Newest YouTube user to fight a takedown is copyright guru Lawrence Lessig

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/newest-youtube-user-to-fight-a-takedown-is-copyright-guru-lawrence-lessig

by comex • 13 years ago

195 31 13 years ago

So where's a link to the video? I'm digging and will update if I find it.

Edit: The following link seems to match many of the attributes mentioned in the complaint filed (date of talk, sponsor of talk, his keynote speaker status, location of talk, video length).

http://vimeo.com/13816922

http://youtu.be/KBTWoCaNKn4?t=37m41s

Edit2: Confirmed. This is the talk. The Ars article says the title of the talk was "Open," same as the title in the video. The "infringement" starts around 37:40. Funnily enough, the "infringed work" is apparently a remix itself. Go figure. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Edit3: I can't tell whether the song itself is a remix, or if Lessig meant there were several remixes of the original clip that had the music dubbed over clips from The Breakfast Club. It appears to be the latter.

Suffice it to say, this is fucking ridiculous. Raise your hand if you're going to watch a 49 minute long video in order to try and "home tape" the 47 second clip 37 minutes and 40 seconds in, especially if you can just download the official video from here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BJDNw7o6so

Whether this is "official" as in this is the actual video shot for the song, or "official" as in "welovephoenix" is their official youtube channel (or both), I don't know. But that link has nearly 10 million views.

Edit4:

And this is the original video remixing the song with The Breakfast Club and another 80s movie I'm too twentysomething to recognize, sitting pretty at 458k views:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq741YqlP7w

fpgeek2• 13 years ago

Lessig retracted his counter-notice in response to their lawsuit threat, so the video is still down.

aspensmonster3• 13 years ago

I know, but I'm guessing that the recently-posted video of his that got the takedown notice is a cleaned up version of the video I linked. I'm currently trying to dig through the talk at the moment to get to the supposedly infringing bits.

softbuilder• 13 years ago

and another 80s movie I'm too twentysomething to recognize

Not one, but several other movies, including at least Pretty In Pink, Footloose, and Mannequin.

aspensmonster3• 13 years ago

Seeing as I can't edit my own post anymore, this is the first remix of the remix mentioned by Lessig in the talk (the one showcasing Brooklyn):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1ywFh2AZLg

I'd suggest clicking "Show More" underneath the description to see the numerous remixes for other localities that have been made.

Also, I found this quote in the description:

Update 1: We met with Glassnote Records and they loved it! They said Phoenix dug it too!

Digging around, it seems Glassnote records is an American label, and Liberation Music is an Australian label. From what I can tell, it seems that Glassnote records hold the rights to the song, and Phoenix is under the Glassnote label:

http://glassnotemusic.com/profile/Phoenix

Does Liberation Music have a distribution deal with Glassnote? Is one a subsidiary of the other? Now I don't even know if Liberation Music actually had standing to file a DMCA claim at all. I should go to law school.

Edit: Even my hometown of Austin has one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAM0rb8vswU .

fpgeek2• 13 years ago

You'd think these DMCA blasters would have some lists of people they shouldn't tangle with because it will be more trouble than it's worth. Fortunately for us, apparently not.

fnordfnordfnord2• 13 years ago

Yeah, like when the NFL DMCA'd Wendy Seltzer's YT video of the NFL's copyright notice plus a short clip of a Super Bowl® ^W^W Sports Championship kickoff. http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/dmca-nfl

davedx• 13 years ago

Only 2 lawsuits have ever challenged a DMCA takedown? Then the DMCA is seriously broken. There needs to be a better path for appeal against excessive or unfair takedowns.

biot• 13 years ago

  > Only 2 lawsuits have ever challenged a DMCA takedown?

How did you extrapolate a single organization (EFF) pursuing a few cases involving a subsection of the DMCA into a blanket statement covering all DMCA takedowns?

kbuck• 13 years ago

No, the article says that only a few lawsuits have resulted in damages per section 512(f) of the DMCA [1] (which places a penalty on knowingly misrepresenting a work when filing a DMCA notice against it, if I am reading correctly). It sounds like they're able to sue under 512(f) in this case because Liberation Music pressed the issue even after they had been notified that the use was fair use. I am not a lawyer, though.

[1] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512

Fuxy2• 13 years ago

So does that mean that in order to keep our work up we need to challenge every take down and invest thousands of dollars fighting it?

That is what is broken in the DMCA. Guilty until proven innocent and you the content creator (that uses some copyrighted material) have to pay for every bullshit take down notice you get.

This is what big companies are counting on, that you are not willing to invest the time and effort needed to challenge them.

And given that they have vastly more resources they will be better prepared to fight you that you are to fight them.

This is not justice this is survival of the richest.

Questioneer6• 13 years ago

Some time ago I became engaged in the Syrian conflict, before it was a conflict.

