Fox In The Henhouse: Uses Someone Else's YouTube Clip In Family Guy, Then Takes Down The Original

from the because-that's-how-it's-done! dept

Mon, May 23rd 2016 2:10pm — Mike Masnick

At the recent Copyright Office roundtable on the DMCA, a representative from Fox was adamant about pushing for stronger punishment for sites that hosted infringing content. But she also made sure to respond to a point raised earlier about abusive takedowns. Someone had pointed out that in 2013, Fox had issued a bogus DMCA notice that took down a copy of Cory Doctorow's excellent book Homeland, because its robotic censors couldn't distinguish Cory's novel from its TV show of the same name. Before launching into her speech pushing for expanding copyright laws to provide more power for censorship, she wanted to "explain" what happened with Cory's book, and said that it happened because Doctorow's book "was on torrent sites" -- as if this made it okay. That leaves out the kind of important fact that Doctorow released the book under a Creative Commons license that allowed it to be shared anywhere, including torrent sites.

So given that bit of background, I do wonder what the excuse from Fox will be for this latest fuckup, in which Fox used someone else's YouTube video of a bug in the old Nintendo basketball game Double Dribble for a large clip in the show Family Guy... and then after the episode was added to ContentID wiped out the original:

Yes, of course, after TorrentFreak posted about this late last week and the news started to spread, the takedown was lifted -- either by Fox or by YouTube itself -- but it again highlights the problems with these demands for automated filtering or notice-and-staydown systems. They don't work very well in many, many situations. And they create complications like this one -- and not everyone will get a site with a large following to write a story about it, getting enough attention to get the situation fixed. So many people on the copyright legacy side of things keep insisting that it's "easy" to just take down actually infringing stuff. Yet, time and time again, that's been shown to be wrong. There are lots of mistakes, and when you're talking about expression, we shouldn't tolerate systems that allow someone to automatically censor speech.

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Filed Under: clips, contentid, copyright, double dribble, family guy, takedowns
Companies: fox, youtube

22 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2016 @ 2:28pm

'we shouldn't tolerate systems that allow someone to automatically censor speech'

hmm. surprised you're allowed to say that!
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2016 @ 2:30pm

Fox are obviously working on the principle that if they broadcast it, then they hold the copyright, even when they are making fair use of others works.
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- DannyB (profile), 23 May 2016 @ 2:32pm
  
  Re:
  Or unfair use.
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- Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2016 @ 1:20am
  
  Re:
  Typical paradox crumple-zone thinking. Lie, cheat and steal from the actual creators, then silence anyone who disagrees.
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- Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2016 @ 8:50am
  
  Re:
  It's interesting that it wasn't fox that got their works taken down for fair use/possible infringement but it was the little guy that got works taken down for Fox's use of fair use or their possible infringement. Shows who contentID and copy protection laws are really intended to favor, the big distributors and not the poor poor artists or the public.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2016 @ 8:57am
    
    Re: Re:
    If the content was enough for contentID to consider it infringement when the little guy uses it then it should be enough for contentID to consider it infringement when Fox uses the same clip. Fox is the one here that violated the contentID standard but they get off the hook while the little guy is the one that suffers instead for not even doing anything wrong.
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DannyB (profile), 23 May 2016 @ 2:37pm

a representative from Fox was adamant about pushing for stronger punishment for sites that hosted infringing content. But she also made sure to respond to a point raised earlier about abusive takedowns.
Both of those things need to bite Fox. Hard.

Their broadcast might contain infringing content. These are people who very likely do not believe in any kind of fair use. And if they acknowledge fair use at all, then their same standard should be applied to them. "fair use is a defense in a lawsuit, but the use is considered infringing until you raise the fair use defense", etc

Fox filed a bogus takedown, and should be punished accordingly. Fox demonstrated an abusive takedown after complaining that abusive takedowns are unusual, which we all know is not true any more than copyright infringement is unusual. There needs to be seriously steep punishments for doing this. Takedown notice issuers need to abide by the same high standards as they expect everyone else to abide by in not infringing copyright. Do by example.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2016 @ 2:44pm

ContentID: Cruise control for copyright notices.
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Ryunosuke (profile), 23 May 2016 @ 2:49pm

Fox damn well knew this was gonna happen. That's why they had the closed door meetings on the take-and-stay down revisions. They WANTED to do this.

This SHOULD be criminally liable.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2016 @ 3:26pm

Content ID Expanded
I am pretty sure that this just shows that systems like ContentID need to be expanded into more communication platforms.

We need a system set up so that when original content from YouTube is detected on an over-the-air broadcast that channel is immediately removed from the air and they cannot resume broadcasts until they file a valid counter claim to get it reinstated. Just think of the millions of potential viewers that clip had that FOX stole from the original creator.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2016 @ 3:36pm

I'm surprised Nintendo didn't beat them to it, or maybe they'll be next to take their turn.
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- John85851 (profile), 24 May 2016 @ 10:48am
  
  Re:
  I was just going to say this.
  If the argument is between Fox and the person who uploaded the video, doesn't Nintendo have a say in this since it was their video game system that was recorded and uploaded? Maybe they should file a defamation notice since the game's bug could make the game (and their system) look bad.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2016 @ 5:20pm

Why...
Is ContentID so braindead that it doesn't take into account dates when determining which content could be infringing?

It seems that content providers should be required to specify first publish dates for their content before submitting it to the robots in order to make this less likely to happen - and furthermore, anyone caught abusing those publish dates should be banned from using the contentid system.
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- Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2016 @ 12:45am
  
  Re: Why...
  Because the publish date can be substantially different to the "published to YouTube" date and as such no inference can be drawn by the "published to YouTube" date, which is the only date YouTube knows.
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- Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2016 @ 8:58am
  
  Re: Why...
  contentID only considers how big and powerful the company is that's issuing the takedown. Little guy vs big company then big company wins. Who did you think contentID was intended to favor?
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  - Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2016 @ 4:15pm
    
    Re: Re: Why...
    Content ID is an automated system whereby Google/Youtube can abuse the little guy at the behest of big media while denying doing so.
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Dan, 23 May 2016 @ 10:30pm

OMG, I didn't even know of this glitch, though I have seen my brother do this time and again against me on our Nintendo Famicom. I just thought he was lucky.

And this issue perfectly illustrate the problems with automated takedowns.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2016 @ 1:00am

So...did the creator of the clip file a DMCA notice against FOX? That would be fun...
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2016 @ 8:45am

So she hates torrent sites because ... they allow you to legally share files? It seems her hatred is not for infringement but for competition, torrents offer a competing method to distribute content.
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Rekrul, 24 May 2016 @ 4:55pm

So many people on the copyright legacy side of things keep insisting that it's "easy" to just take down actually infringing stuff. Yet, time and time again, that's been shown to be wrong.

They know that mistakes happen all the time, they just don't care.
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MAFIAA, 25 May 2016 @ 6:11pm

Without bogus copyright takedowns, YouTube would not exist.
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Funny clips, 2 Jul 2016 @ 3:04am

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