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YouTube Threatens To Remove Scientist's Account Over AIDS Deniers' DMCA Claims
First time accepted submitter EwanPalmer writes "YouTube is threatening to remove the account of a scientist who made a series of videos debunking claims made in an AIDS denialist movie over copyright infringement disagreement. Myles Power is claiming the producers of controversial 2009 documentary House of Numbers are attempting to censor him by submitting bogus DMCA claims against him. He says his movies do not breach copyright laws because his films are educational and therefore fair use. The 'AIDS denialist' documentary makers say they instead amounted to 'propaganda.'"
From the article;
YouTube said that Power's account, which has more than 20,000 subscribers, will be removed on 18 February unless they receive a counter-notification disputing these claims against him by that date.
All they have to do is follow the law, file a counter-notification and this all goes away. The summary makes it look like YouTube is the bad guy when all they are doing is following the law and acting on the DMCA claims. It is up to the alleged infringer to counter-claim not the service provider.
He says his movies do not breach copyright laws because his films are educational and therefore fair use.
Tell that to YouTube and the story is over.
The guy who was filing the complaints commented on the site. So maybe he's a dick, sure. But if you're willing to give him good faith for his complaint--solely in the capacity that he honestly believes that the video oversteps fair use, and is violating copyright--then he did follow correct procedure.
He tried contacting the guy quite a few times (or so he claims), and after getting no response, he filed the takedown request personally, not through some automated thing. If he has good reason to honestly believe that his rights were violated, it wasn't even perjury. Strangely enough that's what I would do if I thought someone was violating my copyright.
Claiming fair use for informational purposes is really shaky ground. There's a lot of "I know it when I see it", and people like to stretch the definition on either side. I haven't seen the video so I don't know how long the clips are, but if they are too long then yes it's a violation, and I suspect that (much like with parody) there's a line between "informational purposes" and "openly hostile" that the law says you shouldn't cross. Does it cross the line? Hell if I know, but the guy sounds like he's at least justified in filing a claim. Whether a court would find it reasonable or not is up to them, but jackasses get to protect their own rights too.
He tried contacting the guy quite a few times (or so he claims), and after getting no response, he filed the takedown request personally, not through some automated thing. If he has good reason to honestly believe that his rights were violated, it wasn't even perjury.
If he actually didn't try to take down any straight copy of those videos on YouTube, and went after one video using pieces of his work as commented-on quotations, it's at least highly suspicious, don't you think?
Ezekiel 23:20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_denialism
Pretty much one or more of the above - it comes in different varieties. There are some flavors of denialism in Africa that claim the West even artificially created HIV to wipe out all black Africans.
What does this mean exactly? Does it deny that AIDS exists? Does it deny that HIV leads to AIDS? Does it deny that non-gay people or non-Africans can get AIDS? Does it say it's all a government conspiracy and really caused by chemtrails?
One way or another, it doesn't sound like something that warrants debunking, but then again, I'm often surprised at just how stupid people can be.
It's not possible to find a single party line, but these are the most common beliefs AFAIK:
AIDS is caused by chemicals, big pharma, the government, the Bilderberg group, the Illuminati, space lizards, etc.
HIV either does not exist, or exists and is harmless, or exists and is harmful and created by evil men in their evil laboratories but does not cause AIDS.
Chemtrails could totally cause AIDS, but more evidence is needed. In other words some dude on the internet needs to write a speculative blogpost that claims that chemtrails cause AIDS before we can say with certainty that it does.
If you think this is harmless stupidity, think again. IIRC there is at least one case of an HIV positive mother who refused to test her child. The child later died in an illness with symptoms like those of someone who has AIDS. The mother also died, naturally.
Automated perjury with no repercussions? Please.
If he has good reason to honestly believe that his rights were violated, it wasn't even perjury.
The perjury clause only applies when the claimant is not the owner of the original content or a legal representative for them. Whether or not the new content infringes -- in belief or in fact -- has no bearing on the matter. There is no penalty for flagging any and all content, no matter how clear its fair-use.
+0 Meh
Not at all. A straight copy simply means an opportunity for more people to see his work, which authors normally want. On the other hand someone taking it apart and cutting it up, 'remixing' it to make the author look bad (and whether you think it's justified or not that is clearly what was done) is not something the author normally wants to see.
So no, not suspicious at all, perfectly normal and expected.
The real question here is whether the hostile piece does fall within fair use or not, and that is unfortunately a very complicated legal question, ultimately based on somewhat subjective criteria, so it's not easy to know for sure. It may well require a court to make that determination, which means a lot of lawyer fees for both of the gentlemen involved.
