News Company's 'Digital Audience Director' Fails To Understand Embedding, Issues Bogus DMCA Takedown Notices

from the maybe-understand-the-platforms-before-trying-to-engage-an-audience dept

Here comes DMCA abuse to ruin everyone's retweeting. T. Greg Doucette -- who has been covering acts of violence by police officers in response to George Floyd protests -- was recently hit with a bogus takedown notice on behalf of Seattle's King 5 television station. Here's the start of Doucette's thread on the bogus takedown, during which he begs for the opportunity to "curbstomp" Tegna, Inc. in court for being so stupid as to consider an embedded video to be copyright infringement.

As Doucette explains, the targeted tweet contained a little of his commentary and an embedded retweet of the original video, which was originally posted by King 5 reporter Michael Crowe.

As you can see from the altered-by-takedown-notice tweet, there's still a link to the removed content. Typing in that URL brings up Crowe's original tweet.

That link comes from Twitter's "Tweet This Video" function, which embeds the video in the new tweet, along with a link to the source account. This is all perfectly fine under the Twitter Rules. Users of the service agree to have their content used this way by other users. Retweeting is a large part of Twitter's platform. If users want to opt out, they can make their accounts private, preventing retweets of their tweets or embeds of their videos.

It's also fine under copyright law. The content never moves. Doucette's retweet didn't perform an unauthorized duplication of the content. It linked to the original content through the embed. In essence, Crowe's tweet stayed where it was while Doucette's tweet simply allowed users to view the content through Doucette's account, rather Crowe's.

Tegna, represented by "Director of Digital Audience Development" Ian Hill, didn't just target Doucette with a bogus DMCA notice. It also targeted five other users for using Twitter's "Tweet This Video" function to embed its reporter's video.

Presumably, Tegna's Ian Hill doesn't think he's infringing on anyone's copyright when he does it:

So, what's different about Doucette's tweet? Well, the only difference is Ian Hill hit Doucette with a bogus DMCA takedown notice for doing the same thing Tegna's digital rep did here.

Misunderstanding the platform you're using and the content-sharing tools built into the system is no way to develop a digital audience, Ian. Hopefully Tenga will drop its BS complaints against these users and allow Twitter to restore the non-infringement the company brought misguided force of law against.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, embeds, greg doucette, takedown
Companies: king 5 seattle, tegna

Brazilian Performance Rights Group Claims Collecting From Bloggers Was Simply An 'Operational Error' After Google Pushes Back

from the and-i-thought-google-was-just-there-to-screw-lowly-creatives dept

Last week, Brazil's citizens were in an uproar about the national performance rights organization (ECAD) attempting to charge a non-profit blog over $200 a month for embedding Youtube and Vimeo videos, and implicitly threatening to similarly bill other blogs. ECAD claimed that not only was this allowed by Brazil's currently-standing laws but that, despite collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from Youtube itself every year, this new set of fees would not be a double-dip.

How quickly things change, especially for entities who find themselves staring down an angry internet. At first, ECAD seemed disturbingly untroubled by the uproar, including the memeification of its intention to stretch the definition of "public performance" to include all audible sound. But it suddenly changed its prohibitively expensive tune when hundreds of thousands of dollars were at stake.

None other than Google Brazil itself issued a blog post stating that ECAD's existing agreement with Youtube did not allow the agency to collect fees from bloggers, pointing out the obvious to ECAD's wilfully obtuse representatives:

These sites don't host or transmit any content when they associate a YouTube video to their site, and as such, the fact of embedding videos from YouTube can't be treated as a ‘retransmission'. As these sites aren't performing any music, ECAD can't, within the law, collect any payment from these.

