States Continue To Make Photographing Or Taping Farms A Crime

from the because-farmers dept

Over two years ago, we wrote about an absolutely insane proposal in Florida that sought to make it a felony to photograph farms without permission. The bill tried to position it as "protecting farm intellectual property," but everyone knew the real reason: farmers were upset about animal rights activists photographing and videotaping animal cruelty and revealing it to the world. We hadn't heard much more about that until just recently. A month and a half ago, On the Media had a segment about how these kinds of bills were showing up in more states, and now the NY Times has done a big article on how these "ag-gag" laws are being pushed by lobbyists heavily influenced by big farm groups.

It appears that the positioning of these bills has moved away from "protecting farmer IP" and over to claiming that animal rights activists are involved in terrorism for exposing animal cruelty. Now, we certainly believe that some animal rights groups go way overboard in their campaigns, though they often just make themselves look silly when they do so. But these laws just seem crazy, and a clear restriction on First Amendment rights.

But a dozen or so state legislatures have had a different reaction: They proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal rights groups. They have also drafted measures to require such videos to be given to the authorities almost immediately, which activists say would thwart any meaningful undercover investigation of large factory farms.

ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), a group famous for writing legislation for members of Congress, has a "draft bill" along these lines, which argues that the effort is to prevent attempts to use images and video to "defame the facility or its owner." That's insulting. First off, we already have defamation laws. If farm owners are defamed, let them use those laws. Second, truth is an absolute defense to defamation, and if they're taking a picture that accurately represents what's going on, it's difficult to see how that could, in any way, be any form of defamation. Third, and most importantly, just because one might use some tactic to defame someone (even if it's highly unlikely) that's no excuse, at all, for seeking to ban the activity entirely.

In the end, it's legal efforts like this that make people especially cynical about the political process. It's pretty clear that there's no good reason for such laws. Rather, the entire purpose is to protect some farmers who don't want their practices exposed.

Filed Under: activists, ag gag, farms, free speech, photographs, videos

YouTube Won't Put Your Video Back Up, Even If It's Fair Use, If It Contains Content From Universal Music

from the that's-a-shame dept

Patrick McKay, who has been a harsh critic of some of YouTube's failings when it comes to the DMCA process and various takedowns, has highlighted a very serious issue with YouTube that has received little attention. YouTube now admits that, when it comes to some videos that contain content from certain "partner" companies, it won't repost those videos, even if the video uploaders file a counternotice and show that they're relying on fair use. YouTube claims that it will still keep some of those videos blocked due to "contractual" obligations:

YouTube enters into agreements with certain music copyright owners to allow use of their sound recordings and musical compositions.

In exchange for this, some of these music copyright owners require us to handle videos containing their sound recordings and/or musical works in ways that differ from the usual processes on YouTube. Under these contracts, we may be required to remove specific videos from the site, block specific videos in certain territories, or prevent specific videos from being reinstated after a counter notification. In some instances, this may mean the Content ID appeals and/or counter notification processes will not be available. Your account will not be penalized at this time.

If this sounds vaguely familiar to something in the past, you may recall that a few years ago, Universal Music and Megaupload got into a bit of a spat when UMG issued a questionable takedown of a song promoting Megaupload, which featured a ton of big stars singing the praises (literally) of Megaupload. Megaupload eventually sued UMG, but ended up dropping that lawsuit as a month or so later it had bigger legal issues on its hands, following the US's decision to shut down Megaupload. But, at the time, Universal Music made a strange claim that it had some sort of contractual agreement that allowed it take down videos like Megaupload's. YouTube quickly came out with a statement denying this, but the situations described in McKay's post certainly raise serious questions about this, and clearly suggest that YouTube has made at least some deals that effectively wipe out fair use for some users. I assume it will surprise next to no one that the key example that led McKay to discover this situation... also involved Universal Music.

