No Copyright Intended: The Coming Generation Who Intrinsically Assumes Remix & Sharing Makes Sense
from the the-modern-prohibition dept
A whole bunch of folks sent over Andy Baio's recent brilliant post entitled No Copyright Intended, after the exceptionally common phrase found all over YouTube, where uploaders (mostly young uploaders) declare that, or the slightly modified "no copyright infringement intended," with videos they post. These are almost always on videos of songs or remixes -- in other words, content that almost certainly does infringe on someone's copyright. But the key point is that young people today intrinsically recognize that this doesn't make sense -- and they assume that their non-commercial use and intent not to profit mean that it should be fine. Legally, it's not. But it's certainly important to recognize that very few young people seem to recognize or care about this:How pervasive is it? There are about 489,000 YouTube videos that say "no copyright intended" or some variation, and about 664,000 videos have a "copyright disclaimer" citing the fair use provision in Section 107 of the Copyright Act.As he notes, many kids really seem to hope that just explaining their intentions will ward off a takedown, even though so many takedowns are automated these days. But the key point that Baio makes is at the end, where he notes that "no amount of lawsuits or legal threats will change the fact that this behavior is considered normal..." And from there, he suggests that as this generation ages, and begins voting, the trend of ever more draconian copyright laws is going to start to look pretty silly:
Here's a thought experiment: Everyone over age 12 when YouTube launched in 2005 is now able to vote.We've been arguing the same thing for a while. We're often told that as these kids grow up and "learn" more about copyright they'll change their minds. I just don't see it. It may happen for a small percentage, but it's tough for these kids to deny reality. Sharing content, remixing content and building on content is so natural to them. The idea that it should be illegal simply makes no sense at all. No amount of "education" (even if it involves McGruff the Crime Dog) can fool people into believing that nonsense is reasonable.
What happens when � and this is inevitable � a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe "I downloaded but didn't share" will be the new "I smoked, but didn't inhale.")
Remix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone voices calling for temperance. You can criminalize commonplace activities from law-abiding people, but eventually, something has to give.
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Filed Under: copyright, culture, intentions, no copyright intended, prohibition, remix
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Who cares? Thats not what the article is about. How about I translate for you ...
Kids now use stuff they find online to make videos and remix music. Eventually they will grow up and begin voting.
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It's amazing what a little time and perspective does to young minds.
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Believe me, youngsters that start vote want this generation that is still in power to go rot and die.
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One of the things I love about this blog is how people's view of business slips out. With the bold above, just another example why the entertainment industry is the most anti-consumer industry around.
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Re: What would Rembrandt say?
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All the "free stuff" thinking works really well as long as you are giving someone else's stuff away. When it is your stuff, over time, everyone pretty much realizes that they need to get paid to live. The problem solves itself.
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Seriously, the "free stuff" mentality that you talk about isn't that at all. It is a controlled situation, not unlimited, and required the consumers ATTENTION in order to obtain anything.
We aren't headed back to an ad supported model, because today's "consumers" are specifically avoiding advertising at every turn, from ad blocking to filtering ads out of torrents they post, etc.
Cord cutters in the end are cutting their noses off to spite their face. They are slowly but surely removing the income from the process that allows it to happen.
In the end, it's all pretty much self defeating. Don't blem the content creators for people's willingness to work to avoid advertising working to avoid supporting the products they consume.
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Every point in your post is easily refutable. I hope for your sake that you're not stupid enought to believe what you say.
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I will toss him a kitten, the next time I pass his bridge on the way home.
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The middlemen in the entertainment industry are as much victims as a school bully is when the little kids stand up and stop giving him their lunch money.
These "victims" are posting record profits, the poor, sad little billionaires.
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Experience teaches that what actually happens is this.
Once they run out of creative energy and can no longer make anything really new they start looking for ways to get paid again for stuff they did before.
It's human nature - the bad side. If you applaud this process then look to your own morals.
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There is this thing called reality, you can try and reject it but it will smack you in the face every time.
I know you can't enforce copyright, and others know it too, what are you going to do?
Nothing is what.
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All industry is predicated on "artificial" law, bud. But nice try.
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The law is not the same thing as viable business model in fact most people believe that too much law is a barrier for commerce and there is a very good reason for it to be a cliche.
Just like, copyright right now. Copyright means shite, nobody respect it, and people are angry about it and the bad news is that the people angry is exactly the people who expend money on it, you know the pirates.
The law means nothing without popular support, that is why democracies were born, so the majority would enforce the laws of the land on the few and have the strength to do so, no minority will pass laws and see the majority obey those laws if they don't want to, that was true a thousand years ago and it is true today.
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"I did not have internet relations with that woman."
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This whole thing is driving me nuts - soon people are going to be getting sued (right or wrong, as they say, is for the courts and a lot of money to decide) for stuff that just doesn't make any sense - imagine your kid making a video of them playing with Lego only to have Lego turn around and sue you because they say you shouldn't make a video of their product without their permission. Now, we all know this is silly, but it would actually make it to court and cost the poor kid's family a ton of cash to fight something totally ridiculous... but what is the alternative? The courts require you to show up with a lawyer or they think your are disrespecting them and they will teach you a lesson.
It's scary. And it seems more and more where we are headed.
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Youngsters will be old enough
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Re: Youngsters will be old enough
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So? Pirates always assume that they can plunder others!
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Re: So? Pirates always assume that they can plunder others!
As for your definition of "fair use" you might want to talk to George Harrison about that who was sued over a single guitar lick on "My Sweet Lord", surely minor. He lost. Badly.
Also,see below about the Grateful Dead. May it drive you as crazy as the Band's slack attitude towards IP drives their label. (Who are bright enough not to do anything about it.)
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Re: So? Pirates always assume that they can plunder others!
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Re: So? Pirates always assume that they can plunder others!
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Re: So? Pirates always assume that they can plunder others!
Humanity shares a common imagination and ingenuity. Once upon a time, a group of clever, greedy conquistadors stomped into this common territory and started laying claim to huge swaths of it. Naturally they convinced the powers that be to legitimize their conquests with nonsensical laws. Since then, they've never stopped widening their stolen territory and broadening the legal rationalization of it.
So if you want to start arguing "fair," you'd better figure out how countless people can have the same idea at once, but only one gets to "own" it.
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Re: So? Pirates always assume that they can plunder others!
Here's an experiment for you, Blue. Watch an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh!. Then, look up Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged and watch one of the later episodes of that. The Abridged Series are incredibly creative works of art, even though their video portions are lifted entirely out of the original series and other shows. Do you support a law that would stop production of Abridged, simply because it reuses content?
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It didn't happen last time
The people may change, but the institutions remain.
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Re: It didn't happen last time
Once these things have momentum, and someone politically-connected is profiting from it or some government agency has a bunch of jobs enforcing it, it'll never get rolled back. The drug war trundles on because so many people are sucking dollars out of taxpayer wallets, and they can turn around and use those dollars to lobby against sensible changes.
In a similar vein, we will also see copyright violation's everyday acceptance mirror that of pot. Everyone will do it (like they already do) but it will technically be illegal but so few people will get in real trouble that it won't matter. Just like with current drug laws where in some places people can get away with basically smoking pot openly, a lot of people will be able to flaunt their copyright violations while every once in a while some random person will go to jail for posting a video recording of their kids that had a radio on in the background.
In the end, the only measurable outcome from any legislation like SOPA will likely be the number of government parasites it creates.
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Of the last group people either recorded over what I gave them or bought the album or both. As with mp3's, they recognized that compared to the album a cassette recording was sonic garbage. Not only that but they tended to fail after a few too many runs through the cassette player in the car.
It was through this "sharing" that I introduced a number of friends and acquaintances to things like punk and new wave, stuff that wasn't getting a whole lot of radio airplay when it first hit the shores of North America. Untalented louts like Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello, you know, or bands like The Clash.
Of course, during the years when we boomers were buying and listening to music on the grand scale sales only went up.
I suspect that, as a whole, boomer music purchasing declined with the rise of "classic" rock radio, an event I like to think of as the onset of program manager terminal laziness and the spread of consultants sending out playlists they'd come up with to hundreds of stations at once. Same thing, really.
It should surprise no one that the favourite genre of music amongst we boomers now is what passes for country on play lists but is really country rock, electric folk and light blues. Stuff we listened to in the 70s before the rise of corporate rock and then "classic" rock. Goodness, we've become our parents listening to "old folks music!!!" when the heck did that happen?
(See "Touch of Grey" Grateful Dead. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l38YXrGJxx0 )
Speaking of the Dead, there's one band that couldn't get airplay but make a great living on gigging and encouraging bootlegs of concerts and mixes of their music. A lot of Dead fans, young and old were introduced to the band that way. They are a case study of what Mike talks about when he talks about reaching out to fans, giving them what they want from the band and connecting with them. They drive their label nuts. But they still sell records. A lot of records. Not to mention t-shirts by the truckload, posters and other paraphernalia sold at shows.
The Dead's only other "Top 40" hit was Casey Jones way way back when. 1971, I think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQF8CILMt8c&feature=related
A near top 40 was Truckin' though some stations that listened wouldn't play it cause it mentioned cocaine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQF8CILMt8c&feature=related
By the way, for copyright purists, the Dead encourage this kind of sharing and if the label goes after me they'll be haunted by the ghost of Jerry Garcia as he plays a 20 minute solo in their ears while they try to sleep.
And no, I'm not apologizing for sharing here. Deadheads to this. All the time.
This one of the things about things like SOPA and IPA that really bug me. Along with censorship (inexcusable in any form), it would stop a band from promoting themselves in the way the Dead have for years.
To quote the song: "Lately it occurs to me, what a long, strange trip it's been."
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As with patents there's nothing wrong with the central notion of copyright but the way it's applied and enforced now is far from the orgininal notion in both cases.
And ONE MORE TIME creative people don't need copyrights or patents to be creative. Humans were creative for 200,000 years or more since we figured out how to plant seeds and "genetically modify" (breed) crops we could eat and domesticate animals we could use for food, clothing and just about anything else you can think of. (Except for the domestic cat, of course, which either domesticated us or, more properly, self-domesticated because they found us useful.)
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Hey kids, get off my lawn!
It is simply not comprehensible to the younger generation that this might not be legal, and there is no thought that it is wrong.
Clay Shirky quoting Gordy Thompson from the 1990s on online and copyrights: "When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem." (That's from the essay "Newspapers and Thinking The Unthinkable," 90% of which also applies directly to the multimedia businesses.)
Clearly these kids have to be clubbed into submission. ( half :-) )
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The World Turns
It is of course helpful to ask an artist's approval before hashing their work and it also helps to credit them. It would also be much more lawful had they plundered the Creative Commons market for their sources.
I don't believe that existing artists should be hard on them when right here are the next generation of musicians, writers, designers, editors and much more where to harshly punish them would destroy their future and turn them into a bunch of taxi drivers instead.
I actually love seeing this copyright abuse when a free sharing culture is our future and as seen this only fuels creation. I do not believe such a law change is a product of the current generation but it sure will be the social golden egg of the next generation. All these pro-sharing people will one day flood all markets including politics and they will certainly ask why what they have long enjoyed doing should be unlawful?
Keep copyright for only when money is involved.
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Re: The World Turns
Thank goodness YouTube puts the links on there already.
Oh did I mention that my YouTube is not set up to make money?
Sometimes, things are just for fun, and sharing with friends, and like minded people, and not for profit for the remixer.
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Outdated
The parallels to Prohibition are so obvious that I'm unsure how the so-called "Pro-IP" folks haven't figured it out. You can't take something that otherwise law abiding citizens find harmless and make it illegal, no matter how you try to make it a moral issue. It doesn't work. History has already shown us this.
I think there is a place for copyright, but it needs a major rebuild, making clear distinctions between sharing and massive, for profit, copyright infringement, in such a way that sharing for personal use is allowed. Until this, there will always be friction between copyright and natural rights.
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Hopefully takedowns start hitting the older generation
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Re: Hopefully takedowns start hitting the older generation
I have been waiting for this to hit more people, so they will wake up and see what's going on.
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Business leaders remain in the family. I say 'in the family' in a sociological sense -- tomorrow's legacy business and political leaders will come from the same in-group that produced today's.
The future business executives graduating from prestigious universities are disproportionately made up of students that come from upper-middle and upper-class families with parents that are themselves business executives. They have been taught all their lives that influence can be bought and that this is a good thing. They arrive at a university where they are instructed by professors that largely come from the same class of business elite. They teach their students how to hone their skills at gaming the market, maximizing profit, and using their influence to gain favorable treatment.
Our future politicians will likewise come from the ranks of the social elite where money buys power buys more money, and again they see no problem with that. A young politician may come in all bright-eyed thinking he is going to change the world, but the reality is unless he sells out to the party he will never see his name on a major ticket.
Our instutions have a way of promoting their own. Until the cycle is broken, it will remain status quo.
Please don't get me wrong. I am so very hopeful that we will see a day when our politicians act in the best interest of the average citizen and the day when businesses are represented by all classes and led ethically. But I'm not holding my breath.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Dec 13th, 2011 @ 10:29am
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Burgermeister
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So, I should just stop paying taxes, what do you think will happen to me?
My point is that while the Entitled generation feels like they don't need to respect the laws of the land, breaking the law has consequences. They should legislate mandatory jail time for pirating creative content and then see how long it takes for the river of piracy to dwindle to a tiny trickle.