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He also (apparently) refuses to issue a formal counter-claim asserting they do not violate copyright. If they are fair use, he can counter-claim and be done with it (until they sue him). He's effectively acknowledging that he's violating copyright by refusing to contest the assertions.
Learn to love Alaska
And Liam Scheff is one of the more virulent practitioners of the art. This is the guy who infamously wrote about the Incarnation Children's Center:
"The drugs given to the children are toxic, known to cause genetic mutation, organ failure, bone marrow death, bodily deformations, brain damage and fatal skin disorders. If the children refuse the drugs, they’re held down and force fed. Should they continue to resist, they’re taken to Columbia University Presbyterian hospital, where a surgeon puts a plastic tube through their abdominal wall into their stomachs. The drugs are injected directly into their intestines. In 2003, two children, ages 6 and 12, had debilitating strokes due to drug toxicities. The 6-year-old went blind and they both died shortly after. Another 14 year old died later and an 8-year-old boy had two plastic surgeries to remove large, fatty, drug-induced lumps from his neck."
The NY State Department of Health investigated and found nothing to substantiate Scheff's claims.
Scheff is a complete nut-job, and a dangerous one at that. Scheff pointing fingers and crying "propaganda" is chutzpah at a pathological level.
Discussing parts of legally released copyright code on the other hand is fair use. You know, like discussing parts of legally released movie.
...this has nothing to do with the government. Nobody here is "the government" - it's just three private parties arguing over who's shit got posted to youtube.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If you think this is harmless stupidity, think again. IIRC there is at least one case of an HIV positive mother who refused to test her child. The child later died in an illness with symptoms like those of someone who has AIDS. The mother also died, naturally.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. In South Africa, HIV denialists advised by the Duesberg cult were in charge of public health policy for several years, leading to a tragedy of genocidal proportions:
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
You should read up on fair use. The purpose and character of the use is the first of four factors in deciding whether fair use applies. A simple copy is merely *derivative*, not *transformative*.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Per Lenz v. UMG , the representative of a copyright owner must consider fair use before sending a notice of claimed infringement.
I certainly do not deny the existence of different breeds of dogs, but these are by no means analogous to the folk scientific concept of human "race".
There are three factors which account for the distinctiveness of dog breeds:
(1) Dogs are domesticated animals and thus less genetically diverse than humans, who are wild animals.
(2) The dog genome produces anomalously high variation in phenotype with slight differences in genotype, in comparison to other mammals.
(3) Dogs reach sexual maturity as early as six months old.
These factors make dogs ideal for developing distinct types that breed true. None of these things are true of humans. Humans do not breed true in the way dogs do; siblings resemble each other much less than dog litter mates.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Drs Duesberg Rasnick and Farmer dont exist in your world, right? And certainly Dr Mullis (the inventor of the PCR test used in AIDS clinics worldwide) never existed, right?
Duesberg...that was the guy who had a role in all those AIDS deaths in South Africa, right? Isn't he also the guy who got pimp-slapped by multiple peer reviewers and investigated for scientific misconduct?
Rasnick...Rasnick...oh yeah, he was the dude who illegally set up clinical trials where he recruited poor black HIV+ individuals and instructed them to forgo antivirals in favor of "VitaCell cures AIDS" vitamin supplements.
Farmer? Never heard of him.
Mullis - the Nobel Prize winning chemist who dropped a boatload of acid in the 60s and claims he's encountered aliens and also believes in astrology.
Yep, nothing low rent about those guys.
Without any opinion at all on which side is right about the disease...
Riiight...
i see nothing wrong with denier labels. it is deliberately ignoring and twisting facts and science to serve a political agenda. i had never heard of aids denier. but another great example is climate change denier.
Sure there are people who have other hypotheses but they have been refuted by research.
Duesberg claims have been refuted..
Rasnick's never actually researched AIDS and has made false claims of University affiliation.
Farmer wrote a book to refute the claim that AIDS came from Haiti.
Mullis has also done no actual research into HIV/AIDS. He is also a molecular biologist and infectious diseases is outside his area of expertise.
Without any opinion at all on which side is right about the disease,
Have you looked at the Durban Declaration?
The declaration has been signed by over 5,000 people, including Nobel prizewinners, directors of leading research institutions, scientific academies and medical societies, notably the US National Academy of Sciences, the US Institute of Medicine, Max Planck institutes, the European Molecular Biology Organization, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Royal Society of London, the AIDS Society of India and the National Institute of Virology in South Africa. In addition, thousands of individual scientists and doctors have signed, including many from the countries bearing the greatest burden of the epidemic. Signatories are of MD, PhD level or equivalent, although scientists working for commercial companies were asked not to sign
That seems to be a fairly strong and widespread opinion.
Worse because the "cocktails" used - many of which he trialed and rejected in his pioneering cancer research - are toxic and cause great damage in and of themselves.