As I noted at the time of that UMG/Megaupload spat that I believed the real issue might be YouTube's contract with Universal Music for Vevo -- and I suspect that's still the case now. As I said then, part of the "announced" deal was that as part of providing the backend for Vevo, YouTube would transfer over the videos of various UMG artists, such that they appeared exclusively on Vevo. I suspect that's the same thing happening here. Because part of the Vevo deal is a promise that Vevo gets exclusive rights to videos involving certain artists' works, it allows YouTube to simply ignore fair use claims from users on such content, and refuse to ever post them again.

Now, as McKay notes, this is (mostly) well within YouTube's rights. I remember, a few years back, seeing a discussion on some legal blogs about this question. The DMCA implies that if you file a legitimate counternotice following a DMCA takedown and if the copyright holder does not take further legal action, the service provider is obligated to put the work back up in no less than 10, but no more than 14 business days. But, to some extent, that seems questionable. After all, as a service provider, any site has the right to not allow certain content to be published if it doesn't want to. And yet, if read literally, some could make the argument that the DMCA obligates a service provider to put up content even if it doesn't want to. As McKay notes, in this manner, the only liability is to the person who filed the counternotice, and any such liability would likely be pretty limited.

Either way, there's no way to look at this that makes YouTube look good. Following so soon on our other story about YouTube taking down a video on a questionable "terms of service" violation and then refusing to repost the video, it's once again a situation where it seems like YouTube needs to do a much better job handling these situations. While we obviously don't know the details of the UMG contract, fair use rights cannot be signed away, especially by two third parties. It would be a shame if YouTube decided that it would arbitrarily give UMG the ability to deny someone's fair use rights in posting a video.

Filed Under: contracts, copyright, fair use, videos
Companies: google, universal music, vevo, youtube

Viacom Filing Attempts To Rewrite DMCA, Shift Burden Of Proof, Wipe Out Safe Harbors And Require Mandatory Filtering

from the are-they-serious? dept

It's been about a year since the 2nd Circuit appeals court sent the Viacom v. YouTube case back to the district court. As we noted at the time, the original district court ruling, which said YouTube was protected by the DMCA's safe harbors, was a good ruling, well reasoned and argued by the court. In contrast, the appeals court ruling dipped into very troubling waters. While it agreed with the district court that YouTube needed "specific" knowledge of infringing works, rather than "general" knowledge that some works were infringing, it also went into questionable territory by arguing that YouTube could be found guilty of "willful blindness," despite the DMCA statute not including any such concept and also being pretty clear that you need specific knowledge in the form of a DMCA-compliant notification.

On Friday, the latest set of (slightly redacted) filings in the case back at the district court were revealed. They were filed in the past few months, but sensitive info was finally redacted and the "public" copies have now been released. Google has, not surprisingly, basically asked the court to reiterate its original ruling, noting that even following the appeals court sending it back, the situation hasn't changed: YouTube obeyed the DMCA's notice-and-takedown procedures and is protected under the DMCA's 512(c) safe harbors (pdf). Google highlights how YouTube has followed notice-and-takedown procedures from early on, and even in the early days blocked some videos that it thought might be infringing. It also notes that Viacom itself pulled a bunch of videos from the lawsuit after it finally signed up to use ContentID and realized that it was beneficial to Viacom's own business. More importantly, as we've pointed out a bunch of times, many videos had to be removed from the case because Viacom had uploaded them itself and even had "confidential (and ever changing) instructions to its copyright-monitoring agent" concerning what to pull off of YouTube. Even worse, apparently, even today, Viacom hasn't fully figured out if all of the clips they're suing over were really infringing. It turns out that many of them are identical to the ones that Viacom itself uploaded as authorized copies (and there's evidence Viacom often uploaded the same clips multiple times itself on purpose).

The basic point: there's no way for Google to know what Viacom uploaded on purpose and what is unauthorized unless it receives direct notification about it. Just like the DMCA safe harbors require. Not only that, but they show that Viacom knew this as fact. First, Viacom tried to buy YouTube itself, and internal memos from Viacom execs noted that "user generated content appears to be what's driving" YouTube's success and even that "consumption of branded content on YT is low." They also specifically stated that YouTube "has many" non-infringing uses.

