Emilio Estevez Uses Some Public Domain Footage In Film, So Universal Studios Forces Original Public Domain Footage Offline

from the copyright-as-censorship dept

Yet another example of the awfulness of copyright filters. Back in 2006, librarian Michael Sauers posted a public domain film (a US government production) called "Your Life Work: The Librarian" to YouTube. If you don't know, "Your Life Work" was a series of educational shorts that, according to the Internet Archive, were "meant to inspire young post-depression workers into specific new careers." One of those careers? Librarian. Sauers' upload of the video has lived happily on YouTube for over 12 years until a few days ago when, if you visited it, you saw this instead:

If you can't see that, it says that the video is unavailable, stating: "This video contains content from NBC Universal, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."

Now, that's obviously bullshit, because the video is in the public domain. So, what happened? Well, the takedown notice that Sauers received reveals what almost certainly happened:

If you can't see that, it shows that the video taken down is entitled "Your Life Work: The Librarian." But the "copyrighted content" is listed as "The Public." If you don't know, "The Public" is a new movie written, directed and starring Emilio Estevez. The plot of the movie -- involving a group of homeless library patrons who refuse to leave a public library in Ohio during a bitter cold winter -- sounds interesting, and it appears this was a labor of love for Estevez, who worked on the film for the better part of a decade. He must have been thrilled back in January when Universal Pictures acquired the rights to the film.

Earlier this month, the film got an actual theatrical release, and apparently Universal Pictures does what all the big Hollywood Studios do: upload all the content to YouTube's ContentID tool to make sure no one has offered up a pirated copy.

There was just one problem. It appears that Estevez included a clip of "Your Life Work: The Librarian" within the movie (in which he, himself, plays a librarian). He, of course, is free to do so (thanks to the public domain), and having put that clip into his movie doesn't magically make that clip covered by copyright. But what the fuck does Universal Pictures care about pesky little things like the public domain and librarians' YouTube accounts? It's a big important Hollywood studio, and if it stomps out public domain material and ends up giving strikes to actual librarians, well, it's all good because it must "stop piracy."

So, Universal doesn't bother making sure that the public domain parts are excised from what it gives ContentID, and ContentID identifies a match... and bye bye public domain material, and Sauers now faces having a copyright strike on his account. Sauers has said he's disputed the claim, but now he has to wait around and see if Universal comes to its senses and withdraws the claim, or decides to double down.

Once again, this is why expecting automated filters to work is a real problem -- and it's doubly obnoxious that companies like Universal Pictures (and the MPAA that represents it) have been among the leading voices calling for more internet filters and things like "notice and staydown" which would effectively be used to block even more such content. Hopefully, Universal/YouTube restore Sauer's video soon, but it's just another example of how copyright is frequently used to take down perfectly legitimate speech.

In the meantime, though, you can still see Your Life Work: The Librarian at the Internet Archive... at least until Universal Pictures goes after it as well.

Filed Under: copyright, emilio estevez, librarians, michael sauers, public domain, takedowns, the public, your life work
Companies: nbc universal, universal, universal pictures, youtube

Universal Studios Misses A Chance To Be Awesome And Instead Tries To DMCA Leak Of Unfinished 'Mummy' Trailer

from the sigh dept

Universal Pictures, it will not surprise you, has a long history of being overtly protectionist on anything to do with its intellectual property. This has led to stories both funny and infuriating. The studio's legal team, for instance, once asked Google to delist 127.0.0.1 for piracy, with that IP address essentially serving to denote the machine currently in operation. It's "home", in other words. On the other side, Universal's lawyers sent out licensing bills to fans its marketing team had asked to pimp one of its movies for free.

Universal keeps a tight grip in an attempt to control everything to do with its products, in other words. But when the internet is involved, such attempts at control can go horribly, horribly wrong. Such is the case with the recent leak of an unfinished trailer for the upcoming film The Mummy.

Yesterday morning very few people knew that a new version of The Mummy will be on the big screen next summer. That changed quickly when an unfinished trailer of the film was accidentally put online by IMAX’s YouTube account. As it turns out, the trailer where Tom Cruise is screaming without sound effects is quite an entertaining watch. Soon, the mistake was reposted all over the Internet, where it triggered a meme fest. Great promotion for the film, one would think, but the bosses at Universal Pictures weren’t smiling.

Let me make this more clear: this trailer, and memes incorporating it, were everywhere these past couple of days. And, to a lesser extent, they still are out there. Not with any sort of approval by Universal, of course, whose lawyers have been firing off DMCA notices to take down the trailer wherever they can find it.

On Twitter alone, several people had their postings removed over copyright infringement claims. According to the movie studio, the “leaked” trailer is not for the public’s eyes.

“The uploaded trailer was a leaked version without sound fx. This was accidentally released online but is not intended to be available for public viewing. We have removed it from YouTube, but it is still populating on Twitter,” they write.