This is ancient history. The modern anti-HIV cocktails are largely drugs that were invented long after Duesberg's research career fizzled out, and as far as I know were never considered for use against cancer. AZT was indeed very toxic, not unlike chemotherapy - but AZT isn't front-line treatment against AIDS and hasn't been for many years, at least not in the US.
His hypothesis may well be wrong, but simply being wrong would not justify the negative reaction he has received.
No, but being wrong and continuing to say the same thing over and over again for decades is a pretty good way to piss people off. And traveling to South Africa to meet with Mbeki and advocate against trying to cure the millions of South Africans with AIDS, well, that's just sick.
Oh, btw, where is that cure?
For people who can afford to pay for the treatment, AIDS basically is cured - we can't totally eliminate HIV from the system, but patients can survive almost indefinitely with a reasonable quality of life. Those therapies were developed by ignoring lunatics like Duesberg and targeting the molecular mechanisms of HIV. We don't have a cure for the flu either, despite knowing about it for much long than HIV, but that doesn't mean that mainstream science is wrong about the flu virus.
Using the term denier to compare people to Holocaust deniers trivializes the Holocaust.
About 12 million people died in Nazi death camps, about six million of them Jews. AIDS has resulted in about 30 millions deaths. So far. Thabo Mbeki may be responsible for more deaths than Heinrich Himmler.
It looks like you are right though you do need to make the following statement;
I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
I guess specifics are not necessary.
DMCA means EVERYTHING to YouTube. If they follow the DMCA procedure, they have safe harbor from both copyright holders and from people falsely accused of infringement. That protection is worth billions to YouTube. The procedure they have to follow to get that protection is:
Upon receipt of a complaint, temporarily remove the video and notify the person who posted it.
When the poster responds saying they don't believe it's infringing, put the video back up.
That second part is called "counter notice". You may have noticed in TFA it said YouTube may lock the account if he doesn't send them a counter notice. He simply needs to quit whining for ten minutes, long enough to type up a counter notice email.
"Mullis has also done no actual research into HIV/AIDS. He is also a molecular biologist and infectious diseases is outside his area of expertise."
This is hilarious and typical of the character assassination.
True, he's a molecular biologist. His expertise? He INVENTED the modern PCR test! Go look that up. It's actually a pretty big deal, there's a little something called the Nobel prize he got for that specifically.
Now he may not be a board certified specialist in infectious diseases but he is certainly qualified to comment on how the test he invented works, and that is exactly the context in which he chipped in to support Duesberg!
As I said earlier, dishonest debating tactics make me suspicious. If he were one of your 5,000 Durban signers, no one would question whether he was qualified.
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It's not possible to find a single party line, but these are the most common beliefs AFAIK:
AIDS is caused by chemicals, big pharma, the government, the Bilderberg group, the Illuminati, space lizards, etc.
Having just watched the videos in question, one of the people interviewed in the videos they're debunking is Christina Maggiore. She is now dead and, at the time of shooting, her three year old daughter was already dead. Both are dead as a result of AIDs by competent medical accounts. She ran an organization: Alive and Well AIDs Alternatives, which was dedicated to convincing people not to test for AIDs or take antiretrovirals. In the case the death of her daughter (who was born from an AIDs infected mother not taking antiretrovirals and never given them, never tested and also not vaccinated for anything), she took her, for her pneumonia, to one of the board members of her organization, who prescribed her amoxicillin. When Christina herself was dying of pneumonia, she took various alternative medicines and apparently a "holistic cleanse". This is just background.
The weird bit is the causes of her daughter's death according to her and her denialist group and her own death according to the group. Their theory on the daughter's death, despite an autopsy confirming and AIDs related death, was an allergic reaction to Amoxicillin. Their theories on her death included a toxic alternative medication or "holistic cleanse". So... yeah. According to the AIDs-denialist nuts, the causes of death were probably the alternatives they sought out rather than going with proper medicine (not to knock amoxicillin, it might have actually been useful in conjunction with actual AIDS treatment).
The joke of course is just how much content on YT clearly violates copyright but just sits there for years. I mean entire major motion pictures will be posted by some non-rights-holding Joe Shmoe, remain up for years, and get recommended to you by YT's algorithms and have ads run before they show it to you. So you go ahead and post a short clip from, say, The Jackie Gleason Show from 1960, Jackie Gleason Enterprises sends in a DCMA by the next day, it gets taken down, (fair enough) and YT has the absolute gall to send you a "you're a naughty boy!" email and ask you to watch this oh-so-amusing copyright drivers-ed film which declares pretty much anything not 100% original content is a violation of the rules, while pretty much the vast majority of the content on the site does exactly that.
