMAN, PLEASE ASSIST....
Bow-ties are cool.
OK, there were mammals, too.
His birdsong sounded just like some of the birds in the copyrighted work, so it infringes. Doesn't matter he didn't actually "copy" it.
Oh. They sound NOTHING alike. Well, he got the idea from Waters. Both had birds in them.
(how much is this lawyer costing you? we can do this aaaalll day.)
Crap. You're not going away? He's on contingency, isn't he. No, don't bother the judge; you win. You created the work; It's all yours.
Now, let me get out my producer/director/publisher calculator...You owe us $165,387.23 in promotional expenses.
You have 30 days to pay, then we start with liens & collections.
With warmest regards,
FYPM & Co.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Absolutely, but with one hiccup: my Arizona bar admission is pending. Our other two partners, Ben Kafka and Karen Poulton, are admitted to practice in a total of seven states collectively. Karen is our senior partner and has been litigating for over 20 years. Ben and I are fresh out of law school, both geeks, and interested in tackling technology-related cases that most firms may not understand or wish to pursue. For strong copyright cases with available statutory damages, we would consider contingency fee arrangements. General contact address: PK at poultonkafka dot com
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Hey all,
There's a lot of threads here and on other places, hopefully this sheds some light on the claim process, and what happened with eeplox's video.
Here's the sequence, as best as I understand it:
- eeplox posted a video to YouTube that contained bird sounds.
- The automated YouTube content identification system mistakenly assigned it to one of the tracks in our catalog.
- eeplox contested the automated claim, which sent it into the manual review queue.
- One of our reviewers reinstated the claim, which triggered the response eeplox received and posted above.
When we heard about the story on Slashdot, we reviewed the video and released it.
TL;DR: We messed up during the manual review process. We've cleared eeplox's video. We're working on fixing the manual review process.
I'm here in the discussion to answer what questions we can. We're not interested in screwing over independent musicians and video creators, and we want to be as open as possible about what's going on.
If you run into content claim issues with our catalog on YouTube, you're welcome to contact us directly at YouTubeContentID@rumblefish.com. We have a FAQ about the process here: http://rumblefish.com/id/youtube-content-id.php
Paul Anthony (the CEO) has an AMA thread over at Reddit where he's answering questions. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q7via/im_the_ceo_of_rumblefish_i_guess_were_the_newest/
Thanks,
-Peat
Sung to the copyrighted tune of "Feed the Birds". Extra points for Julie Andrews class voices.....
(These lyrics are lovingly given away for free as a public service an are in the public domain by me, their author)
Early each day on the steps of the Courthouse
The little old lawyer comes
In his own special way to the people he calls
Come buy my bags full of briefs
Come sue the little birds
Show them your greed
And you be glad if you do
Their young ones are too fat
Their nests all need stripping
All it takes is a lawsuit from you---u
Sue the birds, a million a chirp
million, million, million a chirp
Sue the birds, that's what he cries
while overhead, bird guano fills the skies
All around the courthouse the judges and bailiffs
look down as he sells his wares
although you can't see it
you know they are frowning
each time someone shows his gre--ed
I'd never heard of Runblefish before. Now I know exactly one thing about them - they lied about owning bird songs.
The problem is likely the "quiet assumption" built in to this automation.
Basically all of these automated identification techniques take mathematical transforms on segments of audio and video and map them down to a lower dimensional space and do some sort classification in that space. The problem is usually in the assumptions built into said classifer. Built in to most typical audio/video classifiers is the quiet assumption that the audio (or video) MUST match one owned by one of the participating copyright holders. All the classifer does is pick the "nearest" one (only when there's really no possible nearby match at all do most classifier algorithms give up). This assumption ignores the basic problem that the amount of copyrighted audio is a small fraction of all audio. Does their classifier fail the "null hypothesis" test?
No doubt google^W youtube is well aware of this problem is with the assumption, but will argue that they have to "tune" their classifer to make sure there are fewer false negatives to satisfy their corporate overlords. They will argue that the copyright infringers are really employing guerilla tactics (like hiding/blending into the population) and they are justified in burning down the villages to ferret the copyright infringers out. The problem with this quiet assumption is that the copyright holder that is identified really has no incentive to actually verify anything since they can always blame google^W youtube if in error, but if nobody complains the get money. Google^W youtube is the merc in this story. Guilty until proved innocent, the grand jury is backlogged and the trial docket is totally full. Blackwater^W Xe^W google^W youtube paid to do the dirtywork. Rumblefish make the weapons. That's basically a rigged system.
Technology likely offers a way to help with false positives, but I doubt anyone at google^W youtube really cares at all. When the money keeps coming in, everyone keeps thier mouths shut.
i always wondered why i couldn't sue God for the acts He commits that destroy my property. if i can't serve Him a subpoena then they should come up with a different phrase to handle "Shit Happens" situations.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
It appears as is RumbleFish has disabled the contact link on their website. Use this email address instead to let them know what you think:
YouTubeContentID@rumblefish.com
Why don't you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number...and make that a little louder?
