Double Bogus DMCA Takedown All The Way!

from the what-does-it-mean? dept

HappyCabbie alerts us to the news that "Hungrybear9562," whose real name is Paul Vasquez, but is much better known as the "Double Rainbow Guy" for his viral video hit "Double Rainbow" (perhaps one of the most viral videos ever), has gone on a fascinatingly ignorant DMCA takedown binge, using some questionable theories. Basically, he's decided that if there's a video he doesn't like, he can take it down. He put up his own bizarre video in which he explains his views on the DMCA: It's one of those cases where a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. He admits that he doesn't quite understand the DMCA, but he feels 100% sure that he must be using it properly. His response to claims of "fair use" are to bizarrely cite (incorrectly) the YouTube/Viacom case, which he claims was about "a music company" suing YouTube for $1 billion, and because of that no YouTube videos can use music any more. And towards the end of the video, he responds to those claiming that his takedowns were illegal because they didn't consider fair use by saying, "you know what, if it is illegal, I'm going to change the law."

Throughout the video he makes it clear that his main concern is that he "doesn't like" these videos, which apparently are somewhat mean and make fun of him, but copyright is not made for censoring speech you don't like. Amazingly, Vasquez even seems to be issuing DMCA takedowns on videos that try to explain this to him, including one from HappyCabbie which tries to explain the Streisand Effect to Vasquez: Oh, and did we mention that Vasquez seems to have no problem using clips from others in his own videos?

Now some may claim this is just a case of a fairly ignorant guy abusing the DMCA, but that's what happens when you provide such a tool for easy censorship. It gets abused by people to censor speech. What does it mean? It means that we have a double free speech problem all the way...

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, double rainbow, fair use, hungrybear9562, paul vasquez, youtube

All Of Justin Bieber's Music Removed From YouTube Via 'Prank' DMCA Claims

from the not-so-funny dept

As a bunch of folks have been sending in a "prankster" was able to remove all of Justin Bieber's videos from YouTube by filing a bunch of bogus DMCA notices. While a lot of people find this amusing for one reason or another, it really highlights a key problem with the DMCA's notice-and-takedown process, which is a "censor now, deal with the consequences later" system. As has been pointed out in the past, it seems like this process is a violation of the First Amendment, in that it involves the shutting down of speech prior to any sort of due process or adversarial hearing. I'm still amazed that the DMCA doesn't allow for at least a notice-and-notice process, giving the uploader/host a chance to respond before the content is removed. In a case such as this, it would have prevented the removal. As for the "prankster," he might want to be careful. Filing totally false DMCA claims can open you up to serious legal penalties, and assuming that Bieber makes a fair bit of money from his videos on YouTube, his representatives probably have decent reason to go after the prankster. And that might not be a bad thing. In the process, perhaps they could establish greater precedence for the ability to punish those who file bogus DMCA takedowns.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, first amendment, justin bieber, youtube

Don Henley Hatred Of YouTube Clouding His Vision On PROTECT IP

from the but-you-can-see-him-for-just-two-grand dept

While the entertainment industry thought that getting PROTECT IP approved was going to be a walk in the park, they've been taken somewhat by surprise at the level of resistance to the bill over the last few months. It looks like they're now trying to break out "the big guns." And, by "big guns" we mean out-of-touch millionaire old fogey rockers who have name brand appeal, but little actual knowledge. In this case, it's an op-ed piece by Don Henley in USA Today. Henley has become quite the curmudgeon over the past few years, lashing out at everyone for not giving him more money. A year ago, he was claiming that it's all YouTube's fault:

And Henley reserved particular ire for YouTube, which he described as a "fence" for stolen intellectual property. "YouTube is one of the biggest violators or copyright laws in the world," he said. "A tremendous amount of the content on YouTube is a copyright violation.... I'm not a fan of YouTube at all for their part in aiding and abetting copyright violations."

Given his belief that YouTube is a "rogue" site, his views on PROTECT IP are especially troubling. It appears that Henley really wants to shut down YouTube. Most of the article is a misguided, misleading or simply false attack on both Google and anyone, such as the EFF, who supports basic user rights:

Critics of this pending legislation need to be honest about the company they keep and why they essentially aid and abet these criminal endeavors. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties group, claims such a bill would "break the Internet," while Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt says it sets "a disastrous precedent" for freedom of speech. No one has the freedom to commit or abet crimes on the Internet. Stopping crime on the Internet is not, as EFF says, "censorship." There is no First Amendment right to infringe intellectual property rights.

