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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.
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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 did not see it in the snippets of his license agreement, but I think that people should put something in such as: "if licensee claims ownership of the work in any form (including DMCA take-down notices) and fails to remove such claim within 24 hours of being notified at , this license shall terminate immediately and licensee shall lose all rights granted by this agreement."
Sony's lawyer didn't immediately back down because Sony might have taken an exclusive license.
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RTFA, he did.
He got in touch with someone who sorted out the issue.
That's not the point. He filed a copyright dispute response with Youtube, including a quote from his contract explaining why he is in the right on this issue. And after that he just got a note:
A day or so after filing my dispute, I checked the status of the claim on YouTube and found a status update explaining that "The claimaint (Sony Music) has reviewed their claim and confirmed it was valid"
So Sony was apparently not required to substantiate any of their claims (at least not to him) even after he filed a counter-claim with evidence.
So the process is not biased at all...
Sony's lawyer didn't immediately back down because he was completely ignorant and thus assumed his company was in the right.
Also, he explains in TFA that he did have such a clause in his terms of use with them and they did in fact lose those rights due to failing to remove the claim within the more generous 48hrs he gave them.
The only reason they're still allowed to use the video is because they accepted a secondary deal that explicitly credits him and his website on their video, even if it took them days to get that done.
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.
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This isn't the first time this happens. A Norwegian artist, Bjorn Lynne, had a similar problem where Sony used music that he had released for free usage as background music on one of their audiobooks. They then shut his Youtube channel down.
It was sorted out eventually.
The real problem is for those who aren't the original artist. If someone else were to use the music of Lynne as background music they too would be shut down by Sony.
Without being the original artist they will have a much harder time disputing it.
That's a good idea, but there's something else interesting. DMCA is under penalty of perjury, and he has documentation to prove it. This is the point at which you send them a settlement letter. Especially if that contract had the clause you mentioned, if it goes to court, then SONY is not in a happy place.
If SONY loses the license, then every view from then on is an instance of copyright infringement. That's stupid amounts of money. Courts tend to look down on such clearcut cases of perjury too.
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Actually, it is pro big business. Note that the actual copyright owner is the one who got his work taken down and then couldn't get it back up because Sony "confirmed" that their (wrongful) claim was valid.
No, the DMCA process is biased pro complainant. You can do the same thing: File a complaint, await rejection, stand by your claim. Be prepared to have your pants sued off you though, and that's where the bias pro big business is: In the damages that you are awarded vs. the damages that Sony would be awarded. The complaint process is just a sequence of assertions by the complainant and the defendant which the hoster just has to believe or else they take their own stand for which they are then liable.
The DMCA perjury clause simply requires that the claimant is a legal representative of the copyright owner — whether that copyright ownership conjecture is accurate or not is beside the point. The test for ownership is merely good faith and Sony has a lot of wiggle room there due to the widespread use and acceptance of automated flagging systems and the similarity of the licensed use and the original footage.
+0 Meh
It doesn't say that at all. The article very clearly indicates it was a non-exclusive license.
I had issued a license for the claiming party to use my footage but they have no claim to any copyright for my content.
4. Copyright: Mitch Martinez, retains all right, title, and interest in and to the Stock Files not expressly granted by the License Grant above. Such rights are protected by the United States and International Copyright laws and international treaty provisions. You may be held legally responsible for any copyright infringement that is caused or encouraged by your failure to abide by the terms of this Agreement.
+0 Meh
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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No, they were not correct. Sony did not own the copyright on the video they sent a notice on, they were merely a licensee.
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?
Perjury is a criminal complaint though.
Sony would have to knowingly and willfully be misrepresenting themselves. Not only that, but the prosecution would need to prove this beyond reasonable doubt.
The perjury clause only really prevents outright deliberate fraudulent abuse of the provisions.
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.
Sony is a massively complex company, such that they have sued themselves over DMCA issues before. Literally one division has no idea what another is doing.
Samsung's rise in the 80s and 90s was fueled in part by a mission to destroy Sony. That was their driving goal, and they have in fact succeeded with that mission and then some. Part because Samsung is that good, but also because Sony literally invents ways to shoot themselves in the head.
Sig for hire.
That's a good idea, but there's something else interesting. DMCA is under penalty of perjury, and he has documentation to prove it.
No, he doesn't. Sony's movie has a copyright and he's Sony's legal representative. The clip also has a copyright, but they're not falsely representing to own that. They're mistakingly claiming the clip infringes on the movie's copyright, when in fact the movie is a licensed derivative of the clip. But that part isn't under penalty of perjury.
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The real question is whether he got the $150,000 for wilful copyright infringement form Sony, that Sony lobbied to have put into law.
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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.
Except, to extend the metaphor, Goliath has a ton of endurance (legal funds) and David can't keep fighting indefinitely (has limited funds). So all Goliath needs to do is keep the fight (lawsuit) going until David collapses out of exhaustion (declares bankruptcy). Then Goliath wins, siezes everything David owned, and uses him as an example to scare future Davids into giving up (settling the lawsuit) quickly.
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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.
Youtube just took down two of my videos claiming they violate someone else's copyright. But they are animated films that I made in film school.
I can only imagine that maybe the music used is copyright, but the film is my work. And I don't have the freaking first clue how to fight this since the films were uploaded to youtube many years ago under a different account I don't have the password for.
As a result, I can't even login to READ the notice of why the films were removed. All I've got is the email notification that they were.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
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
Cite in court the fines that Sony has asked for non-commercial copyright infringement.
Is Sony BMG Music Entertainment et al. v. Tenenbaum close enough?
The article also explains the following:
Unless the license for using the stock footage contained language allowing them to impersonate the author as the copyright owners, and deny him recognition in the video, this means that they were violating copyright law by doing just that.
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My understanding is that the Stock Video owner Mitch Martinez makes high quality background videos. Martinez enter into a licensing agreement with Epic Records a Sony subsidiary and supplied Epic Records with a background video for a videotaped music performance. The Sony bot crawling Youtube.com saw Martinez's stock footage posted there and correctly identified it as the same as in the Epic Records video, Sony then without performing adequate due diligence issued a take down notice with youtube and thereby breaching the terms of the licence and thereby committing copyright infringement by distributing a derivative work of Martinez's video without licence and defaming Martinez by claiming he was distributing copyrighted works without licence.
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Under the DMCA, filing the counterclaim should have gotten the video restored and gotten YouTube out of the middle of the dispute. Any further claim by Sony would required them to take action against Mitch Martinez directly.
So among all of the other problems with this case, YouTube is in violation of the DMCA.