You're absolutely correct in that ideas are not patentable, but your suggested change no longer makes the point I was trying to make. It's conceivable that someone might come up with a patent-worthy new process of recording a bird song. The patenting of the idea or concept of recording bird songs was meant to be absurd.
If they're actually claiming birdsong is copyrighted to them, then that is either a lie or a statement made with gross disregard for the truth. And it (the takedown notice) is a false statement made for the purpose of negatively impacting your reputation (accusing you of illegal activity), that in fact did negatively impact your reputation (Google believed them) and the result of which is they gained real money.
IANAL, but in most jurisdictions, this is called libel, and it's highly likely you can sue Rumblefish for it. But that would be an awful lot of work for very little money - the cost of the lawyer would far eclipse what you could get. However, just the act of having a lawyer send them a threatening letter might be enough.
Doesn't the Gmail spam filtering rely partially on crowd sourcing (users clicking the "this is spam" button)? Could make a decent Master's thesis to implement something similar for non-text media...
+1 Disagree
make it to SD ?
"It's automated" isn't an excuse, it's a business plan.
Brilliant business plan though, profiting off ads for content that isn't even yours.
can you really copyright something purely natural like a birdsong, or fur, or a frog's 'ribbit', or a waterfall? I know that back in 1999 American corps wwere patenting our genes. little to say some people were a walking infringment and lawsuit as were their children. would be nice for the 'little man' to one day get his own back
-- David
1. a) Actually it can be thousands of dollars when the videos go viral.
1. b) Rumblefish is an evil entity that is part of a cartel that has done it's best to price-gouge and rip off consumers and artists alike. Destroyed the public domain. Repeatedly broken their own rules when it benefits them. How is that NOT evil?
2. Copyright in it's present form provides a modicum of benefit. And if copyright is further extended to perpetual length as planned. One would be able to create a recording featuring every order of notes. Copyright it. And argue they own all music every made from this point on. No, technology isn't at the point to do that now...but one day it will be.
3. Sorry, having been ripped off. Having had hundreds of dollars of investment made worthless. And lost countless hours due to copyrights. I'll say you are utterly wrong.
Seriously, have you tried working with music you actually have bought and paid for on electronics devices? Heck, DRM and crap like iTunes causes so much headaches and often losses of data it's not even funny.
So no, seriously, RIAA needs to be bulldozed and put out of business. They're an extinct business model kept alive only by bribing a corrupt political system.
Warning! Wall of Post Coming! Don't hurt me mods!
----
Hooray for Friendly Tech-Friendly Lawyers (Rare Species Lawyerus Friendlius!)
Do firms form "Liasons" to cringes at the Biz Speak coming up "Synergize" efforts across a whole field of practice? I feel that one of the problems
"We on the Defense" from atrocities likes the slew of copyright bills face is that all 150 of the opponents are camping out in the same 20 bars and
official rooms planning strategy and patting backs leaving us stuck without a corresponding network Have you folks heard about New York
Country Lawyer? He's been quieter lately while working on his cases directly but he's been one of our resident 's on these topics for a long
time now So just suppose your 7 states don't include New York does it make sense to form a coalition on these topics? "Okay 50 state action
needed PoultonKafka?" "Yep We have states 1 through 7" "Nice BeckermanLegal?" "Here with New York and any other states"
I saw this article a little while ago:
http://coupmediaorg/internet/google-new-privacy-policy-challenged-by-36-state-attorney-generals-2302
Hulk "That's a lot of Attorney Generals Don't make them angry You wouldn't like it when that many AG's get angry" /Hulk
Here is an old list I made of your fellow 's along with a fragment of their "Proof Statement" Take with Pi Grains of Salt etc
(I kept hitting the Lameness Filter. Assume each of these folks had "IAAL" on a post.)
SPYvSPY
ari_j
debrain
sampson7
DavidBrown
Jim Tyre
Yoshi Have Big Tail
Zordak
mbstone
wrecked
conlaw
caitsith01
crrkrieger
Dusabre
Legal Penguin
apc
siliconbunny
locker1776
tambo
judmarc
Chuut-Riit
ninewands
calbanese
Macadamizer
Darth_Foo
buelba
cpt kangarooski Authentication borrowed from Ars Technica"Tribus: This and all my posts are in the public domain I am a lawyer I am not your
lawyer and this is not legal advice"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
They've made no attempt to return the profits they made from my work. It's worse than stealing, because not only did they take my creative property that I provided freely to the Internet, but they commercialized it and sold it and turned it into their commodity, and I was powerless to do anything about it. They only reversed their decision about maintaining ownership of my video when the public outcry forced them to go into damage control mode, after making an unknown sum of money off of me.
If a lawyer wants to represent me (I can't pay you), then please contact me on my youtube channel. I have a feeling that the moment the publicity dies down, they'll fall right back into their old tricks.
http://www.youtube.com/user/eeplox
Remember one thing, the laws were not written for common folks like you or me
The laws were written by rich and powerful people to protect their fellow rich and powerful peers
In this day and age, there is no protection for common folks what-so-ever, not online, and not offline
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !