Dan Bull's 'Death To ACTA' Video Silenced After Claim From Rapper Who Used The Same Sample
from the wait,-what-now? dept
Back in 2010 we wrote about rapper Dan Bull's excellent "Death to ACTA" song and video, which is a parody of Jay-Z's "Death of Autotune." In 2011, we further wrote about the MP3 of that song (which Bull distributes willingly on file sharing platforms) being taken down from Mediafire due to a questionable takedown request. Now, years later (well after ACTA is pretty much long dead), Dan's discovered that his video on YouTube was just silenced due to copyright claims.At the same time Jay-Z has been quite public about his support for artists remixing his tracks into other songs saying that he's "honored" when it's done. It may be that Jay-Z doesn't hold the copyright for DoA, but even so... it seems like a pretty weak claim to go after Dan Bull. And, of course, you can find a ton of other videos that use the same backing track for their own songs. Here's one. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And there are a lot more. I'm just getting tired of cutting and pasting.
And none of those other ones are silenced.
Just Dan's. It almost makes you wonder if Universal Music has... a political reason for trying to silence Dan's songs, such as the fact that it mocks an international agreement that the recording industry was highly supportive of. And they say copyright isn't used to censor free speech...
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Filed Under: acta, bigg brass, contentid, dan bull, death of autotune, fair use, jay-z, samples, videos, youtube
Companies: youtube
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Apr 27th, 2015 @ 6:08am
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Apr 27th, 2015 @ 6:08am
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As those opposed to reasonable copyright reform that post here will tell you, they don't want fair laws - they want all copyright law unreasonably biased in their favour.
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$5 million is pocket change compared to what the copyright is actually worth to them.
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Apparently Dan's marketing strategy is working!
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Parody
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Seems bassackwards to me.
Maybe, just maybe we could get someone to make a change in the law whereby the one suing for infringement must include an analysis of the four fair use tests in their suit and expect sanctions if their analysis is weak or non-existent, along with a summary judgement against, with prejudice. That just might stop some from filing the suit in the first place.
With a change in the law like that, it would be easier to adjust the DMCA to allow for fair use.
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Right, but it appears the only way one can assert it if a complaint is made, is as a defense once one is sued, and it takes getting sued to be able to make that defense. At a very steep price.
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Bull could counter-claim, which means that Google would need to restore the blocked material unless an infringement lawsuit was filed by the claimant, but Bull may not want to risk getting drawn into an expensive legal battle.
That said, a DMCA notice has to come from the copyright owner or their authorized agent. If Nilovic and Sarky (or their representative) didn't send the notice, then whoever did has committed perjury and is materially misrepresenting under 512(f), though that provision doesn't really seem to have teeth.
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It gets even more lopsided when you consider this was probably through the ContentID system, which is above and beyond getting into DMCA.
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He's said this in videos about his other wrongfully taken down videos.
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Homerisms
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re re etc Fair Use
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