Having been smacked down by its main benefactor, ECAD issued a statement of its own, claiming the whole thing was just an "error" and that it had no intention of setting up tollbooths on every website with embedded video:

1- Ecad has never had the intention to curtail the freedom on the internet, known to be a space devoted to information, dissemination of music and other creative works, and propagation of ideas. The institution also lacks a copyright billing strategy geared to embedded videos. Royalties collections for webcasting have been under re-evaluation since February 29th, and the case reported in recent days took place before then. Nevertheless, it resulted from an operational error of interpretation, which represents an isolated fact in this segment. (...)

2- Two years ago, Ecad and Google signed a letter of intent that guides the relationship between both organizations. The document details thatEcad can collect copyright fees for music coming from embedded videos, as long as it gives advance notice to Google/YouTube. As Ecad did not send such a notification, it becomes clear that this is not its goal. If it were the case, it would have sent the notification the letter of intent requires. (...)

Note that ECAD has left itself a bit of an opening for pursuing these fees in the future. Supposedly it can still go after blogs but only if it informs Google/Youtube of its intention to do so. It seems the only error it feels it made was getting caught. Everything else was simply a clerical screw-up and if all ducks had been properly ordered, it would have been free to bill websites for linking to Youtube.

As it stands now, ECAD has backed completely away from this plan. But, once the furor dies down and recedes into the past, I wouldn't be surprised to see this sort of tactic deployed again, if not by ECAD, than certainly by another "aspirational" performance rights organization.

(Hat tip to Techdirt's own Glyn Moody and his amazing Twitter feed. He's asked you all very nicely to follow him and this post is an example of why you should. So, follow this link to do exactly that..)

 

Filed Under: brazil, copyright, embeds, errors, performance rights, videos
Companies: google

Did You Embed The Leaked Trailer For Dark Knight Rises On Your Blog? Under SOPA, You May Face Jail Time

from the the-dark-knight-rises,-indeed dept

You may have heard that, over the weekend, the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises was leaked (eventually leading to the official release of the trailer). As tends to happen with these kinds of things, they spread pretty quickly and the video (which, let us remember, is an advertisement for the movie) went pretty viral, and lots of people were sharing it. Now, if you're normal and clueful, this is a good thing. If you're lawyers for Warner Bros., you flip out and start sending out legal notices. Rob Sheridan received one of these notices after he included the embed of one of the videos of the trailer on his Tumblr site. He pointed out how ridiculous it is that he's getting hit for merely embedding a video, since he doesn't host it at all, and it seems like the takedown notice should have gone to the folks actually hosting the video instead. Unfortunately, it's become equally popular to go after those who link to infringing content, usually relying on 512(d)'s requirements that "information location tools" "disable access" to the material once notified. Thus, Warner Bros notifies Tumblr, and there goes the video. Personally, this seems silly. A simple link or embed should never be seen as infringing, especially when it's easy enough to go after those actually hosting the video.

That said, this whole incident should be a damn good reminder of why the felony streaming portions of SOPA in the House and S.978 (the felony streaming bill) in the Senate are pretty scary. Under those bills, Sheridan could have potentially faced many years in jail for his helping to promote this movie. Remember, the point of these bills is to make a willfully infringing "public performance" of such works a potential felony. It has to be for commercial advantage or private financial gain, but those can be broadly interpreted: if the purpose is to get people to your site and advertise yourself and your work.. that can be commercial advantage. It's willful, because everyone knew the video was leaked, and not legit at the time. But is it a public performance? Hell yes.

Courts have determined that links can be public performances, noting that:

the most logical interpretation of the Copyright Act is to hold that a public performance or display includes each step in the process by which a protected work wends its way to its audience.... Using the same approach, the court determines that the unauthorized “link” to the live webcasts that Davis provides on his website qualifies...

So forget about worrying about Justin Bieber going to jail... start worrying about merely embedding the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises.

Is this really the kind of law that America needs right now?

Filed Under: dark knight rises, dmca, embeds, infringement, rob sheridan, sopa, trailers
Companies: warner bros.

