What If The Era Of Video Game Mashups Is About To Begin?

from the hoo-boy dept

Search the Techdirt pages for the term "mashup" and you will see a metric ton of ink spilled on the topic. Most of those posts deal with the copyright implications of mashup creators, be they for music or literature. It is, frankly, a tortured landscape largely littered with the metaphorical bodies of artists creating new and interesting artwork by combining previous works to create something new. Music is the easiest entry point for those not in the know. Take the music from one song and lyrical output from another, put them together, and you get something new and interesting. When done well, the results are mind-blowing. As are the constant attacks from original creators and rightsholders that seem to see such mashup work as a threat to the originals.

But what about the video game space? Go poke around for terms like "video game mashup" and you'll get plenty of results, but all of them discussing theoretical mashups. You can get a Cracked article entitled "4 Video Game Mashups Too Awesome To Exist", or a GameRant post entitled "5 Video Game Mashups That Would Blow Our Minds". Even in those headlines you get a common theme: we wish we could have these things, but they don't exist.

Well, at least one does. Crusader Blade is a mashup mod combining Paradox Interactive's Crusader Kings 3 and TaleWorlds Entertainment's Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord. Confused? Well, this will take some brief background.

Mount & Blade puts the player in a medieval fictional world and allows them to hack and slash their way to glory, fighting battles alongside the rest of their army, with some RPG elements thrown in. The battles featuring hundreds of combatants are really the sell for the game, however. Crusader Kings 3 is a medieval grand strategy game focused on diplomacy, intrigue, relationship management, managing a family dynasty, and warring with other nearby kingdoms and realms. My listing warfare last was not coincidence. The warring part of the game is extremely barebones by modern standards, literally just showing an avatar for an army that marches and then fights to a mathematical outcome. Think of the battle sequence like one in a Civilization game. It's not an afterthought, but it's close to one.

What this mod has done is make owners of both games able to seamlessly use both games to play both the grand strategy portions of Crusader Kings and conduct actual battles using Mount & Blade. Yes, seriously.

Crusader Blade is a mod that lets you directly control any battles taking place in the game by literally using a whole other video game to do it. That game is medieval combat title Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, and in the simplest sense possible, the mod works by pausing CKIII at the time of a battle, switching over to Mount & Blade so you can resolve it, then switching back again.

And here you can see the mod in action.

The comments both on Twitter and in that YouTube video can be generally sorted into two categories. The first and most prevalent can be paraphrased universally as "Oh my sweet god I want this right now!". Descriptions that this mod has created "the greatest game ever" are common.

But the second category can be described as sincere concern that either Paradox Interactive or Taleworlds Entertainment firing off cease and desist letters, issuing DMCA takedowns, or otherwise taking action on the mod as some sort of copyright infringement. And those concerns are entirely understandable, given all the copyright action that has occurred over mashups in other entertainment genres.

To be clear, those fears don't appear to have come true as of yet. And to continue to be clear, such actions by the game studios would be asinine. In fact, we can perhaps say that the video game industry is uniquely positioned to be fully accepting of a new video game mashup world like this should this sort of thing flourish. The reason for that is because mashups like this require the player to have copies of both games in order for it to work. In other words, this mod is likely chiefly doing two things: giving the players of each individual game a reason to buy the other and rewarding players that have already bought both.

What does that sound like to you? Because to me, it sounds like an incredible way to increase sales of both games at the cost of not being the copyright fun police with their games. We'll see both if this sort of game mashup becomes more than a one-off and if the industry can stay out of its own way.

Filed Under: mashups, video games

Oh The Culture You'll Cancel, Thanks To The Ninth Circuit And Copyright

from the things-actually-worth-being-upset-about dept

If everyone's going to be talking about Dr. Seuss, then we need to talk about this terrible decision from the Ninth Circuit a few months ago. Not to validate the idea of "cancel culture" in the particular way it's often bandied about as a sort of whining over people not wanting to be associated with certain ideas, but because when law takes away the ability to express them in the first place, that's censorship, it's an affront to the First Amendment, and it's something we all should be outraged about. And, as this case illustrates, the law in question is copyright.