Indeed it is, and it's not difficult to understand why. On the one hand, the trailer without sound effects and music is truly hilarious and entertaining. In fact, one wonders if any polished and completed trailer could garner so much attention as this unfinished one. On the other hand, it's quite interesting to get a glimpse at what the unpolished footage looks like, and to understand how much a musical score and sound work add to the experience. Whichever angle you come at it from, it's fun.

And it was a massive opportunity for Universal Pictures to join in on the fun, be awesome and human, and enjoy all of the massive and free publicity its unreleased movie was suddenly getting. Sure, the trailer is goofy without the production values the completed product will enjoy. But so what? Everyone understands that. And everyone realizes that the studio had no intention of the public seeing this version of the trailer. But now that it's out, Universal should be doing everything it can to supercharge the viral nature of all of this free publicity and bending some good will from the public. Instead, they are trying to shut the whole thing down.

Which, of course, isn't working.

As a result, many copies that were posted on Twitter, YouTube and elsewhere are no longer working. However, there is so much interest in the trailer that Universal can’t really keep up. For every video that’s pulled offline, several others appear elsewhere. It seems virtually impossible at this point to put the genie back in the bottle. In fact, the trailer has become a fertile breeding ground for memes, with people adding their own soundtrack or using Tom Cruise’s scream as the modern-day Wilhelm scream to pimp other videos.

And this sort of thing will only be furthered now that reports are out about Universal's attempt to unring the bell. So, the lawyers will accomplish nothing other than to create animosity where there was once only interest. Great job all around.

Filed Under: dmca, special effects, takedowns, the mummy, trailer
Companies: universal pictures

Hollywood Keeps Breaking Box Office Records... While Still Insisting That The Internet Is Killing Movies

from the because-if-the-story-sounds-good,-why-bother-with-the-facts dept

Hollywood is still 100% focused on trying to blame the internet for any of its woes, mostly with bogus attacks on internet companies it doesn't like. And yet... it seems to keep on setting box office records. The latest is that Universal Pictures has broken a new record in bringing in $2 billion in box office revenue faster than any other studio in history, pushed over the top by the successful opening weekend of "Straight Outta Compton" (a movie that seems to have some big fans in Silicon Valley).

Thanks to the overperformance of N.W.A biopic “Straight Outta Compton,” Universal Pictures is tracking to cross the $2 billion mark at the domestic box office on Saturday, setting a new speed record in doing so.

Universal’s historic climb will break Warner Bros.’ previous record of reaching $2 billion by December 25, 2009. The studio is also extremely likely to break the record for all-time domestic box office high, which was set by WB in 2009 with $2.1 billion.

That does not sound like an industry that is having a problem getting people into the theaters, even if the movies are available via infringement. But, people will argue, these services are actually harming the "home video" revenue stream. But that's questionable as well. First off, it was Hollywood that angrily fought against ever allowing a home video market in the first place (remember that?). And, more to the point, we've seen over and over again that when the industry actually adapts and offers content in a reasonable format at a reasonable fee, people will pay at home, just like they do in theaters.

But, of course, due to continued Hollywood confusion and jealousy, it's still holding back lots of movies from Netflix streaming -- one successful service that has shown that it's totally possible to "compete" with infringing content.

So, again, it's confusing as to what Hollywood's real complaint is. It's shown that if it makes good films, people will go out to the theaters to see them, rather than just watch them online. And if it offers them in a reasonable manner for a reasonable price online, people will pay for that as well. And yet, it doesn't do a very good job of this and then blames the internet for its own failures to adapt. Seems like a weird strategy. If I were an investor in those companies, I'd wonder why they've spent the better part of two decades so focused on "stopping piracy" rather than doing a better job delivering what the public wants.

Filed Under: adapting, box office, business models, hollywood, internet, movies, records
Companies: netflix, universal pictures

Geniuses Representing Universal Pictures Ask Google To Delist 127.0.0.1 For Piracy

from the furiously-dumb dept

We recently wrote about a German film distributor that went on a DMCA takedown blitz and managed to send notices for sites that had nothing to do with infringing files (such as IMDB and, er, Techdirt). In a somewhat related story, we learn that representatives of Universal Pictures have likewise gone DMCA happy over infringing versions of movies like Furious 7 and Jurassic World -- even to the point of issuing takedowns not only for the film's IMDB page (for Furious 7), but for "127.0.0.1" for Jurassic World.

And while we’re on the topic of self censorship, it’s worth noting that Universal Pictures also asked Google, in a separate notice, to remove http://127.0.0.1 from the search results. The mistakes were made by the French branch of the movie studio, which only recently began sending takedown notices to Google. The company has reported less than 200 URLs thus far including the mistakes above.

You can see the notice here. 127.0.0.1 is, of course, the IP address a machine uses to refer to itself. It's also known as "localhost." In other words, it basically means "home."
...Should we delist this house from the address books? This is obviously a case of these companies setting up some kind of automated system, working off of an obviously flawed algorithm, that is causing these errors, rather than having real people going through to see if the targets for these takedown notices are actually infringing. Why do we allow this kind of collateral damage in the DMCA system?