As for the specific issues raised by the appeals court, YouTube points out that for "willful blindness" to apply, Viacom needs to show that specific clips in this lawsuit were involved in cases where there is evidence of willful blindness by YouTube. That's because the lawsuit is just about those particular clips. If Viacom wants to go after a general willful blindness on the part of YouTube, that's way beyond what the law allows -- and the court is specific about this, noting that Viacom needs to show willful blindness to specific infringements concerning videos in the lawsuit.

But, of course, Viacom doesn't bother to show a single piece of evidence alleging willful blindness by YouTube in regards to any one of the clips in the lawsuit. Instead, in its opposition filing it once again tries to rewrite the law in its favor, trying to create a ridiculously broad general "willful blindness" standard that effectively wipes out the DMCA's 512(c) safe harbors. First, it relies almost entirely on an email sent by an ex-employee of YouTube, in which he claims there is a lot of infringement on the site, but does not name any specific videos. As Google points out, just having someone say there's infringing works on YouTube doesn't (a) show what files need to be removed or (b) even prove the works are actually infringing (see: Viacom uploading its own videos) or, most importantly (c) prove that YouTube failed to remove infringing videos when it learned they were infringing. Viacom doesn't even seem to try to show any of those things. Also, the fact that the email came from an ex-employee certainly doesn't prove that YouTube had knowledge of the specific infringements.

As the filing notes:

The type of generalized guesswork that Viacom engages in bears no resemblance to the showing of specific knowledge of clips-in-suit that the Second Circuit demanded.

In fact, Viacom's filing is really incredible. Having completely lost (at both district and appeals court levels) its ridiculous claim that "general knowledge" of some infringement somewhere on the site leads one to lose safe harbors, Viacom simply tries the same argument again, pretending that the "willful blindness" standard is basically a stand-in for "general knowledge." That's hogwash on many levels, and frankly, I'm surprised that Viacom's pricey lawyers would bother with that argument. The district court already rejected it and the appeals court was pretty clear that Viacom needed to show willful blindness on specific items, not generally.

It also tries to completely flip the burden of proof, arguing that as long as Viacom can show that infringing works were on the site, YouTube has to show that they "lacked such knowledge or awareness of Viacom's clips-in-suit." That's not how the law works. Viacom is actually arguing that the DMCA requires proving the negative. Furthermore, it argues that YouTube's failure to implement an anti-piracy filter that Viacom wanted is more proof of willful blindness. That's similarly ridiculous. The DMCA has been held, repeatedly, to not include a proactive duty to monitor. Failing to do so at the insistence of Viacom (even as YouTube was establishing its own filter anyway) is hardly proof of willful blindness to the infringement of specific clips (and given Viacom's "dizzying array" of authorized videos on the site, such a filter would hardly prove infringement). Incredibly, Viacom insists that it's YouTube trying to flip the burdens in the DMCA, but either Viacom's lawyers have totally misread... um... everything, or they're lying to the court.

They're correct that to get safe harbors the service provider needs to meet certain "burdens," but those are laid out in 512(c). It needs to be a service provider that does not have actual knowledge and when it gets the knowledge, it acts expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material. Those are pretty clearly laid out. Viacom is making things up pretending that the burden also includes the idea that if a copyright holder claims its works are there then the burden shifts to the service provider to prove the negative that it wasn't willfully blind to infringement. Viacom literally argues:

It is not Viacom's burden to prove specific knowledge or awareness. That factual issue is relevant only to the affirmative defense that YouTube is asserting; knowledge of specific infringements is not an element of Viacom's copyright infringement claims against YouTube. At trial, it will be enough for Viacom to prove that the clips-in-suit were on the website, along with some other elements of infringement liability.

Got that? Stuff on the site, plus "some other elements" and boom, no more safe harbors. That's crazy. That's clearly not the purpose of the safe harbors, because that would mean there are no DMCA safe harbors.

As YouTube noted in response:

Viacom does not even try to make the showing of clip-specific knowledge required by the Second Circuit’s ruling. It instead reverses course and claims that it is YouTube’s burden to affirmatively establish its lack of knowledge as to each specific clip-in-suit. Viacom’s novel burden-shifting argument is wrong. It is contrary to the Second Circuit’s decision, all the case law, and the structure of the DMCA itself. Viacom also ignores the record. YouTube has identified more than sufficient evidence of its lack of knowledge of infringement— including the very fact that the voluminous record in this case contains no evidence of such knowledge. Viacom’s inability to offer any evidence from which a jury could find that YouTube had actual or red-flag knowledge of even a single clip-in-suit requires that summary judgment be entered in YouTube’s favor.

Viacom goes on to argue that even though the DMCA is explicit (in 512(m)) that there is no duty to monitor, there really is a duty to monitor! How do they tap dance into that position? By arguing that while there's officially no duty to monitor, if you fail to monitor because it might show you infringing works, then you are guilty of willful blindness. Got that? There's no duty to monitor, but failing to monitor shows that you were making yourself willfully blind. If that's true, then 512(m) makes no sense, which is what Viacom (and other copyright maximalists) have always wanted (in fact, we noted just this three years ago about this case). They want a requirement for others to be their personal copyright cops and 512m gets in the way of that, so Viacom is trying to rewrite it here. In doing this, it relies heavily on the ruling in the Tiffany v. Ebay case -- but that's a very different story, involving trademark (for which the safe harbors don't apply), not copyright.

Viacom also regularly cites shows like South Park, the Daily Show and others despite the fact that Viacom explicitly (in its "rules" sent to BayTSP, its DMCA monitor) had many, if not most, of those clips left on the site as authorized.

There are a few other points up for debate -- concerning things like whether or not YouTube got financial benefits directly from infringement, whether or not reformatting YouTube videos for smartphones removes safe harbors and a few small other points that we won't get into here. Those are unlikely (hopefully) to be the center stage issue, and this post is long enough as is. Frankly, I remain surprised that Viacom's arguments seem so obviously weak. Ever since the case began, I've been surprised at how weak Viacom's arguments are. From the beginning, I expected them to have a stronger lawsuit. Having read the latest filings, it really feels like Viacom went all in early, and rather than admit it never had the goods, it's just going to try crazier and crazier arguments and hope that a court gets confused. Seems like a good way to completely throw away money.

Anyway, if you feel like digging into the three filings (YouTube's motion for summary judgment, Viacom's opposition and YouTube's reply), they're all embedded below for your reading pleasure.

Filed Under: burden of proof, copyright, dmca, filters, mandatory filters, safe harbors, videos
Companies: google, viacom, youtube

Hulu Continues To Wobble Along That Fine Line Between Success And Failure As CEO Bails

from the looking-kind-of-bad dept

If one were to make a short list of the top great ideas that were implimented horribly, unbelievably wrong, Hulu would have to be somewhere between The View and the United Nations (I'll let you decide what goes where, exactly). Hulu was the once promising entertainment venture that has ugly-morphed its way into a mere excuse for entertainment studios to claim they offer people what they want. All the while there's been some discussion about whether or not the studios that own Hulu are purposefully trying to tank it to keep people from cutting the cable cord. And throughout all of this, Hulu has never really caught on with the same kind of fevered pitch as Netflix or even Amazon for streaming service customers.

Reader Vidiot writes in about a Business Insider piece detailing all the reasons why Hulu may have one foot in the grave and the other foot hovering just over it. Amongst the less-than-awesome facts on Hulu's list are items such as a new request for $200 Million from investors, reported losses of $30 Million per quarter, and that Hulu is trying to compete against Netflix while spending one-tenth the money on original content and one-ninth the paid subscriber base. The article announces that because of all that, it's time to conclude that Hulu is a failure, but don't blame corporate leadership.