We've written about this case, Dr. Seuss Enters., L.P. v. ComicMix LLC, 983 F.3d 443 (9th Cir. 2020), many, many times before: some people wrote a mash-up using Seussian-type imagery and Star Trek vernacular to express new ideas that neither genre alone had been able to express before. And Dr. Seuss's estate sued them for it.

The little bit of good news: their trademark claim failed. Applying the Rogers test to determine whether the Lanham Act could support such a claim, both the district court and the appeals court agreed: it didn't.

Under the Rogers test, the trademark owner does not have an actionable Lanham Act claim unless the use of the trademark is "either (1) not artistically relevant to the underlying work or (2) explicitly misleads consumers as to the source or content of the work." Neither of these prongs is easy to meet. As to the first prong, any artistic relevance "above zero" means the Lanham Act does not apply unless the use of the trademark is explicitly misleading. Boldly easily surpasses this low bar: as a mash-up of Go! and Star Trek, the allegedly valid trademarks in the title, the typeface, and the style of Go! are relevant to achieving Boldly's artistic purpose. Nor is the use of the claimed Go! trademarks "explicitly misleading," which is a high bar that requires the use to be "an 'explicit indication,' 'overt claim,' or 'explicit misstatement'" about the source of the work. Thus, although titling a book "Nimmer on Copyright," "Jane Fonda's Workout Book," or "an authorized biography" can explicitly misstate who authored or endorsed the book, a title that "include[s] a well-known name" is not explicitly misleading if it only "implicitly suggest[s] endorsement or sponsorship." Boldly is not explicitly misleading as to its source, though it uses the Seussian font in the cover, the Seussian style of illustrations, and even a title that adds just one word—Boldly—to the famous title—Oh, the Places You'll Go!. Seuss's evidence of consumer confusion in its expert survey does not change the result. The Rogers test drew a balance in favor of artistic expression and tolerates "the slight risk that [the use of the trademark] might implicitly suggest endorsement or sponsorship to some people." [p. 31-32]

Note: as you read the quotes from the decision be aware that the court regularly refers to the mash-up as "Boldly" and the original Seuss work it riffed on as "Go!"

But while the Ninth Circuit was accommodating to artistry on the trademark front, it was hostile on the copyright front and overturned the district court's finding that the mash-up was fair use. It walked through the fair use factors with its thumb heavily on the side of the copyright owner, willfully blind to any "countervailing copyright principles [that would] counsel otherwise." [p. 11]. For instance, on the second factor, the nature of the work, it looked at the mash-up with a harsher eye because the original work had been a creative one, rather than one more informational. ("Hence, Boldly's copying of a creative and "expressive work[]" like Go! tilts the second factor against fair use." [p. 19])

But what's most alarming is not just how the court applied the other factors, but how its analysis effectively expanded the power of a copyright holder to shut down others' subsequent expression, far more than the statute allows, the Progress Clause of the Constitution permits, or the First Amendment tolerates.

For instance, on the fourth factor, because the original work, "Oh, the Places You'll Go," targeted the graduation market, the court gave it the power to shut out subsequent works that also might serve the same market by somehow construing the mash-up as a competitor with the original, even though it was a distinctively different creature—after all, there was no Star Trek in the original, and the appeal of the second work was entirely based on consumers wanting both genres combined in one.

The court further hangs this analysis on the fact that one of the exclusive rights a copyright holder has is the ability to license derivative works. But when combined with its flawed analysis on the first factor, transformativeness, and also the third, examining the amount and substantiality of the original used, it lets that right to license derivatives effectively swallow all fair use. The Dr. Seuss estate likes to license its works, the court reasons, including to those who might want to combine them with other genres. But if people could do these sorts of mash-ups for free then the Dr. Seuss estate would have a harder time making money from those licenses.