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Anyway, that will not happen, because you are (apparently) a member of a passive, entitled, impractical and (most importantly) marginal constituency with only a tenuous grip upon the real world. Most people believe artists have rights to their own work, and upholding that right is what the "content industries" derive from, after all. So, in the mean time, you will be arguing/acting in contempt of the rule of law and the legal rights that underpin open society. Do you really think that is the right "team" to be playing on?
And I agree with many of the SOPA criticisms found on this site, btw. Doesn't mean we can't remember to uphold the rights of artists/creators.
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Copyright is a monopoly and it comes with all the problems a monopoly has, including excluding the most vulnerable people in society and that is others smaller artists.
Copyright must end. Is time has come and gone and now it is time to see it put to rest.
7 billion people say you can't enforce it, and I dare you try it.
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While you are changing those laws, and effectively ending commercial music production in the process, maybe you can do the same thing with produce and livestock. Shouldn't food be free? It's required for life after all.
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Playing guitar and singing is something I cannot do, this I why I pay to go see artist do it for me, quite often even.
When I click to play a song on my phone, The artist isn't playing it, neither is UMG or whatever. It's a file which was copied of another one and making a copy of a file is something I can do myself and certainly don't need to pay someone to do it for me.
If you cared so much about artist and music creation and performance, file sharing would be the last of your worries. I think a scalper sponsored by a ticket selling company buying all the tickets in bulk at low price and then making a profit reselling them up to 5 time their actual price to fans who could not buy tickets, because it was sold out on first day due to certain people buying them all can do a lot more damage to an artist than a million people who copied his songs off the web by themselves, for themselves.
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Its funny that you say that. I think it is the Entitled generation that currently has the reigns of power who feel that they deserve money for works produced in antiquity which they had no hand in producing just because they were at the right place at the right time to monopolize on it. We don't continue to pay hammer manufacturers every time a hammer is used. As others have already stated, humans lived for a very long time without copyright, and were very productive without it. Who has a bigger sense of entitlement, the kids who share what they have with others or the ones who want money for stuff others made?
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I am drowning in new content. It has never been this good.
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Pure myth.
You will see content created by (or funded by) people who want it to exist - rather than by people who have made cynical calculations about what will make most money in the short term.
Content will be better - quality - the trash you complain about is what would actually disappear.
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mmmhmmm...
Your closing paragraph/reasoning is simple-minded. Your claim that digital copyright doesn't matter is a self-fulfilling prophesy, not a fair reading of reality or history. We see what we want to see, I suppose. Also, quite condescending of you to say that the "youth" are incapable of being educated as to the consequences of their actions, or on the importance of upholding the rule of law in an open/civil society. Have they been stripped of their capacity for reason/consciousness? I know you have your own stake in this argument, you "innovator" you, but just sayin...
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The numbers
AND, I would also point out that Google is notoriously inaccurate when it comes to those huge numbers that come up on searches. It won't actually show any results past the first thousand, so take it with a grain of salt. The search "techdirt site:techdirt.com" on Google results in "About 931,000 results". Does this site even HAVE 931,000 pages?
Of course, the searches given would not catch all the variations. "I do not own x", for example.
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Re: The numbers
View the page source and then type search for the term "tech" on this page and you will have over 100 hits. Do the same with the word "dirt" and you get a similar result. 900,000/200 = 4,500 (and I haven't even looked at any of the CSS or JS files on this site to see how many hits that would pick up).
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Re: Re: The numbers
It appears twice because the page can be accessed more than one way. For example, if you put "&fmt=18" at the end of a YouTube URL, it will give the same video but possibly adjust the quality. If you put "?threaded=true" at the end of a URL for a TechDirt article, it will show the same article but with threaded instead of flattened comments. Sometimes Google counts these as seperate, even though they are really the same page. (Sometimes it detects the duplicates and hides them, but not always.)
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Be careful, you might get what you ask for, you just won't like the results.
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The new music, movies, books, games would be with people that know how to treat their customers right.
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Piracy?
Why is it illegal to download a song from the internet, but perfectly legal to record that very same song off the radio?
I am allowed to record any show I like off the TV (ABC, CBS, NBC & FOX can be watched for free, other channels are on Cable which I am paying for and given a device by the company to record shows) and can keep that for as long as I like, but if I download that show from the internet I am breaking the law?
They have already given it away for free (or in the case of cable I've already paid for it in my monthly bill). What exactly is the difference?
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Re: Piracy?
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