First of all, no, there is no First Amendment right to infringe, but no one has claimed that there is either. But PROTECT IP goes way, way beyond what Henley describes. He also fails to respond to the "break the Internet" claim, which comes from a group of very well-respected technologists who had a major role in building the internet's core infrastructure. Henley just brushes that off by pretending that Google just wants to keep "accepting untold advertising dollars from illegal online pharmacies."

But the bigger issue is that Henley totally ignores the points that the EFF has raised about the problem of PROTECT IP. He's right that stopping infringement is not censorship, but the bill is extremely broad and goes way beyond stopping infringement. In a weak attempt to do so, it advocates outright censorship with no due process.

In the meantime, if Henley wants to look at "the company anyone keeps," perhaps he should look at his friends who are supporting PROTECT IP. And we should remind Don Henley that not so long ago he was pointing out that piracy isn't a problem, and the real problem was the RIAA and the major record labels. Apparently he's changed his mind.

Oh, and if you'd like to see just how badly Henley is suffering from all this infringement in person, you can buy tickets to an upcoming Eagles concert for $2134 a pop. At least they set aside some "cheap seats" for the kids. The nosebleed seats where you can barely see the stage... those will run you a mere $116. Actually, that's just the list price, and you can't buy a single ticket at that price. You have to buy two. There are some (more expensive) tickets where you can buy just one, but then you have to add in the service fee ($21.65) and a delivery fee ($15). Amusingly, even if you choose to show up and pick up the ticket yourself, you still pay the delivery fee. So the absolute cheapest price you can pay to see Don Henley in concert, in the nosebleed seats will run you... $153.65. Yeah, but all that infringement is killing the music business, huh?

Filed Under: copyright, don henley, music, protect ip, youtube

Kings Of Leon Management Issuing Questionable DMCA Takedowns To Stop Clips Of On-Stage Problems?

from the copyright-as-censorship dept

John Obeidin points us to the news that YouTube videos of a problematic Dallas concert by the band Kings of Leon are disappearing from YouTube under claims from Vector Management, who apparently represent the band. Apparently Caleb Followhill from the band complained a bunch about feeling sick and saying that his voice was shot. At some point, he announced that he was going backstage to vomit and that he'd be back later -- which didn't happen. The rest of the band apologized (profusely) and later hinted at "bigger" problems with the band. Lots of folks in the audience were upset about all of this. Either way, a bunch of videos sprung up on YouTube. But as quickly as they go up, Vector Management appears to be pulling them down. Now it's possible that some of the videos include clips of copyrighted songs, but the whole thing certainly seems pretty questionable, and looks like an attempt to stifle the video of what happened. Assuming that most of the videos only included a bit of music, but focused on Caleb's statements, it seems like there would also be strong fair use claims.

Now, I did just find the following video, which does not appear to include any music, but merely clips out the statements made by Caleb and then other members of the band. It's still up as I'm posting this. If it remains up, then perhaps the takedowns are only directed at clips with actual music in them. Even so, the whole thing feels sketchy and, of course, is only drawing more attention to the whole story.

Filed Under: caleb followhill, dmca, kings of leon, takedown, youtube
Companies: vector management

YouTube Kills Lady Gaga's YouTube Channel For Copyright Violations

from the the-moden-world dept

YouTube has a pretty strict "three strikes" rule on accusations of copyright infringement before you lose your account. But whoever thought that Lady Gaga would lose her account because of it? Apparently she (or her people) uploaded some video of Gaga appearing on a Japanese TV show, and a company called Media Interactive issued a takedown. Media Interactive has quite the reputation (search the YouTube help forums) for issuing somewhat questionable takedown claims. And, it may be true that Gaga violated the copyright of the TV show (and perhaps earlier uploaded works), but it does seem pretty ridiculous. But, alas, this is the state of copyright law today. Of course, between this and 50 Cent's website being declared dedicated to piracy, it should make people realize that figuring out what is infringing isn't always so clear cut. Of course, it would be nice if one of these music stars used incidents like these to speak out about the over aggressive nature of copyright enforcement, but that seems unlikely to happen.

