Copyright Professor's Lecture Removed From YouTube Over Sony Content-ID Claim (torrentfreak.com)

ShaunC writes: William Fisher, a professor of intellectual property law at Harvard, posted to YouTube a lecture titled "The Subject Matter of Copyright: Music." In discussing the complexities of music licensing and cover songs, Fisher played several short clips of music by Hendrix, Santana, and others. Sony responded by having the lecture removed from YouTube, ignoring any fair use protection in excerpting works for educational purposes. While the video was restored after public backlash, most YouTube users don't have Harvard Law School backing them up. Once again, a company has issued overreaching copyright claims with no penalty or consequence for harming an innocent party.

Comments

until people get punished for false claims

[0xdeaddead]

and yes PEOPLE, not corporations, but the people making these false claims the system will remain the same.

hail corporate!

Re:until people get punished for false claims

[Immerman]

Don't punish the program, or even the person maintaining it - punish the person who gave the order.

Re:until people get punished for false claims

[Anonymous Coward]

plagiarize
1. To reproduce or otherwise use (the words, ideas, or other work of another) as one's own or without attribution.
2. To plagiarize the words, ideas, or work of (another person).
v.intr.
To present another's words or ideas as one's own or without attribution.

The NC always gives credit to the studio that made the movie, I don't think he's trying to say the movie is his own work. Also given some of his views on the movies themselves I don't think he'd WANT them to be his. Not to mention Channel Awesome is a business. The NC makes money off of his reviews, both in terms of views of the videos and the ADs he places in them. (Not to mention the CA store....) CA has been in business since 2008. If he was doing something any where near plagiarism, I think the MPAA would have dealt with him by now. Especially given his reviews tend not to show the movies in their best light.

the nostalgia critic pretty much puts the whole movie in his "review" videos while contributing not much more than making funny faces and pretending to be upset

Yes, that's the point. His reviews are a satire. Don't like it? Then go watch something else. That being said, he does pick apart the movies to find something to make a joke on or to support his (presented) views. Yes this is needed, as sometimes the joke or viewpoint would make no sense without context. (Something that copyright explicitly has an exemption for.)

I'm not defending youtube's current system, but that guy has no room to complain when he's downright uploading whole movies and contributing nothing to the equation.

1. He does not upload entire movies.
2. Learn the defintion of plagiarize.
3. That's your opinion. To many others he is an entertainer, and definitely contributes something to the public.

Re:until people get punished for false claims

[davester666]

Actually, it's Youtube, which uses Google's ContentID system and process, which uses just private contract law, not the DMCA.

It amounts to "We (google) permit a limited number of wealthy partners arbitrarily decide to either take down or make money off whatever videos they want on our service, in exchange, they agree not to sue us for copyright violations, even though they know they would lose."

DMCA penalty

[CanadianRealist]

While DMCA is not likely mentioned, it likely is involved. And the reason there is no penalty is because Sony only needs to prove that it is a copyright holder, not that the video that was taken down is actually in violation of copyright.

So the solution is simple. The professor should post some cat video on YouTube, claim copyright, and then file to have every video from Sony removed via a DMCA request.

Hopefully with the whole Harvard Law Faculty behind him he can get away with it and show how broken the system is.

Re:DMCA penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

His whole point is that *most* takedown request are complete bunk, but if you're Sony you don't have to deal with that. Which is just one of a dozen pieces of power imbalance that make the current system untenable -- Sony can make bunk claims against you all day, without evidence or paperwork or even a human being in the process. They can use those bunk claims to steal your money AND your content. But if you make claims against Sony -- even valid ones supported by evidence and paperwork -- YouTube simply ignores those claims.

This isn't some theoretical exploit, it's status quo for a lot of people who produce content for YouTube. Other easy examples include NASA content being blocked because some media company used NASA's (explicitly public domain) videos and falsely claimed to own the copyright on them. This affected the public at large for the supposed benefit of a media company that isn't concerned enough about copyright to not assert claims on things they took from the public.

Re:need to pay the legal bills + any back ad reven

[CanadianRealist]

Google did exactly what the law requires them to do. Sony made the false claim, they should be the ones that pay the penalty. And also the people in government who created something as broken as the DMCA.

Another simple solution

[watermark]

Right now, Youtube takes the video down as soon as a DMCA claim is made against the video. One of the biggest issues is that youtubers depend on the ad revenue which is lost when these bogus DMCA claims take the video down (or worse, they redirect the ad revenue to the company that made the false claim).

The solution is to give the author of the video some time to counter-claim that the video is not infringing, without automatically taking the video down. That or punishing the company that made the false claim. Either works, the later probably would work better, but it would be hard to enact in practice.

Of course not ...

[gstoddart]

Once again, a company has issued overreaching copyright claims with no penalty or consequence for harming an innocent part

Of course they don't have any consequences.

They got exactly the fucking laws they bought, ones with they can make unfounded accusations with no burden of proof, and which people are expected to jump to and enforce or face their own penalties ... make no mistake about it, this is exactly what they wanted, and exactly what they got.

And, they've managed to get the US government on the fucking payroll to ensure every other damned country has the same absurd bullshit. And companies like YouTube pretty much have to jump and say "yessir boss".

The DMCA and related laws are supposed to give them all the power, and no accountability. That's what they paid for, that's what they got.

This is what was said when it was happening, and this is what has been said ever since. But let's not pretend this is the first we're learning about just how defective these laws are.

These damned laws a broken by design, because they were written by and for the copyright cartel, and the rest of us can go get stuffed.

Blame the idiot politicians who gave this shit to them -- Sony and these guys? They paid those clowns fair and square. And they keep delivering in the form of even more fucking broken garbage, like the IP provisions in the TPP which will more or less the USA in championing the rights of multinational corporations like the puppets they are.

Hell, DHS (and by extension ICE) are now the enforcement arm of the copyright cartel. Welcome to the awesome future where corporations have more rights than you do.

Re:For a real DCMA notice, a real lawyer signs.

[Darinbob]

It's nearly impossible to prove bad faith though, unless someone kept a record of their intent. So a good faith provision is essentially the same as saying there is no punishment.

Re:Turn the tables

[dryeo]

Then the law will be changed so that only registered media companies can issue take down notices.