Even more ridiculous? The organization representing Universal who sent this notice is TMG, or Trident Media Guard, which is the company that is officially working with the French government on its Hadopi copyright enforcement program. You'd think that a company so closely involved in such issues, working with a major movie studio, might try to be a little more careful about these things. But, of course, when have copyright defenders ever cared about collateral damage like this?

And here's the really crazy part: it's not like this is even particularly rare. Chilling Effects has long lists of DMCA complaints that point to 127.0.0.1. We're talking about a whole lot of armed militias running around utilizing a targeting system that wouldn't be trusted in a snowball fight, never mind in the realm of something as important as speech and communication via the internet. Here are just some of the most recent (many filed by NBC Universal): If we have to live with the DMCA, filers ought at least be forced to take responsibility for their own notices. Pointing back to their own flawed algorithms shouldn't be an excuse -- especially when the requests are so obviously wrong.

Filed Under: 127.0.0.1, copyright, dmca, france, hadopi, localhost, takedown
Companies: google, tmg, universal, universal pictures

German Film Distributor Issues Takedown Request Falsely Targeting IMDb, Reddit And Techdirt

from the HOW-DO-I-ANTIPIRACY dept

You'd think it wouldn't be too hard to vet a DMCA takedown request for false positives, especially when the request only includes 28 URLs. You'd be wrong.

TMG (Germany's Tele Munchen Group, which acts as a European distributor for several motion picture studios) issued a takedown request on behalf of Universal Pictures France, hoping to delist links to a few movies. But its algorithm is obviously flawed.

To start with, it listed our article on the Hacking Team hack under its list of supposedly infringing URLs for the movie "Hacker."

Now, Hacking Team itself announced shortly after the data dump that "law enforcement was involved" and that orders were being sent out to have their leaked documents and emails removed from the web. Without a doubt, Hacking Team does have law enforcement involved somewhere, but takedown notices from the company itself have yet to arrive. (Third parties seem to be a bit more active on that front.) And with the documents stashed multiple places around the web, any takedown requests will be little more than symbolic.

I doubt it's using distant third parties to achieve its takedown goals, but clumsy, automated, Googling, "content protection" companies and rights holders are perfectly capable of inadvertently achieving the same aim.

It appears TMG's search for infringing URLs includes little more than the title, as this same request also targets a Reddit post that has nothing to do with its "Hacker" movie.


Instead, this links to a twitch.tv account of a gamer allegedly using hacks to get an edge in DotA 2 (Defense of the Ancients 2). Obviously, this has nothing to do with copyright infringement.

And, for good measure, TMG's efforts on behalf of Furious 7 in the same takedown request targets the movie's IMDb page. Because why not take down a wholly legitimate page on a wholly legitimate site that not only offers a wealth of information on the movie itself, but also acts as an unpaid promotional platform, what with its ample supply of trailers and links to retailers.

And, yes, some people will point out that most of what is targeted appears to be infringing content (or links to it). But here's the thing. It doesn't take long to vet small requests like these for false positives. At the very least, TMG owes it to the rights holders that pay for these services to issue legitimate takedown requests. Something like this making its way to Google makes TMG look, at best, clumsy, and at worst, incompetent and censorious. And while it's rarely a concern for rights holders and content protection companies, they also owe it to the rest of the internet to do their best to avoid targeting legitimate URLs -- especially those that have absolutely nothing to do with the content being "protected" and are, as in the case of IMDb, sites that can actually increase sales.

Filed Under: dmca, hacker, takedown
Companies: google, tele munchen group, tmg, universal, universal pictures

Multiple Hollywood Studios Making Movies About Julian Assange; How Many Will Pay Him For His Story?

from the just-wondering... dept

We've all heard the refrain from the MPAA a million times: profiting off of someone else's work is "theft" and we need new laws to stop that kind of thing. So, it struck me as interesting to see an article in the Wall Street Journal, claiming that multiple Hollywood studios are planning movies about Julian Assange and Wikileaks:

Among the studios with WikiLeaks movies in development are Time Warner Inc.'s HBO Films, DreamWorks Studios, Comcast Corp.'s Universal Pictures and Annapurna Pictures, the company run by Megan Ellison, daughter of Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison.

Most of the article talks about the difficulty of creating a movie based on a true story that's still very much in progress. However, they just barely touch on the question of paying for the story. After all, the story of Assange is based on "his work," right? There had been one project that sought to buy an option on Assange's own memoirs, which were due to be published by Random House, but apparently Assange failed to deliver and the deal fell through. Other projects did option different versions of the Assange story -- but not from Assange himself. One optioned the book from former WikiLeaks spokesman, turned Wikileaks critic, Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Another optioned a profile of Assange that was done in the New Yorker.

However, all of the actual stories focus on Assange and his work in building up Wikileaks. If Hollywood really believes so strongly in not "profiting off the works of others" without fairly compensating them, why aren't they lining up to pay Assange?

Filed Under: daniel domscheit-berg, hollywood, julian assange, licensing
Companies: annapurna pictures, comcast, dreamworks, hbo, the new yorker, time warner, universal pictures, wikileaks