Filed Under: copyright, lady gaga, three strikes, youtube

The Rest Of The Story: Fair Use School Created To Respond To YouTube's Questionable Copyright School

from the fair-use-tube dept

Back in April, we were pretty surprised to see YouTube launch a "copyright school", with a video and quiz that seemed woefully limited, and at times, misleading -- especially on fair use. Google has traditionally been pretty good on copyright issues, so it was unexpected that it would put out one of those kinds of propaganda videos, especially one that implied fair use was something you shouldn't bother with at all, and that all videos should be entirely new and original. Public Knowledge responded by offering up $1,000 for whoever could create a better video.

The winner has been announced, and it's Patrick McKay for his "Fair Use School," that takes the same basic style and makes a video about fair use, and which explains YouTube's DMCA counternotice setup: Of course, it's fair to say that McKay (admittedly) simplifies things a bit in saying what is "probably" fair use, which is a big part of the problem. Since fair use isn't a hard set of rules, but rather basically whatever judges decide fair use is, it's sometimes difficult to assume what is and what is not fair use.

Filed Under: copyright, education, fair use, videos, youtube
Companies: google

Video Gamers Realizing Streaming Criminalization Bill Might Make A Lot Of Them Into Criminals

from the a-joke-of-a-bill dept

We've been covering just what an awful bill S.978 is. That's the anti-streaming, anti-embedding bill from Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons, which would allow law enforcement to seek jail time against people for streaming infringing works. As I've explained before, the clear intent of the bill is to go after sites that are streaming TV and movies. And the method to do so is to make a pretty small change to the criminal side of copyright law. Criminal copyright law was limited to reproduction and distribution among the various "rights" given to copyright holders. Civil law covers many more. This bill seeks to add "public performance" to the list of things that can be considered criminally infringing, potentially sentencing people to five years in jail.

The problem is that "public performance" is not at all well-defined. And while the bill does require that the effort be done as a commercial enterprise to be criminally liable, the fact that pretty much anyone can have AdSense or simple ads on their website makes nearly any website a commercial operation these days. And, yes, there have been cases where people have used simple ads, even if they make a few dollars total, as evidence of a "commercial" operation.

And that's a huge problem, because this bill, if it becomes law creates a massive liability for pretty much anyone who embeds or streams anything. The backers of the bill claim it's clearly not intended for the FBI to go bust down the door of someone singing along with their favorite song in a video... but it's entirely possible that the law could be used that way, and that's why people should be concerned about it. We've seen time and time again that federal prosecutors will toss in charges on questionable laws like these when they're going after people for something else and don't have enough evidence. The risk that this law will be abused is quite high.

Thankfully, more and more people are recognizing this. Dennis S. was a first of a bunch of you to note that the video gamers have jumped onto this cause in a big bad way, starting with a great overview of the problems with S.978 for video gamers who show footage from video games, and also points us to a YouTube video of a gamer explaining why people should be worried. That video doesn't quite have all the legal details straight (which is too bad), but it is generating attention, with over 400,000 plays start to finish (for a 17 minute video). Hopefully many of the gamers are making their voices heard among politicians.

Filed Under: copyright, criminal law, public performance, streaming, video games, youtube

People Realizing New Anti-Streaming Criminal Copyright Bill Could Mean Jail Time For Lip Synchers

from the unintended-consequences dept

We recently wrote about the horrible bill introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons to extend criminal copyright law to include "public performances" as being potentially criminal. As we explained at the time, current copyright law is split into civil and criminal parts, with most violations being civil in nature. But this new bill -- unfortunately recommended by White House Copyright Czar Victoria Espinel -- would extend the criminal provisions to include "public performances." Supporters claim that the lack of a "public performances" provision in criminal copyright law was a "loophole" or an oversight. But that's incorrect. There are good reasons why public performances aren't covered by criminal copyright law, in that it rarely makes sense to consider them criminal issues.

Yet, because the entertainment industry is freaking out about sites that embed and stream infringing content, and want law enforcement to put people in jail over it, rather than filing civil lawsuits, this move was made to extend criminal copyright law. However, the idea and the suggestion were done with very little thought towards what this really means in an internet age, when almost everything you do online could be considered "a public performance." We already pointed to one possibility: that people embedding YouTube videos could face five years in jail. Now, others are pointing out that it could also put kids who lip sync to popular songs, and post the resulting videos on YouTube, in jail as well.