Crucially, ComicMix does not overcome the fact that Seuss often collaborates with other creators, including in projects that mix different stories and characters. Seuss routinely receives requests for collaborations and licenses, and has entered into various collaborations that apply Seuss's works to new creative contexts, such as the television and book series entitled The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, a collaboration with The Jim Henson Company, famous for its puppetry and the creation of other characters like the Muppets. Other collaborations include a digital game called Grinch Panda Pop, that combines Jam City's Panda character with a Grinch character; figurines that combine Funko Inc.'s toy designs with Seuss characters; and a clothing line that combines Comme des Garçons' heart design with Grinch artwork. [p. 28-29]

Of course, the answer to this concern is "so what"? Because if the court were right, and this were the sort of market harm that would trump fair use, it would mean that the only such combinations we will ever get are the ones that the Dr. Seuss estate deigns to allow—assuming they allow any at all, because, per the court, it's totally ok if they don't ("Seuss certainly has the right to "the artistic decision not to saturate those markets with variations of their original." [p. 29]). If it chooses not to license a mash-up with Star Trek, then the world will never get a Seussian-Star Trek mash-up. Even though that's exactly the sort of making-something-new-there-hasn't-been-before creativity that copyright law is supposed to incentivize. Copyright law exists so that we can get new works, but per this Ninth Circuit decision the function of copyright law is instead to obstruct them.

And it won't just be this particular mash-up that we'll have to do without. Because with this decision the court is giving copyright holders the power to not only veto subsequent uses of a work but an entire expressive vernacular (and one that may even transcend any particular copyrighted work).

In fact, this lawsuit manages to not even be about the alleged infringement of a particular work. In some ways it is, such as the way the court takes issue with the fact that the mash-up referenced 14 of the 24 pages of the original Seussian "Places You'll Go" book [p. 20]. Of course, even that view ignores how unfaithful a copy the later work must inherently be given how much got left behind of the original, and how much space the omissions left for something new. But the court was even more put out by the pieces of the work used, objecting strenuously to the detail of the references, even though the use of that detail was so that the reference could be a meaningful enough foundation upon which to convey the new idea of the subsequent work.

Crucially, ComicMix did not merely take a set of unprotectable visual units, a shape here and a color patch there. For each of the highly imaginative illustrations copied by ComicMix, it replicated, as much and as closely as possible from Go!, the exact composition, the particular arrangements of visual components, and the swatches of well-known illustrations. ComicMix's claim that it "judiciously incorporated just enough of the original to be identifiable" as Seussian or that its "modest" taking merely "alludes" to particular Seuss illustrations is flatly contradicted by looking at the books. During his deposition, Boldly illustrator Templeton detailed the fact that he "stud[ied] the page [to] get a sense of what the layout was," and then copied "the layout so that things are in the same place they're supposed to be." The result was, as Templeton admitted, that the illustrations in Boldly were "compositionally similar" to the corresponding ones in Go!. In addition to the overall visual composition, Templeton testified that he also copied the illustrations down to the last detail, even "meticulously try[ing] to reproduce as much of the line work as [he could]." [p. 20-21]

And it wasn't even the pieces of that work that irked the court. In defending its distaste for these verbatim references, the court cites the mash-up's inclusion of the illustration of the machine from Sneetches, which was, not incidentally, an entirely different work than the book the defendants were being accused of copying too much from.

For example, ComicMix's copying of a Sneetches illustration exhibits both the extensive quantitative and qualitative taking by ComicMix. Sneetches is a short Seuss story about two groups of Sneetches: the snooty star-bellied Sneetches and the starless ones. The story's plot, the character, and the moral center on a highly imaginative and intricately drawn machine that can take the star-shaped status-symbol on and off the bellies of the Sneetches. Different iterations of the machine, the heart of Sneetches, appear in ten out of twenty-two pages of the book. ComicMix took this "highly expressive core" of Sneetches. Templeton testified that "the machine in the Star-Bellied Sneetches story" was "repurposed to remind you of the transporter" in Star Trek. Drawing the machine "took. . . about seven hours" because Templeton tried to "match" the drawing down to the "linework" of Seuss. He "painstakingly attempted" to make the machines "identical." In addition to the machine, Boldly took "the poses that the Sneetches are in" so that "[t]he poses of commander Scott and the Enterprise crew getting into the machine are similar." Boldly also captured the particular "crosshatch" in how Dr. Seuss rendered the machine, the "puffs of smoke coming out of the machine," and the "entire layout." [p. 23]

