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Man Licenses His Video Footage To Sony, Sony Issues Copyright Claim Against Him (petapixel.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Mitch Martinez creates high-resolution stock video footage, and then licenses it out to people who need footage to go along with their creative projects. He has written an article at PetaPixel explaining his bizarre interaction with Sony Music Entertainment, and the hassle they put him through to fix it. Martinez licensed one of his videos to Epic Records, and they used it as background for a music video on YouTube. Less than two months later, his original video on YouTube was hit with a copyright claim from Sony. After figuring out that Epic Records was a subsidiary to Sony, he disputed the copyright claim — which is usually the end of it. But after reviewing the videos, Sony rejected it, saying their claim was still valid. Martinez then tried to contact the person at Epic Records to whom he issued the license. None of his emails got a response. Then he had to get in touch with Epic's legal department. After a lengthy series of emails, voicemails, and phone calls, he finally got somebody to admit it was his video. It still took a few more calls to work out the details, but the company finally released the copyright claim. Martinez concludes by offering some tips on how to resolve such claims.
The TPP isn't even approved by Congress yet. Crap like this happening will be a cakewalk in comparison to what things will be like if and when Congress approves it. Call and/or write your congressperson now, tell them to vote against it!
Don't do business with Sony or any of its subsidiary companies?
Yeah, next time the automated system will imprison him. Why is he complaining now?
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I'd have thought that would have already been clear in the licencing contract.
"The material is licenced to the purchaser for the purposes stated in appendix A. Ownership and copyright of the material remains at all times with the seller".
So a copyright claim by Epic/Sony would be breach of contract, and hopefully there would be a clause in the contract that the licence is immediately cancelled should there be such a breach of contract.
At least, that's how I would licence any material of mine.
Sony has obviously sent a copy of the video to their legal/enforcement division (did they have a licence to copy the material for that purpose?), who proceeded to scour youtube/vimeo/liveleak for it, without bothering to check who *actually* held the copyright in the original footage.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
The problem with small guy, is that if he does that, he will black listed by the sony alike. If he does not do his business with sony alike corp, then go for it. But if he does, it would be the quickest way to dry up. That is the power of corp. And mostly why I watch with dismay American thinking private business are better and more efficient. At least a government you can vote out. A corp ? They will crush you most of the time, baring very few rare exception.
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The point is large corporations have it so easy to lay copyright claims and when you go to dispute it you have to jump through hoops. Not only was the onus on his to prove to YT that it was his own work even though somebody else is making the claim but he had to contact multiple people at Sony, multiple times just to wake them up. And here is a guy who licensed his work to a large multinational corporation for FREE and he gets screwed over by them. If he didn't waste his time fighting it then he would have been the one losing the rights to his own work. So how is that fair?
Doctorow and Lessig is right about copyright vs the digital age. I can't understand copyright working in the digital age. If the man and computer power used to enforce copyright was put to better use. So much time, money and energy to make life better, insted used to frustrate us trying to enjoy a video clip, audio clip or even a still image. I'm sure YouTube is more busy trying to find violations than trying to create the recommended video lists
The real issue here is not that some automated system flagged the video, but that after the counter claim some human still insisted that Sony still owned the entire copyright. Granted, the person who handles these counter claims probably sees hundreds a day and basically is trained to say "nah, we still own the copyright and no it's not fair use". Which probably is correct most of the time. The shame lies with Sony that fails to do is due diligence when reviewing counter claims made by the automated systems.
Yeah, next time the automated system will imprison him. Why is he complaining now?
Automated imprisonment?!? Don't be so 1984, we have long since moved on to drone strikes.
It can easily go a step further.
The license is not necessarily exclusive to Epic Records, which means he can license it to other people as well.
So now it may happen that Bob has licensed the same video, and is using it legally, and then Epic Records via Sony tries to sue him over copyright infringement. That's bad not only for Bob, but also for Mitch, as he may get a bad name and can't sell his material any more. Bob will also have no idea what's happening to him, as he knows he properly licensed the video from Mitch, who is not related to Sony, yet it's Sony that comes with the infringement claims.
A big, big mess.
It's shameful but Sony has nothing to lose by saying they own everything 100% of the time. This phase of the YouTube copyright claim process doesn't even involve the horrible DMCA. This prelude is all copyright enforcement theater. The bitch of it is going to be clearing YouTube's copyright strike against the owner of the footage. If this happens a couple more times, his channel could be shutdown permanently, even if the strikes are bogus.
+0 Meh