Now, of course, all of the supporters of this bill insist that's just crazy talk. After all, this bill is not intended for that purpose at all. It's solely intended to go after "criminals" who are doing these things for profit:

The new law will not target �individuals or families streaming movies at home,� said a statement from Klobuchar. She said the bill will instead target �criminals that are intentionally streaming thousands of dollars in stolen digital content and profiting from it.�

That's nice to say, and I'm sure she means it. But this shows a massive misunderstanding of how the internet works. After all, plenty of people doing these kinds of videos may put some ads around them, and plenty of them get to be really, really big. And, as we've seen with ICE's domain seizures, they consider any use of advertising, even if it makes a pittance, to be "profiting from infringement." These days, everything has ads on it, and it's easy for anyone to sign up for a simple ad account and make a few bucks here and there for your activities online.

And that's the problem. While I'm sure no one supporting this bill thinks it'll be used in this manner, and I'm sure law enforcement has no interest or intention to go after lip-syncing teens, we've all seen how laws like this get stretched and used to bring people up on charges, when no other law applies. Remember the Lori Drew case? That involved the feds stretching a "computer hacking" law to claim she "hacked" MySpace by creating a fake account on the service, allowing them to charge her with a felony. Similarly, we've seen officials charge people with wiretapping for merely wearing a helmet cam while riding a motorcycle.

The point is that when law enforcement wants to charge someone with a felony where there's no obvious match, they'll often stretch laws like this to find something they can use. And this extension of criminal copyright law to include a "public performance" seems ripe for misuse. If Klobuchar and the others are serious about this, they should go back to the drawing board and rewrite the bill so it's not nearly so broad and won't open up so many potential unintended consequences.

Filed Under: copyright, criminal law, lip synching, public performance, streaming, youtube

Record Labels, Once Again, Freak Out About Anyone Making Their Content Useful

from the moving-on... dept

Another day, another story of the major labels freaking out that someone (for free!) has helped make their content more useful and valuable. About a week ago, I was one of the folks who passed along the news (via Twitter) of a new service called Youtify, which took the YouTube API and built a neat media player on top of YouTube that looked quite a bit like Spotify, the popular music service that's not yet available in the US. The concept really isn't all that new. Muziic has been around for years, and has a YouTube-based media player, and TubeRadio has a YouTube-based music player that looks just like iTunes. Honestly, TubeRadio and Youtify are really quite similar, except one uses the iTunes look and feel, and the other uses the Spotify look and feel.

Either way, it's a pretty useful and neat setup for listening to and discovering new music on YouTube.

So, of course, the labels have to kill it. Adam Singer points us to the news that just days after Youtify's launch started spreading... the major record labels have somehow blocked their music from appearing. Note that most of this is via Vevo -- the major label-owned service for posting videos to YouTube. In other words, these are authorized videos that have been uploaded and made available on purpose by the record labels. And... then the Youtify guys went and made an interface to make it easier to access and consume that music... and the labels/Vevo freak out and block them.

Because, apparently, that's how the major labels roll. If something makes the music more enjoyable and more valuable for free, but doesn't "pay" the labels, then too freaking bad. Is it really any wonder why the major labels are struggling?

Filed Under: music, player, useful, youtify, youtube
Companies: spotify, vevo, youtify, youtube

Studios Apparently Would Prefer Searches Only Turn Up Pirated Copies, Rather Than A Legit Option

from the do-they-not-think? dept

There have been some stories about how YouTube is preparing to work with a bunch of big movie studios to sell access to movies. It's been offering up some movies for a year or so, though it hasn't really caught on. The hope is that with big Hollywood pictures, people might care more. I'm not convinced it will be that big of a deal -- especially for folks who use Netflix -- but it's an easy enough thing to do. Except... apparently two of the major studios, Fox and Paramount, are balking at the deal, because they don't like that people can find unauthorized copies of their movies via Google's search functionality. This makes no sense. Basically they're saying they'd rather that when people search on their movies, that their only options are unauthorized versions, rather than having a legitimate version at the top of the list. This is not how you "compete" with unauthorized versions.

Filed Under: movies, piracy, searches, streaming, studios, youtube
Companies: fox, google, news corp., paramount, viacom, youtube