The fact is (CEO Jason) Kilar had an almost impossible job from the very beginning. Hulu doesn't own the content it distributes, so it only gets to keep a small portion of its revenues. Hulu is, in fact, owned by the companies that own said content. And those owners have little incentive to create healthy margins for Hulu at the expense of their own. The fact is, Kilar has, in a couple years, built a Web brand that you have heard of. Yes, this was done on the back of free TV and a big marketing budget. But it's still decently impressive.

I'm not sure how we went from failure to impressive in less than a hundred words (which is impressive, by the by), but I am sympathetic to Hulu's raw deal from the studios that own it -- something Mike has been pointing out for nearly four years. That said, I don't think Hulu is a failure that is so far failed that it can't be brought back from fail-dom. After all, I've heard that Justin Timberlake is taking some time away from bringing sexy back to work on bringing Myspace back and if that mess of a social network can rise from the internet grave, Hulu can too.

But whoever is going to try to bring Hulu back from the prep-coffin, it appears it isn't going to be the afore mentioned Jason Kilar, because he's decided to bail. By all accounts, Kilar tried, really tried to make this thing work, but despite some successes it's not wrong to say that Hulu hasn't turned out to be what some folks thought it would. Given the raw deal that Hulu has gotten, the conflicts of interest heading up the company, I don't blame Kilar one bit for leaving. Hulu needs to innovate despite its issues, or else we can get the funeral march going.

Filed Under: jason kilar, ownership, videos
Companies: hulu

Lionsgate Censors Remix Video That The Copyright Office Itself Used As An Example Of Fair Use

from the a-tale-of-copyright-and-fair-use dept

It has been three and a half years since I first uploaded my remix video “Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed” to YouTube. The work is an example of fair use transformative storytelling which serves as a visual critique of gender roles and representations in modern pop culture vampire media.

Since I published the remix in 2009 it has been viewed over 3 million times on YouTube and fans have translated the subtitles into 30 different languages. It has been featured and written about by the LA Times, Boston Globe, Salon, Slate, Wired, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly and discussed on NPR radio. It was nominated for a 2010 Webby Award in the best remix/mashup category. The video is used in law school programs, media studies courses and gender studies curricula across the country. The remix also ignited countless online debates over the troubling ways stalking-type behavior is often framed as deeply romantic in movie and television narratives.

This past summer, together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I even screened the remix for the US Copyright Office at the 2012 hearings on exemptions to the DMCA. Afterward my Buffy vs Edward remix was mentioned by name in the official recommendations by the US Copyright Office (pdf) on exemptions to the DMCA as an example of a transformative noncommercial video work.

"Based on the video evidence presented, the Register is able to conclude that diminished quality likely would impair the criticism and comment contained in noncommercial videos. For example, the Register is able to perceive that Buffy vs Edward and other noncommercial videos would suffer significantly because of blurring and the loss of detail in characters’ expression and sense of depth."

-Recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, October 2012 (Page 133)

Despite the clear and rather unambiguous fair use argument that exists for the video, Lionsgate Entertainment has now abused YouTube's system and filed a DMCA takedown and had my remix deleted for "copyright infringement." Below is a brief chronicle of my struggle to get Buffy vs Edward back on YouTube where it belongs.

On October 9th 2012 I received a message from YouTube stating that Buffy vs Edward had "matched third party content" owned or licensed by Lionsgate and "ads may appear next to it." Lionsgate acquired ownership of the Twilight movie franchise in 2012 (via the purchase of Summit Entertainment for 412 million dollars) so the claim appeared to be directed at the 1 minute 48 seconds of footage I quoted from the first Twilight movie in my 6 minute remix.