There was a time when a multitude of cities rose up in peaceful demonstration. Civilian organizations took root to make clear cases for ways and means of reforms, both on the local and national scale. These local coordination committees were most publicly visible by foreigners on the net, being prolific in uploading of media, mainly during Friday protests after prayer. These local orgs, mainly teens, found sites like bambuser.com and youtube.com highly effective for disseminating and spreading word of solidarity for towns spread miles apart, those miles just may as well be worlds apart much like how it is in the US and other nations.

Well I helped disseminate these events, my favorite were those broadcast live on bambuser as it gave viewers a much more personal feeling for those demonstrating on the other end. Much respect to Hans Eriksson[1] who used his position at bambuser in a positive way, embracing these broadcasts and himself helping disseminate the broadcasts to the world.

These weekly mass demonstrations took a bloody turn, and while many stopped looking the coordination committees kept witness, services like bambuser kept showing live feeds even though they were turning increasing violent as Assad's forces began publicly gunning down crowds.

Ever see the GPS trail of someone fleeing with a crowd of his neighbors during a live broadcast, while they were being shot at? I have. Here is a profile of a martyr who fought with his camera to show the world his life[2].

What does this have to do with copyright? Well those early days of mass demonstrations are valuable evidence of the true origins of the Syrian civil war, peaceful defiance met with violence.

During my monitoring and dissemination of other people's hard fought media, I began processing some into panorama as the narrow field of view provided by handheld cams reduced much of the true impact of what the recorder meant to show to others. I made stitched images from video showing tanks awaiting a push into so-called 'infected' cities[3]. I made images of the days during the fraudulent elections, of BMPs chasing unarmed civilians through the streets[4]. Later, I've stitched together images of war crimes that I can never remove from my thoughts. After doing this for many images I had video of which I also processed and began uploading those of potential interest, video of Assad's troops hurling IEDs onto residential neighborhoods from helicopters for instance[5].

But the video that involves this discussion of copyright, is one held dear to many of the early activists. Held dear to many of those now deceased. It was a song sung by someone who himself, was killed in those early days of mass demonstrations.

Ibrahim Qashoush, a fireman and a poet from Hama Syria[6].

Ibrahim coined a song that became popular during these mass demonstrations in Hama, singing them in a multitude of breathtaking shows filled the entire town square (remember when towns had those?) with the families that lived there. Time passed, and after becoming depressed at the daily slaughter I decided to go back and make a stitched image[7] of that night in Hama, when Ibrahim sung before his throat was slit[8] for daring to sing.

After uploading the video to Youtube, marking the video as not copyrighted, then the image to imgur as usual I received a copyright complaint from CDBaby[9]. Apparently they thought that due to an artist of theirs including a sample of the protest audio, they retroactively owned the original protest song themselves.

I lodged a rebuttal saying that the video was clearly not theirs, and Youtube agreed. Attempts to contact CDBaby were futile. Having the copyright claim removed I was somewhat happy with the vindication that this dead man's song was indeed not CDBaby's, but infuriated that this company made ABSOLUTELY NO DUE DILIGENCE AS TO THEIR CLAIMS. Most of the time people, if they notice, can contact them saying a company like CDBaby was in the wrong. But in this case the man they wronged had his throat slit for the media CDBaby was now claiming as their own. Cue the rage.

Youtube removed the claim from my copy of the video[10] but when linking the original copy that I processed I noticed that CDBaby's claim was still on their video. Looking further I found _ALL_ copies of this dead man's voice claimed by CDBaby.

This is around the time I started making a stink on Twitter making sure to include CDBaby's handle while pummeling them for stealing a murdered man's voice.

Of course after this I finally had CDBaby contact me.

The response from their support 'manager' said simply that my upload has had the claim removed, she was completely unaware or ignorant of what I was referencing since I never said my video was the problem. The fact they were blanket claiming without due diligence or occasional follow-ups to check the accuracy of their claims was the problem.

Only after displaying their absolute pathetic avoiding of the topic of legal ramifications for false claims online did I receive a simple follow-up from CDBaby support 'management':

"All claims have been removed," and indeed they were, for now.

My position on copyright shifted in those months of shouting into the copyright void that is the Youtube/CDBaby scheme.

I will break every copyright possible without care.

Not just for those who died bravely singing songs for others to be motivated by, but because for-profit entities display far less due diligence in their corporate position than a marijuana smoker does in his hobby.

Now I sometimes listen to Ibrahims song, thinking of how many of those people in Hama in the crowd no longer are alive. I think of CDBaby profiting off it and who knows how many others, think of Google's complicity in the mess, think of the lawyers who profit off it keeping the situation rolling. I think of the militant US government who is coming closer and closer to making copyrights worse than violent crime, and I get really depressed.

That is one of my fights with copyrights.

