Vimeo Pressured Into Setting Up Its Own Content ID

from the via-audible-magic dept

The legacy copyright industry has been pushing for years to make automatic fingerprinting and blocking a requirement under the law. In fact, many lawsuits from both the record labels and movie studios have argued that automated fingerprinting is already a requirement under the law -- though, those legal arguments have been consistently rejected. For example, in the record labels lawsuit against Vimeo for allowing "lipdub" videos, the labels have been claiming that Vimeo's failure to offer an automated system for filtering out copyright-covered works amounted to "willful blindness." While the court rejected that argument wholeheartedly, noting that the law makes "clear that service providers are under no affirmative duty to seek out infringement," it appears Vimeo has decided to do so anyway.

On Wednesday, Vimeo announced its new Copyright Match tool. Like basically every non-Content ID filter out there, this one relies on technology from Audible Magic, which doesn't necessarily have the best reputation. Vimeo seems to bend over backwards to insist that it will allow fair use... but it appears they're still taking a "takedown first and review later" approach to it. If your work is blocked, you can claim fair use, and then wait for Vimeo to determine if they agree with you or not -- even if the copyright holder never complained about the work.

In other words, it's another step towards permission culture, rather than allowing the sort of permissionless creativity and innovation that is so important today.

Filed Under: content id, contente match, copyright, creativity, fair use, filters, permission
Companies: audible magic, vimeo