I always turn all ads off on my remix videos and never profit off them. But sure enough when I checked my channel, Lionsgate was monetizing my noncommercial fair use remix with ads for Nordstrom fall fashions which popped up over top of my gender critique of pop culture vampires. Incidentally this copyright claim also prevented the remix from playing on all iOS devices like iPads and iPhones because they are not ”monetized platforms“.

I thought perhaps YouTube’s Content ID System had automatically tagged the video and didn’t understand that it was a fair use. In the hopes I could get the mistake cleared up I immediately used YouTube’s built-in process to register a fair use dispute.

Less then 24 hours later however I received another message from YouTube informing me that Lionsgate had reviewed my fair use claim and rejected it, reinstating their claim on the remix and again monetizing the video with intrusive popup ads.

Concerned at what appeared to be a blatant disregard for fair use provisions, I contacted a lawyer at New Media Rights named Art Neill. New Media Rights drafted a rather detailed 1000 word legal argument citing case law and explaining how Buffy vs Edward was in fact about as clear of an example of fair use as exists. This included fair use arguments for the nature and purpose of the transformative use, amount used and market effect. YouTube's built-in system now allows for a second round of copyright disputes, called an appeal process. So I returned to YouTube and filed an official appeal of the reinstated bogus copyright claim by Lionsgate using the fair use argument and legal language from my lawyer. (See the full text of the fair use argument we made here.)

On November 26th 2012, after a month of waiting, I finally got a response stating that Lionsgate had decided to release their copyright claim on my remix. Victory!

Or so I thought.

That same day I noticed another notification from YouTube saying that my Buffy vs Edward remix had "matched third party content" owned or licensed by Lionsgate and that ads may appear on my video. Wait what? Deja-vu. Hadn't I just spent nearly 2 months dealing with exactly that? On closer inspection this new claim was for "visual content" owned by Lionsgate and the claim I had just fought and finally won had been for "audiovisual" content. No further information was provided as to what the difference was between the two claims or what content exactly was supposedly infringing.

It appeared as though Lionsgate just filed two separate infringement claims on the same piece of media.

 Confused and slightly frustrated I once again embarked on repeating the same dispute process as before. I filed my fair use dispute via YouTube’s built-in form exactly as I had the first time around.

Again, just like the first time, it was rejected by Lionsgate within 24 hours and they reinstated their claim on the remix.

So again I filed my second long-form appeal using YouTube’s system, again making the detailed legal arguments crafted by my lawyer at New Media Rights which again lay out very clearly all the fair use arguments. And again, I waited for a response.

On December 18th I received notification from YouTube that Lionsgate had again ignored my fair use arguments, rejected my appeal and this time had the remix deleted from YouTube entirely.

I was dumbfounded. And to add insult to injury I was now locked out of my YouTube account and had a copyright infringement “strike” placed on my channel.

In order to regain access to my account I was also forced to attend YouTube’s insulting “copyright school” and take a test on fair use. Since I’ve been giving lectures on fair use doctrine for artists and video makers for a number of years this was a breeze, but still insulting because my video was not infringing in the first place.

Once I was allowed back into my account I found that YouTube is now penalizing me for this “strike” by preventing me from uploading videos longer than 15 minutes.

I consulted my lawyer again, and following the advice on YouTube’s copyright FAQ page, he reached out to the representatives of Lionsgate who administer their online content and had issued the DMCA takedown. What he found out from that correspondence was worrying.

Representatives of Lionsgate, a company called MovieClips that claims to manage Lionsgate’s clips on Youtube, confirmed in an email to New Media Rights that they had filed a DMCA takedown on Buffy vs Edward because I did not want them to monetize the remix. In fact this is exactly what the company’s representative, Matty Van Schoor, said in a response email to New Media Rights on December 20, 2012.

“The audio/visual content of this video has been reviewed by our team as well as the YouTube content ID system and it has been determined that the video utilizes copyrighted works belonging to Lionsgate. Had our requestes to monetize this video not been disputed, we would have placed an ad on the cotent [sic] and allowed it to remain online. Unfortunately after appeal, we are left with no other option than to remove the content.”

