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Hugo Awards Live Stream Cut By Copyright Enforcement Bot
New submitter Penmanpro writes news of the Hugo Awards stream being unintentionally cut off by some AI gone awry: "Quotes from the linked article 'UStream's incorrectly programmed copyright enforcement squad had destroyed our only access.' 'Just as Neil Gaiman was giving an acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script, "The Doctor's Wife." Where Gaiman's face had been were the words, "Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement."'"
It was a convention and it was for fans... so I don't agree with you on this.
DRM is all about fucking over the fans.
The sooner they learn that, the better.
You can't buy targetted "advertising" as good as this.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I wonder if they could be gotten for breach of contract.
The problem with these bots is how the people setting the policy weigh the risks.. they fear the content owners suing them more then their customers. But if you are failing to provide a service that you have been contracted to provide, then that opens up a new area of liability that I do not think customers have been pushing enough.
It was our national anthem, and it was copyright free, I made sure I got the track from a royalty free collection.
Nevertheless, the AI thought it sounded like someone else's recording of the national anthem, so I was tried and convicted. Oh sure, there was an appeal's process, but it is up to me to wait in line to be absolved of the sin I never committed. Guilty until proven innocent.
And we are talking about our national anthem. You know, freedom and all that. Irony.
All hail the great God filthy lucre.
Eventually, the people are going to be fed up, and not put up with this crap any more.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For synical people like myself this is funny, painfully funny. (I do not mod)
It's cynical, and that is why you fail. I've been talking with EEs and RF engineers for several months about how to create a cognitive/software radio. It's already been done, it's not theoretical -- the military already has this technology in use today with specifications similar to what the project requires. But all that research is locked behind the guise of national security, so it must be developed independently. And it's not easy finding DACs and FPGAs with the bandwidth and clocking speeds necessary to drive the radio without a lot of discrete components; And when I say a lot, I mean more than what's on your motherboard.
However, every person I've talked to says it is certainly possible; Just not easy, especially if the design makes every attempt to limit harmful interference, since unlike the military, this device needs to play nice with existing equipment. Your cynicism is, frankly, pathetic. Don't think that a few people who care can't change the world -- indeed, they're the only ones who ever have.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
If you buy the UStream pro video package you get to show whatever you like (no bot oversight) and there's 24/7 live support. You also get to choose not to show your viewers any UStream adverts (obviously you could inject your own ads) and handle a vast number of simultaneous viewers. It does cost money, but if something goes wrong there's a live human to call who can help fix it.
Worldcon was NOT using the pro video package. I haven't even been able to find out if they were paying for one of the cheaper entry-level options with less features and no support. It's quite possible they simply created a free Ustream account and hoped for the best like somebody uploading a little league game.
Now, that doesn't make it _good_ that this happened, but it sure does make it _understandable_. Imagine if, rather than paying for a venue, a famous band just decides to play for free in a local park. Well, good news is that the show is free. Bad news, if it rains there's no shelter organised, if people arrive to mow the grass in the park then show's over, and if the police decide its' too noisy the amps will get turned off with no notice. But that's not because the police hate music, it's because the band were too cheap (or too lazy) to hire a real venue.
I suggest that future Worldcon hosts either find a way to pay for a more professional level of video service, or make it clear to the fans that this is basically a best effort feed and might go down for any reason at any time with no way to bring it back.
The point should be that the Hugo Awards hold the copyright to their awards ceremony, which includes distribution rights; by the erroneous blocking of the stream, Hugo's right to distribute was grievously infringed. That infringement like any other infringement should by remedied by the assessment of considerable monetary penalties.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds