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Rumblefish Claims It Owns 'America the Beautiful' By United States Navy Band

ptorrone writes: Adafruit is now shipping the USA-made open-source Arduinos. In celebration Ladyada the engineer posted an Arduino rotating in front of an American flag with the public domain "America the Beautiful" by the United States Navy Band as background music. Adafruit immediately received notice from from YouTube stating that the song is owned by Rumblefish. Rumblefish previously claimed to own copyright to ambient birdsongs, too.

18 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Penalty for obvious false claims by JeffOwl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There should be a penalty for companies making claims that are obviously false. Doesn't have to be huge, maybe $100 to the up-loader and another $100 to the web site owner. That would be enough to stop the claim spam but not so much that it deters real claims. The weak point is that "obvious" would have to be determined by some arbiter, hopefully someone who isn't an idiot or in the pockets of big media and the trolls.

    1. Re:Penalty for obvious false claims by Malenx · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There should just be a penalty that is paid whenever a false claim is made. If you are making legal claims that you own content, you should be able to back that up. If you are using bots to automate that process, you should still be held accountable for their mistakes.

    2. Re:Penalty for obvious false claims by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The penalty should be double what you claim, plus double the legal costs of both parties (in addition to paying both parties legal costs).

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    3. Re:Penalty for obvious false claims by DarkOx · · Score: 2

      Once again we should work toward getting back to common law. A number of states have made Barratry at thing again, thankfully. What should happen is if you are right and you know your right you just ignore the bogus legal letter. If they then take you to court anyway. You phone up the local prosecutor who should go after them for filing baseless claims.

      In Texas at least for repeat offenses it can be a felony! We should aim for that everywhere.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    4. Re:Penalty for obvious false claims by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are STILL not allowed to libel, which is what this is.

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      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    5. Re:Penalty for obvious false claims by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 2

      You can sue for anything. Why not sue for harassment + triple legal fees?

      Because they generate enough legal business to have lawyers on retainer and thus pay no incremental costs for more suits. You, of course, enjoy no such advantage.

    6. Re:Penalty for obvious false claims by pjt33 · · Score: 2

      How would that help? Barratry is only relevant when suits are being filed, and that's not the case with DMCA abuse. They don't take you to court: they just threaten to take the host to court, and the host folds because they don't see it as their fight.

  2. Re:Harrassment and frivolity by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I believe there's a concept called Slander of Title, but I'm not sure it actually results in serious damages being paid out, and quite honestly, how many YouTube contributors want to/can afford to pay for a lawyer to sue over what, at best, would be a tiny, measured in pennies, royalty check?

    I don't actually buy the argument that this was a mistake. Rumblefish actually doubled down when they were called on that birdsong mistake mentioned in the summary, and Google backed them. I think Rumblefish knows they've found a loop hole, and Google are too scared of the larger copyright holders to vet their claims.

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    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  3. Re:Clearly they haven't checked my patent by whoever57 · · Score: 2

    That sounds suspiciously like my patent on aural telepathy. Expect to hear from my lawyers.

    But won't he be violating your patent again when he "hears" from your lawyers?

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  4. Re:Copyright trolls are rampant on YouTube, making by Iamthecheese · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Youtube blogging is stupid in another way, and it's structural. Since it's so easy to get ad revenue from youtube and so difficult from regular advertising people are increasingly using the wrong medium for their messages.

    Got a list? Make it a video! A paragraph of text? Video! Series of static pictures? One picture and a line of text for a FAQ? Two bar charts? video, video, video! And watch that revenue pour in. It's fucking ridiculous and it's transparent. Don't use video format unless your information is best presented by video dammit!

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
  5. Re:What baffles me is.... by hey! · · Score: 2

    If this scum has a history of making false claims then why are they still allowed to make claims at all? Better yet, why haven't they been banned from Youtube altogether?

    Alice posts a video using music that Bob owns the copyright to. Carol posts a video that uses music Bob falsely claims to also hold the copyright for. Unfortunately Bob's false claim against Carol doesn't change the fact that he actually does have a legitimate legal claim against Alice's video. So kicking him off the system means he's going to issue a takedown against Alice. The whole point of bringing him into the system was to give him an incentive to leave Alice alone.