No other option? How about recognizing it is fair use and dropping the complaint? They did not answer or even acknowledge our fair use arguments via email, despite fair use being raised multiple times. 

Perhaps this is just the action of a rogue studio, but it hints at a bit of a nightmare scenario for transformative media makers and remix artists. The fear is that fair use will be ignored in favor of a monetizing model in which media corporations will “allow” critical, educational and/or transformative works only if they can retain effective ownership and directly profit off them.

It appears that Lionsgate is attempting to do just that. What if every time The Daily Show made fun of a Fox News clip, News Corp. was allowed to claim ownership over the entire Daily Show episode in order to monetize it?

There are limitations on takedowns. For instance, as Neill from New Media Rights points out, the DMCA Section 512 prohibits knowingly, materially misrepresenting any information in takedown notices. At least one court, the case of the baby dancing to Prince in the Lenz case, has even required that DMCA takedown notice senders consider fair use before sending a takedown.

Buffy vs Edward has now been offline for 3 weeks. Over the past year, before the takedown, the remix had been viewed an average of 34,000 times per month.

Since none of YouTube’s internal systems were able to prevent this abuse by Lionsgate, and our direct outreach to the content owner hit a brick wall, with the help of New Media Rights I have now filed an official DMCA counter-notification with YouTube. Lionsgate has 14 days to either allow the remix back online or sue me. We will see what happens.

This is what a broken copyright enforcement system looks like.

One last note, New Media Rights has offered me invaluable advice and guidance throughout this battle. They are a small, non-profit two lawyer operation on a shoe-string budget fighting to make sure artists like me are heard. So if you can please consider donating to them here.

PS: Until we can get the takedown reversed, you can still watch the HTML5 popup video version of Buffy vs Edward here.

Reposted with permission from RebelliousPixels.com

Filed Under: fair use, jonathan mcintosh, mashups, takedowns, videos
Companies: lionsgate

Thank Joe Lieberman For YouTube Accidentally Censoring Key Syrian Watchdog's YouTube Channel

from the bet-that'll-stop-terror dept

Senator Joe Lieberman may finally be out of the Senate, but his "legacy" lives on. Over the years, we've noted that he's regularly sought to censor technology that terrorists use, on the ridiculous theory that censorship somehow makes the terrorists disappear. One of his campaigns, way back in 2008, was to force YouTube to magically censor videos from terrorists. After putting a lot of public pressure on YouTube, the company caved. And... as a result of that, it recently shut down the video channel of an important Syrian watchdog organization which had been posting video evidence of atrocities occurring in that country. YouTube has apologized and reinstated the channel, but this is what happens when you encourage censorship. It is impossible not to have it lead to censoring important speech.

YouTube sent the Observatory an email on Sunday that said its channels "syrianhro" and "almrsd" had "violated the policy of the site by publishing shocking and offensive videos," the Britain-based watchdog said.

The Observatory, which disseminates graphic videos on YouTube of atrocities from the bloody civil war the UN says has killed more than 60,000 people, condemned the closure.

"This is the second time in two months that the site administration has closed the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights channel," it said in a statement, in reference specifically to almrsd.

Of course, if we're to take Lieberman's theory to its logical conclusion, so long as no one can see the atrocities in Syria, we can all pretend they haven't happened, right?

Filed Under: activism, free speech, joe lieberman, syria, terrorism, videos, youtube
Companies: google, youtube

No, The Major Labels Didn't Fake 2 Billion YouTube Views

from the manipulations... dept

The record labels have a long history of knowing how to manipulate key numbers to their advantage. Look how labels have manipulated the various charts over the years and you'll find that it's a big part of how they do business. So it probably struck little by surprise to hear that the labels were now being accused of massively manipulating YouTube view counts to make certain songs look a hell of a lot more popular than they really are. The only problem? It's not actually true.