So the poor analogy is this: kids throwing rocks at the old factory windows in full view of the police. If the factory owner calls the police and complains, the kids are promptly arrested. If the owner says nothing the police gather a crowd around inviting people to watch the kids smash the windows, then mills through the crowd selling tickets to the policeman's ball.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Discussing parts of legally released copyright code on the other hand is fair use. You know, like discussing parts of legally released movie.
You are totally right, however you do not need the "legally" qualification here. Many Americans don't seem to realise exactly how strong the "fair use" rules are. This is one of the few remaining areas where US law is clearly more pro-freedom than most European law. This is because the fair use rules are not actually rules. They are a direct representation of the first amendment acting on copyright law. The first amendment gives you the absolute right to freedom of political speech. If you need to show an "illegal" part of a movie in order to make your point clearly then whatever law made that illegal becomes unconstitutional because it is blocking your first amendment rights. Fair use is just a recognition of that for copyright which allows copyright laws to remain constitutional.
Any time that you need to use material in order to make an argument then you have the right to use as much as you need to make your argument. For example, if you claim that "every sentence in the entire film contains a lie" and then you set out to prove that, you could use the the entire film with no gaps. However, you would have to stop after every sentence and have an in depth explanation of why it is a lie. For a one hour film, you would end up producing four or more hours of analysis.
The important point, however, is that if there was a section of the film you didn't want to comment on, then there is no need to leave it in. If you say something like "in the next ten minutes the same stupidity continues" you don't need to show that part of the film to make your argument. At this point copyright law reasserts and you are not allowed to use that part of the film. This is where the potential problems occur. You may want to leave in a longer segment in order not to be seen to be cheating in which case there would have to be a complicated discussion about whether you are justified or not. Simply don't do that. Either cut it or continue to comment the whole way through.
Neither TFS, TFA or GP talks about the holocaust, only you do.
There are plenty other types of deniers, like evolution or global warming.
"Denier" is just a word used to describe somebody who denies what the vast majority accepts as fact.
Denying the use of a word serves nobody except those apposed to discussion.
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Educational use is one of the fundamental uses of the Fair Use doctrine, as long as there is no commercial gain derived directly from the application of Fair Use.
Quoting from 17 U.S.C 107:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. 106 and 17 U.S.C. 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
So... this use is valid on the grounds that it is criticism (in both of the main definitions of the word), comment, and teaching, if the person applying the Fair Use doctrine is not claiming any direct commercial benefit from the use of said copyrighted information. Unless, of course, the original authors can show that the original work is of a specific nature that would itself invalidate Fair Use; the re-user had included all or the vast majority of the original piece directly in his response; or the re-use substantially affected the commercial value of the original work (probably requires a before/after study of revenue generated from the work to be presented in justification for the copyright claim, not something that can be submitted with a DCMA request).
In this case, both sides will probably feel justified in labeling the other's position as "propaganda", with their own as "education", although it shows the AIDS-deniers' viewpoint and world view as being very narrow, because "any view other than something that completely aligns with mine is incorrect, and worse propaganda, so must be expunged from view so that my Universal Truth can be seen in all its glory"...
'remixing' it to make the author look bad
...is usually called "academic discourse" where I come from. :D
and whether you think it's justified or not that is clearly what was done
Not only is it justified, it's been done for centuries now.
not something the author normally wants to see
Of course, nobody in academia wants people to know that he's wrong, but the interests of the public always win big time in such cases.
Ezekiel 23:20
LOL, this is the first time Ive ever heard of AIDS deniers. No Shit? Some dumbass shoved a tinfoil hat up his ass and rationalized somehow that AIDS doesnt exist? I was in school in the 70s when a friend of mine figured out he was gay, got a divorce, moved to Frisco, contracted AIDS and died. The Rock Hudson jokes were still warm. I can understand that there are holocost deniers, because I have met enough Nazis and Klan Klowns to understand stupid is; as stupid does.
I wanna see the oxygen deniers, or penis deniers or something amusing. Aids deniers? No shit?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
What's funny is that a lot of them end up dying of AIDS for some reason (e.g, Christine Maggiore). Weird, huh?
The big problem is, you can do all your due diligence and claim Fair Use in your usage of copyrighted material, but Fair Use doesn't actually exist until someone sues you for infringement and loses because a judge agrees with you. If you cannot defend yourself in court, you only have Fair Use until you lose an infringement suit.
Belief in belief is a terrible thing. It would be nice if we could set those people down and force them to choose between injecting HIV+ blood into themselves, or admitting that they don't actually believe in what they are saying.
If they really believe, they should volunteer for such a scientific study. Then they should change their minds when they get the disease.
Sadly, humans aren't rational, and are often violently opposed to rational thinking, far preferring doublethink.