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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.
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.
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.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
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.
"
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.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
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.