In other words, because the machine was important to a (completely different) story, the Dr. Seuss estate got to say no to anyone who wanted to reference that import. Yes, the mash-up referenced it in detail, but that's how the reference could be recognizable. The court is clearly offended by any verbatim copying of any aspect of the image, but fair use does not forbid verbatim copying or otherwise require deprecating the quality of the original. Yet per the court's reasoning, verbatim references in "overall composition and placement of the shapes, colors and detailed linework" are off-limits, even though using them did not amount to making an infringing copy of the entire work, page, or even full illustration and ultimately became part of something substantially different from the original. Because even if the original work had certain characters in certain poses that the mash-up emulated, it didn't have them posed in the futuristic environment that the mash-up expressed. That overall visual tableau was something new and different and transformative.

Above is a representative sample of what the plaintiffs showed to compare the two works so you can see what was literally referenced by the mash-up, and how much was obviously different about its own expression.

But the court also glossed over that transformative quality in its analysis of the first factor, instead focusing only on what was the same about the first work instead of what was different.

ComicMix copied the exact composition of the famous "waiting place" in Go!, down to the placements of the couch and the fishing spot. To this, ComicMix added Star Trek characters who line up, sit on the couch, and fish exactly like the waiting place visitors they replaced. Go! continues to carry the same expression, meaning, or message: as the Boldly text makes clear, the image conveys the sense of being stuck, with "time moving fast in the wink of an eye."

ComicMix also copied a scene in Sneetches, down to the exact shape of the sandy hills in the background and the placement of footprints that collide in the middle of the page. Seussian characters were replaced with Spocks playing chess, making sure they "ha[d] similar poses" as the original, but all ComicMix really added was "the background of a weird basketball court."

ComicMix likewise repackaged Go!'s text. Instead of using the Go! story as a starting point for a different artistic or aesthetic expression, Hauman created a side-by-side comparison of the Go! and Boldly texts in order "to try to match the structure of Go!." This copying did not result in the Go! story taking on a new expression, meaning, or message. Because Boldly "left the inherent character of the [book] unchanged," it was not a transformative use of Go!. [p. 17-19]

It's bad enough that it supplanted the district court's original fact finding with its own dismissive judgment, and that copying of an image from a separate work was bizarrely being used as evidence of infringement of the first. But the cynical determination that the second work was only a "repackaging" of any work designed to "avoid the drudgery in working up something fresh" because of how it used certain elements, including ephemeral elements (composition, posing, story structure), in order to produce something fresh, expands what a copyright holder in a work ordinarily can control and puts all sorts of fair reuse out of reach of subsequent creators.

Boldly also does not alter Go! with new expression, meaning, or message. A "'transformative work' is one that alters the original work." While Boldly may have altered Star Trek by sending Captain Kirk and his crew to a strange new world, that world, the world of Go!, remains intact. Go! was merely repackaged into a new format, carrying the story of the Enterprise crew's journey through a strange star in a story shell already intricately illustrated by Dr. Seuss. Unsurprisingly, Boldly does not change Go!; as ComicMix readily admits, it could have used another primer, or even created an entirely original work. Go! was selected "to get attention or to avoid the drudgery in working up something fresh," and not for a transformative purpose. [p. 16-17]

And that's the crux of the matter, because if a mash-up like this, that merged two aesthetics that had never been merged before, even if to convey a similarly inspirational message ("In propounding the same message as Go, Boldly used expression from Go! to "keep to [Go!'s] sentiment." [p. 16]), can violate a copyright, then a copyright holder has enormous veto power over all subsequent expression that might use the cultural vocabulary it ever introduced.

And that's what's truly canceling.