The DailyDot -- who normally does a fantastic job -- broke the story that got most of the attention, reporting:

Google slashed the cumulative view counts on YouTube channels belonging to Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG, and RCA Records by more than 2 billion views Tuesday, a drastic winter cleanup that may be aimed at shutting down black hat view count-building techniques employed by a community of rogue view count manipulators on the video-sharing site.

Universal's channel is the one that took the biggest hit. According to figures compiled by the YouTube statistics analysts at SocialBlade, the record company's YouTube channel lost more than 1 billion views from its preexisting tally of 7 billion views Tuesday.

Lots of other publications then picked up on the Daily Dot version and suddenly the story was everywhere -- in particular claiming that the labels were being punished for faked video views. Only problem? That's not really true. The report suggests that YouTube has begun a big campaign against view inflation by YouTube users across the board. That part is true. But the untrue part is that the major labels were faking so many views. Instead, it turns out that most of the issue was just that the labels had moved their videos from YouTube to Vevo -- the online video site that the labels had started a few years ago (built on top of YouTube technology). As Billboard notes, the "de-spamming" effort did delete about 1.5 million views from Sony and Universal Music videos -- so there may be some funny business, but that's tiny compared to the 2 billion views that disappeared. But the reason those went away was much more mundane:

The answer comes in the second way that YouTube changed its view count. The company recently decided to remove view counts for videos that are no longer live on the channel, or so-called "dead videos." For Universal and Sony, that meant thousands of music videos that over the past three years slowly have migrated to the VEVO channel, which is jointly owned by the two companies. A senior label executive confirmed the migration....

That meant high-profile videos that once lived separately on the Universal and Sony YouTube channels have been relocated to Vevo. As a result, the views that those videos received during their time on the dedicated label channels were taken away in YouTube's latest "clean up" effort.

In other words, those views happened; they weren't "faked" or even double counted when they went on to Vevo. But because the videos are no longer on the channel, YouTube considers them "dead videos." They still live on in YouTube, just under a different channel.

Considering how many people have been sending this story over, I know lots of people would like to believe Sony Music and Universal Music faked 2 billion views and were now being punished for it, but it's just not the case.

Filed Under: fake, major labels, videos, view counts, youtube
Companies: google, sony music, universal music, vevo

Italian Prosecutor Still Wants To Put Google Execs In Jail Because Of A Video Uploaded By Some Kids

from the secondary-liability-mess dept

Back in 2008 we were amazed that prosecutors in Italy were seeking to put four Google execs in jail, claiming that they were liable for a video that was uploaded to Google video, showing some kids mocking another child who is autistic. Google even took down the video after being notified of it -- and the video itself was evidence used to go after the kids for their actions. And yet, for reasons that still make no sense, prosecutors deemed that four Google execs should be found criminally liable for the fact that some kids uploaded that video. The execs in question did not taunt the child. They did not make the video. They did not upload the video. They were unaware of the video's existence. It is solely because they work at Google, and Google was a tool used by these kids to incriminate themselves, that prosecutors went after them.

Making matters even more ridiculous, three of the four execs were then found guilty and given "suspended" 6 month jail sentences (meaning they didn't actually have to go to jail). A reading of the ruling by an Italian legal expert noted that the judge appeared to confuse different parts of the law to come to that conclusion. Part of the issue was that because some users "complained" in the Google Video comments, prosecutors claim that Google should have known and taken down the video (because, they apparently think that people at Google read every single comment).

Google appealed, of course, and Italian prosecutors are still arguing that the execs belong in jail for reasons that still escape me. At best, all this is doing is telling tech execs to not do business in Italy, because the country apparently has completely wacky secondary liability laws that mean you might be criminally liable (i.e., face jailtime) if anyone uses your service to do something mean to another person. The easiest way to avoid that kind of liability: don't do business in Italy at all.

Filed Under: italy, secondary liability, videos
Companies: google