    The problem here isn't Bob and Alice -- that part of the scenario is working fine. The problem is Bob and Carol. There's no incentive for Bob not to make false claims against Carol. That's the bit that has to be fixed.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  6. Re:Copyright trolls are rampant on YouTube, making by pjt33 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Reading your comment brings back the memories of when I was briefly working on a Drupal project. The firm impression I came away with is that the Drupal community prefers to document things by making a half-hour video rather than by writing a page of text, even though written documentation could be read and re-read several times in the time it takes to watch the video.

  7. Re:Typical Slashdot... by jk379 · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the link:
    "
    America the beautiful / Samuel Ward [sound recording], Title: America the beautiful [sound recording] instrumental and vocal, Composer: Ward, Samuel. Arranger(s) Dragon, Carmen. Performing Ensemble: United States Navy Band. Lyricist: Bates, Katharine Lee. Publisher(s): Department of Defense. Form: sound recording.

    Note(s): Taken from CD entitled: “Remembering the Navy Hour.” Featuring the Navy Band and Sea Chanters. Recorded by Sheffield Recording, Ltd., Inc. at the George Mason University Center for the Arts Concert Hall.

    Credit: Performing Arts Encyclopedia, Library of Congress.

    This Composition is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the United States, where Works published prior to 1978 were copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 “COPYRIGHT BASICS” from the U.S. Copyright Office. Works published before 1923 are now in the public domain.

    This composition is also in the public domain in countries that figure copyright from the date of death of the artist (post mortem auctoris) in this case Katharine Lee Bates (words), (August 12, 1859 â March 28, 1929), Samuel Augustus Ward (tune) (28 December 1847 â 28 September 1903), and that most commonly runs for a period of 50 to 70 years from December 31 of that date.

    This media file is a work of a U.S. Department of Defense employee, made during the course of the person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the media file is in the public domain.

    Generally speaking, works created by U.S. Government employees are not eligible for copyright protection in the United States. See Circular 1 “COPYRIGHT BASICS” from the U.S. Copyright Office.
    "

  8. Hold them liable by bl968 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Reuters claimed to own Nasa's video of the 1969 Moon Landings

    CD Baby claimed ownership of music by an artist sang by the artist and used with their permission.

    I have frequent claims on classical music especially military marches that are clearly out of copyright and are live performances.

    The organization should lose all rights to claim copyright via youtube's content id after one false claim of copyright.

    Youtube should also be liable for allowing blatantly false claims once they have received notification of the copyright status of public domain works.

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    "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
    1. Re:Hold them liable by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Strenuously disagree. This is more than a billing error here, it is an implicit threat of expensive legal action wrapped in a takedown that at the least interferes with someone's free expression. They need to take it seriously or go away.

      Civilization has long understood the dangers of crying wolf and even has a number of fables about it in order to teach young children not to do it.

      They are welcome to use their algorithm as a screening test, but they shouldn't be claiming ownership of things without human verification. Since their algorithm must have some 'idea' what it thinks the work is, it should only take a few seconds per filing to have a human verify that what is playing is what the algorithm thinks it is.

      Perhaps the ban on the easy method of making a claim should expire after a time, but the message is fairly clear: If they prove they are unable to responsibly use a largely automated system, they will be forced to do it manually in order to force them to consider each case more carefully. It may even be acceptable to grant them 3 strikes rather than 1, but only if they issue a personal (hand written) apology from their CEO to the person they wrongly claimed against.

  9. Re:Typical Slashdot... by bl968 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Except for the fact that all works by U.S. Government employees in the line of duty are by default public domain, and not eligible for any copyright protection at all.

    So I seriously doubt that the US Navy has an agreements with Rumblefish or any other organizations to collect royalties for their performance. It wouldn't be legal if they did.

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    "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
  10. Three Strike by CanEHdian · · Score: 2

    How about a Three Strike rule for takedown requests? You earn a strike for every successful counterclaim. After three strikes "automated" takedowns no longer need to be honoured, only human-verified ones.

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    When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
  11. So what should be done in the mean time by portwojc · · Score: 2

    Let's see. Find all the public domain songs that others claim copyrights to. Create videos - lots of videos. Post to all the video sites. Repeat until the problem is fixed. Gives the trolls something to do to.