Filed Under: copyright, culture, dr. seuss, fair use, mashups, star trek
Companies: comicmix, dr. seuss enterprise

Big Fair Use Win For Mashups: 'Oh, The Places You'll Boldly Go!' Deemed To Be Fair Use

from the set-phasers-to-fair-use dept

It's been roughly two years since we last had any update on the lawsuit that was brought by the estate of Dr. Seuss against ComicMix, a group of artists that created a mashup book in the styles of Dr. Seuss and Star Trek. The suit was over trademark and copyright rights, with the court ruling against the estate two years ago on the trademark claim. At the time of the ruling, the court gave the estate two weeks to prove there was any real harm done on the copyright side, after already ruling the trademark uses were fair use. Given the context of the judge's comments in the request, it was clear the Suess Estate had a hell of a hilll to climb.

A hill that now, nearly two years on, appears to have been insurmountable, as the firm representing ComicMix has announced that it has prevailed on the fair use copyright claims as well.

On March 12, 2019, after more than two years of litigation, the United States District Court for the Southern District of California (DSE’s home court) gave a learned, thoroughly reasoned decision that strongly affirms the fair use doctrine. District Judge Janis L. Sammartino reaffirmed her earlier findings that Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go! is a highly transformative work that takes no more from the Dr. Seuss books than necessary for its purposes. Under those circumstances, she found that DSE could only defeat the fair use defense by demonstrating that publishing the book would be likely to cause market harm to DSE, and she found that it failed to do so, leaving its claims of market harm simply hypothetical.

As for the trademark claims, Judge Sammartino had already found that the First Amendment protected the use of the title of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! in the title of the Defendants’ book. At the summary judgment stage, she determined that there is no such thing as a trademark in an artistic style, and that DSE does not have an enforceable trademark in the typeface used for the title, so the use of a Seussian typeface for Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go! is not trademark infringement.

The ruling itself is, as the law firm states, thoroughly reasoned. It takes the requests for summary judgement from both parties in turn, before taking on the question of fair use itself. Again, the analysis here is detailed, but the court's central ruling is whether or not Boldly interferes with the Seuss' works marketability:

Further, the Court is not persuaded that Boldly “has the same intrinsic purpose and function as Go!,” i.e., “providing an illustrated book, with the same uplifting message that would appeal to graduating high school and college seniors,” see Pl.’s MSJ at 17, or that Defendants “act[ed] in bad faith.” See id. at 17. While Boldly may be an illustrated book with an uplifting message (something over which Plaintiff cannot exercise a monopoly), it is one tailored to fans of Star Trek’s Original Series. See, e.g., Duvdevani Decl. Ex. 2 at 67:1–68:3. Further, that Defendants discussed the necessity of a license and determined that Boldly was a “fair use parody” without seeking the advice of counsel does not amount to bad faith.

The court then turns to the nature of the use of the original work. The court had originally ruled for ComicMix's motion to dismiss specifically on the question of how Boldly used Seuss' work, noting that the use of the work was both not a complete copying of the original and that it was obviously infused with new meaning. The Seuss Estate then argued that Oracle America Inc. v. Google LLC resolved that mashing two properties together in the way that Boldly does would not result in a work suddenly becoming fair use if the copying of the Seuss work was deemed to be substantial.

The court was not impressed.

Examining the cover of each work, for example, Plaintiff may claim copyright protection in the unique, rainbow-colored rings and tower on the cover of Go! Plaintiff, however, cannot claim copyright over any disc-shaped item tilted at a particular angle; to grant Plaintiff such broad protection would foreclose a photographer from taking a photo of the Space Needle just so, a result that is clearly untenable under—and antithetical to—copyright law.