Dutch Collection Society Backs Down Slightly On Video Embeds

from the but-not-really dept

Dennis Laumen alerts us to an update on the story concerning Dutch music collection society Buma/Stemra's plan to charge bloggers for embedding YouTube videos on their site. After the story got lots of publicity, Buma appears to have backed down ever so slightly, saying that "amateur" bloggers are off the hook. But, the definition of "amateur" is basically only if you don't have any ads. Put up some Google AdSense... and suddenly you're a "pro" who has to pay up.

Filed Under: collection society, embeds, netherlands, performance, youtube videos
Companies: buma/stemra

Dutch Collection Society Looks To Charge Bloggers For Embedding YouTube Videos

from the pay-up...-again dept

Over the past year, we've noticed an explosion in ridiculous attempts by music collection societies (often totally clueless about technology) to extend their ability to collect for positively ridiculous things (while also looking to significantly increase their collection rates). The latest, sent in by Dennis Laumen, is that the Dutch collection society, Buma/Stemra, is claiming that it's going to start charging bloggers 130 euros for every 6 videos they embed. This is, of course, technologically clueless. The embedding of a video doesn't change the fact that it's actually playing from and hosted at the original site (such as YouTube). All embedding does is allow the video to appear via the other page, even though, technically, it's all still happening at its original location. Claiming that this is somehow a "new" publication of the content is technologically incorrect.

This is somewhat similar to ASCAP's recent technologically clueless claim that embedding YouTube videos should count as a public performance (along with its other recent claims that iTunes 30-second previews and your mobile phone ringtones should also be counted as public performances). You sort of get the feeling that many of these collection societies came to the conclusion about two years ago that they're functionally obsolete, and rather than adapt to the times, they've all agreed to the same basic principle of going out in a blaze of glory. They're trying to vastly increase rates while covering any and ever attempt to use music in any way, bleeding everyone dry while making it that much more difficult for up-and-coming acts to get heard (since venues that promote them can't pay the crazy rates) and (even better) setting up their payout mechanisms to massively favor the top acts.

For the most part, these collection societies are simply being greedy, without putting a single thought towards actually helping composers and songwriters. They're looking for every single penny they could possibly collect today, and ignoring the medium and long-term impact of trying to charge for any sort of promotional behavior.

Filed Under: collection society, embeds, netherlands, performance, youtube videos
Companies: buma/stemra

Can Anyone Explain Why Any Warner Music Artist Or Website Still Embeds YouTube?

from the do-they-not-know? dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in the BoingBoing post about how the various YouTube videos on Warner Music Group subsidiary Sire Records are all broken due to "copyright claims" from WMG. This isn't a new story, as we've been among those covering the YouTube-Warner Music dispute since December when it became public. Plenty of Warner artists have been screwed over by this move, having their official videos pulled down because Warner demands YouTube pay it for the free service of hosting those videos. You would think, with bandwidth costs being what they were, WMG would be thrilled that a company like Google is willing to host them totally free and manage the infrastructure.

So, this particular story isn't new or surprising, and doesn't involve (as the original implies), WMG accusing itself of piracy. However, it does raise a separate question. How backwards are Warner Music and its various sub-labels that they still have taken down YouTube videos embedded on their official sites. After all, it's been more than four months since this dispute began. You would think that whoever is in charge of running these websites would have stopped using YouTube embeds a long time ago. It's really not that difficult to replace a YouTube embed with a locally hosted one. However, the fact that Warner hasn't done so pretty much makes the point, doesn't it: the company apparently doesn't have the tech talent to host its own videos. That's a lot sadder a statement than having just taken the officials videos down in the first place. Update: Ethan from Warner shows up in the comments to say that this was just an honest mistake, and the company had taken YouTube embeds off of all their sites, but somehow missed Sire Records. I'm still not sure how this goes on for four months with no one noticing it... You'd have to think that someone would visit those sites during that time and noticed.

Filed Under: copyright, embeds, videos
Companies: google, warner music group, youtube