[1] https://twitter.com/HansEriksson

[2] http://bambuser.com/channel/syriapioneer

[3] http://i.imgur.com/pyegah.jpg

[4] http://i.imgur.com/prkBmh.jpg

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZNy7V4Dz60

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Qashoush

[7] http://imgur.com/gallery/R0hnb

[8] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/world/middleeast/22poet.ht...

[9] http://www.cdbaby.com/

[10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu_adzfW8tc

Questioneer6• 13 years ago

There is a lot of pain within me from the last few years, so many people I no longer have contact with, for most likely bad reasons. It felt good writing this out, thank you for reading.

unimpressive• 13 years ago

Right now your comment seems to be at the bottom of the page.

Don't take that to mean nobody is reading.

I personally feel the same way about youtube writ large. Google has made youtube one of the greatest video libraries ever compiled. Downloading videos is not allowed by the software (No, various add ons and browser extensions are not acceptable.), and on top of that it's disallowed by their TOS.

I can only imagine the tragedy set to occur when youtube inevitably shuts down.

One of the most egregious examples I've seen thus far is on the older Tay Zonday videos where it says the license is creative commons but there is no way to download the video.

EDIT:

" This MP3 is subject to a Creative Commons License. Creative Commons License Details:"

Interesting. Guess I didn't read close enough the first time.

jjjeffrey• 13 years ago

That was a powerful story, and it's well written too. I think it would make a great article for Vice or something like that, but obviously it's nice to read posts like this on HN.

Questioneer6• 13 years ago

For the record I mandated that CDBaby define the process for which they make copyright claims, how they handle due diligence for any preexisting media copyrighted or not. I mandated this after being shrugged off three times in a row, once during email correspondence with CDBaby support "manager."

Nothing was ever clarified.

I keep using "manager" in quotes because their lower support rep and the "manager" shared the same name..

jacquesm• 13 years ago

Derek Sivers won't like it one bit when he sees how his creation is being abused. Have you tried going all the way to the top at CDBaby? (Derek is on HN by the way, but sold the company long ago).

fnordfnordfnord2• 13 years ago

I'd love for someone to auto-tune and mix Qashoush's song up. I'd love to see something like that go viral.

devx• 13 years ago

DMCA needs be amended, badly. The automated DMCA takedown notices and with no repercussions for false infringements are making the copyright situation worse. These companies need to be punished for sending abusive DMCA notices.

petenixey• 13 years ago

While I hate the heavy-handedness that the DMCA operates with and I think it's ridiculous that LL's video was banned it's worth remembering back to pre-YouTube to recall how we got here.

Before YouTube there wasn't any consumer-accessible dissemination of AV media online. You had to have serious equipment, there was no social distribution and copyrighted material couldn't get used anywhere.

YouTube came along and simply overpowered the copyright holders with both sheer volume and variety of copyright infringements and followed through with the financial and legal muscle of Google behind it. There was a long time when it wasn't clear whether YouTube would actually survive its legal battle and I assume that the instant-take-downs were a compromise that was reached to allow them to continue.

I'm glad that Lawrence Lessig is fighting this case and it's a good time for it to happen. However it's also worth keeping in mind why these instant take-downs were instituted in the first place - it was (I presume) because it was the only way to placate copyright holders into allowing the whole thing to continue.

thenomad• 13 years ago

That's not quite 100% true - there were various sites that disseminated video to and from consumers. I ran one of them, Machinima.com, which was founded in 2000.

However, they were few, far between, and didn't work nearly as well as YouTube. I'll admit to making a massive mistake disregarding Flash video back in those days in favour of downloadable content!

YouTube really has been a remarkable thing - one of the few .coms that can genuninely claim to have significantly changed the world.

eksith• 13 years ago

  Before YouTube there wasn't any consumer-accessible dissemination of AV media online

Are we forgetting eBaum's World? Metacafe? Break (used to be Big-boys.com)? And of course right after YouTube came LiveLeak (from the same guys as Ogrish and I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole).

eBaum's was fighting the copyright fight (and for less than honorable reasons) long before YouTube existed.

Fuxy2• 13 years ago

Yay! This is fun. Finally a company foolish enough to pick a fight with an expert in copyright that's been waiting for one for years. Let's just hope the courts show a bit of common sense.

nicholassmith• 13 years ago

I wonder if they did any research before filing a DMCA against who they were poking with a pointy stick? Or whether it was just an auto-match and auto-DMCA filed?

Hopefully when this goes to the courts it'll set some precedents, I can't imagine Lessig backing down from a fight over a spurious DMCA claim.

Aldo_MX• 13 years ago

I lost my faith in Youtube when I started getting claims in my videos with Vivaldi's Music...

Newest YouTube user to fight a takedown is copyright guru Lawrence Lessig

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