But that is essentially what Plaintiff attempts to do here. Instead of replicating Plaintiff’s rainbow-ringed disc, Defendants drew a similarly-shaped but decidedly nonSeussian spacecraft—the USS Enterprise—at the same angle and placed a red-and-pink striped planet where the larger of two background discs appears on the original cover. See Duvdevani Decl. Ex. 31, ECF No. 115-11, at 450. Boldly’s cover also features a figure whose arms and hands are posed similarly to those of Plaintiff’s narrator and who sports a similar nose and eyes, but Boldly’s narrator has clearly been replaced by Captain Kirk, with his light, combed-over hair and gold shirt with black trim, dark trousers, and boots.5 Id. Captain Kirk stands on a small moon or asteroid above the Enterprise and, although the movement of the moon evokes the tower or tube pictured on Go!’s cover, the resemblance is purely geometric. Id. Finally, instead of a Seussian landscape, Boldly’s cover is appropriately set in space, prominently featuring stars and planets. Id. In short, “portions of the old work are incorporated into the new work but emerge imbued with a different character.” See Mattel, Inc. v. Walking Mountain Prods., 353 F.3d 792, 804 (9th Cir. 2003).

It goes on and on, but you get the idea. What this ultimately represents is a fantastic ruling for anyone interested in the flourishing of mashup-style cultural output. The kind of creative output that is Boldly, with its transformative meaning and messaging, but utilizing other original works to drive the point home, is certainly an art form onto itself. A ruling other than this one could have murdered that art form in its infancy.

And that isn't the purpose of copyright law, as this court wisely noted.

Filed Under: copyright, dr. seuss, fair use, mashups, oh the places you'll boldly go, remix, star trek
Companies: comicmix, dr. seuss, seuss estate

Company Wants To Nickel And Dime Every Single Music Mashup

from the searching-for-pennies-in-the-couch-cushions dept

With the record labels desperate for any new source of revenue, they've been increasingly trying all sorts of convoluted plans to try to find "untapped" sources of revenue. Apparently mixtapes and mashups are next on the list. As you're hopefully aware, mashups have become a big deal in the world of music and remixes of various songs have become popular in interesting ways. Artists like Girl Talk and DJ Earworm have become incredibly popular. In the past, we've discussed how these kinds of remixes and mashups are almost certainly fair use, but things are tricky in the world of music samples, because of some totally screwed up court rulings. You have crazy rulings on the books like Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films where the judge not only quoted the Ten Commandments as an authority (no, really), but also announced "get a license or do not sample," because he didn't even want to think about the concept of fair use.

This has created something of a problem for new music services, such as Spotify, Pandora and the like, where they often will not offer remixes and mashups, even when they're super popular. The problem for those services -- which do pay for licenses -- is often "who to pay?" on those songs. The answer should be that it's fair use and quite frequently acts as promotion for the original works, so it will help get those original songs more plays and licensing revenue that way. But no one wants to take the legal risk.

So, instead, it looks like we may end up with a completely bogus licensing regime that isn't required because of fair use -- but is going to happen, because everyone's scared to make the fair use argument. The WSJ has an article on a company that is jumping into the space, called Dubset Media, that has come up with its own system to analyze mashups and remixes to figure out how much of a song they use and then pay out royalties based on that amount:

Dubset Chief Executive Bob Barbiere estimated that online music mixes could eventually generate $1.2 billion a year in additional revenue for the industry. Currently all the big subscription music services “deal with same library, but now you’re dealing with a whole new world of content that could help drive new subscription,” he said.

Dubset spent the past several years creating its “MixScan” technology to analyze DJ mixes, which it hosts on a small music-streaming service it operates called Thefuture.fm.

Before posting music on the site, Dubset analyzes it, measuring how many seconds each individual song is heard and logging the data into its library. It then pays royalties based on the number of times users listen to a given mix, along with the length of time each song was featured in the mix.

As the article notes, Dubset has actually been around for quite some time. I've spoken to some of the founders before, and actually thought some of what they were doing was interesting in putting together a platform for these kinds of mashups and remixes. But the latest move to work with the major labels to then try to license these works to other platforms has me worried about what it may mean in the long run for this art form.

The article itself seems weirdly devoid of any discussion on the actual copyright implications of this. It doesn't mention copyright or fair use at all. It's not even clear how Dubset Media determines the royalties, though apparently it's negotiating with the major record labels on some sort of deal. Perhaps those record labels will agree, because this is money from nowhere -- in fact, it appears to be the potential of money out of fair use, where no money needs to be paid.

And that likely means that once the labels start getting a sense that there is some money to be made in licensing remixes and mashups, they're going to want more money from remixes and mashups -- because that's how the major labels always act. And that's likely going to mean a pretty big crackdown on the way most remixes and mashups are made and distributed, because the labels are going to want cold hard cash for each one. Remixes and mashups started as an amateur pursuit -- a fun thing to do, or a way to show off some skills. And while there certainly are plenty of professionals now doing it, you can bet that the labels are going to try to lock up and monetize all of it.

There's an excellent documentary, called Copyright Criminals, that tells the story about the early days of hip hop, in which most people considered it perfectly legal (or just didn't care) to sample others' music to make hip hop songs. And then people started getting sued, and the whole nature of sampling changed. When you had to pay for every sample, suddenly sampling was crazy expensive. So much so that some of the most creative hip hop albums of all time, like De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising and the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique could not be legally made today.

The only barely underground community of mashups and remixers brought that world back, at least partially, allowing us to see the kind of amazing creativity and music that could have been created if only the law allowed it. People weren't suing over it for a variety of reasons -- including the fear of a potential legal loss that reinforced the fair use argument -- but also because it really was just a side thing. But this move, to try to start licensing it all, regardless of the fair use question, seems likely to create another shift in remixes and mashups -- one where major labels eagerly searching for coins in the couch cushions, suddenly make it nearly impossible for anyone without a big bank account to take part in this art form.

Filed Under: copyright, dj mixes, fair use, mashups, remixes
Companies: dubset media, thefuture.fm

Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Universal Music Takes Down Fun Mashup Of Taylor Swift's 'Shake It Off' And 1989 Aerobics Video

from the because-universal-music-sucks dept

Last year, when Daft Punk released it's super popular single "Get Lucky" the first time I actually heard it was when someone I know linked to a fantastic video of the song put over a danceline from Soul Train. It's pretty amazing how well it works. You can see it here. That video has about 4.5 million views. Not bad.

As you may have heard, Taylor Swift recently came out with a new album, "1989," and she's at war with Spotify over it and making some statements about streaming royalties and such (which we've mostly been avoiding covering because this fight has gone on long enough already and it's silly and mostly misleading).

However, in the last day or so, someone tried to do the equivalent of the Soul Train/Get Lucky video above with Swift's song "Shake it Off." They matched the song to an aerobics competition video from (amusingly) 1989 -- and it worked quite well. It got lots of attention with the Huffington Post and Slate and others writing about it. So, I went to check out the video and got this instead: Yup. Thanks, Universal Music and copyright for taking down something that was getting this song more attention. Of course, multiple other copies appear to have shown up in response (not all identical, but all using versions of the same footage). Those are all up as I post this, but I imagine they're likely to disappear soon too.

It makes you wonder what's the point here? Yes, legally, Universal/Taylor Swift may have the legal right to pull the video down (though, some could make a reasonable fair use argument), but it seems pretty futile. Here are people having fun with her music, doing something of their own free will to get it more attention (I hadn't heard the song at all before this), and then it gets pulled down, because copyright.

In many ways, this is the antithesis of how music worked for ages. Music was always about people sharing and building on the works of others. Someone would create a song, and others would take it, resing it, adapt it, change it, mix it up with other things. That's how culture works. But not so much in an era with strict copyright laws and automated takedown systems. What a shame.

Filed Under: copyright, culture, mashups, shake it off, taylor swift, youtube
Companies: google, universal music, youtube

New UK Copyright Exception Allows Mashups -- But Only If Judges Think They Are Funny

from the you-must-be-joking dept

Five years ago, Techdirt reported that a request to the UK government to provide a copyright exception for mashups was rejected. Since then, we've been reporting on the UK's very slow progress in updating its copyright laws by bringing in various changes and exceptions. An article in the Daily Telegraph points out that there is a big problem with the new exception for parody, caricature or pastiche (found via @copyrightgirl):

Under a new exception to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998, which comes into force on Wednesday, people will be allowed to re-use copyright material "for the purposes of parody, caricature or pastiche" without having to ask permission of the original author first.

There is an important caveat. If a parodist is taken to court, it will be up to a judge to decide whether the disputed parody is sufficiently funny.

A document from the UK government explains (pdf):

In broad terms, parody imitates a work for humorous or satirical effect, commenting on the original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target.

Leaving aside the fact that judges tend to be somewhat advanced in years, and are therefore likely to have a very different idea from young creative artists of what "funny" means, there is also the point that this narrow definition excludes a huge class of mashups that aren't even intended to be funny, just creative. As Mike pointed out recently in his article on Kutiman, it's all too easy for this brilliant use of elements taken from elsewhere to be seen as "infringing." The fact that the UK's exceptions do not permit such kinds of originality shows how much its new copyright is still stuck in the past.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: copyright, free speech, humor, judges, mashups, parody, uk

DailyDirt: Imagine All The People, Sharing All The World...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The Beatles broke up by 1970, but since then, they've still managed to release a few new songs, like Free As A Bird and Real Love.. and even the new music video for Words Of Love (released this year). Maybe it's a bit creepy to hear new songs coming from a band that hasn't existed in decades, but at least these guys were real people (and not some computer-generated pop stars). Imagine how much more music with the Beatles would be available if mashups of their songs weren't considered copyright infringement? Beyond the infamous Grey Album, check out some of these creative Beatles mashups.

• Ever wonder what a hundred vinyl record players would sound like if they were playing the Beatles White Album's side 1 at (almost) the same time? Wonder no more. Check it out before the copyright bot on SoundCloud deletes it.... [url]
• If you don't have the time to listen to every Beatles song sequentially, how about listening to them all at once (it only takes about 8 minutes)? Note: you can buy this track for the bargain price of $1 per Beatles song ($226) as a John-Cage-esque mashup (8 minutes 22 seconds of silence). [url]
• Paul McCartney can still collaborate with John Lennon with a mashup like Imagine The Band -- a combination of Imagine and Band on the Run. Apparently, Lennon can also play with Coldplay and other bands, too. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: beatles, coldplay, grey album, john cage, mashups, music, pop star, white album
Companies: bandcamp, soundcloud

Yes, It's Fair Use To Mashup Charlie Brown And The Smiths

from the stand-up-for-your-rights dept

We had mentioned in our post about Universal Music sending bogus DMCA takedowns over Lauren LoPrete's This Charming Charlie tumblr mashup, that LoPrete had been contacted by various copyright and internet free speech lawyers offering to represent her. It appears that among the lawyers reaching out to her were the good folks at Booth Sweet -- whom we've covered many times for their efforts to fight copyright trolls and other bogus threats -- have taken on her case. Lawyer Dan Booth has sent a short and simple counternotice to Tumblr, arguing that the strips that were taken down were covered by fair use.

So much to answer for! Yet our client believes in good faith that these three posts, like all posts on her charming website, do not infringe the copyright for any Smiths lyrics, as they constitute fair use in accordance with 17 U.S.C. § 107. The three contested posts are JPEGs (attached for your reference) that quote from songs by the Smiths, namely "Ask" (a seven-word quote: "Nature is a language, can't you read?"); "This Charming Man" (eight words: "Will nature make a man of me yet?"); and "Frankly, Mr. Shankly" (twelve words: "Sometimes I'd feel more fulfilled making Christmas cards with the mentally ill"). Those brief excerpts are used to transformative effect, as you see. They also have no commercial purpose, and cannot have any negative effect on the market for the original works. As a result, the takedown notices are erroneous. We look forward to the prompt reinstatement of the posts pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512 (g)(3).

And now we wait to see if Universal Music decides to sue. Doubtful, but you never know with the big labels and their itchy trigger finger lawyers.

Filed Under: charlie brown, copyright, fair use, lauren loprete, mashups, morissey, peanuts, remix
Companies: booth sweet, tumblr, universal music

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