Copyright Enforcement Bots Seek And Destroy Hugo Awards

from the welcome-your-robot-overlords dept

We have talked repeatedly of automated copyright enforcement, and how it often goes too far. Recently, we wrote about over enforcement-by-bot when Google's ContentID flagged coverage of the Curiosity landing on Mars. And then there was that time when a recording of some birds got flagged as the content of Rumblefish. These are just a few examples; these stories happen all the time.

One thing that sets these examples apart from the following story is that most if not all of those videos were taken down after they were recorded. What happened just recently is a whole new category of insane. These automated copyright enforcement bots are now flagging and taking down live content. Not surprisingly, you have the same folks as usual to blame for this: an over-aggressive US government, at the behest of the legacy entertainment industry. A few years ago, after various sports leagues complained to the feds, Congress held hearings designed to put the fear of Congress into live streaming startups like Ustream and Justin.tv. In response, despite having strong DMCA compliance records (and the associated safe harbors), those companies are going above and beyond what the law requires to try to keep copyright holders (and the government) happy.

But, as with the over-aggressive automated takedowns on recorded content, the live streaming takedowns can be similarly troublesome -- and that situation can be made even worse when people are relying on an official live stream via one of these sites. That is what happened to the Hugo Awards when it tried to live stream the awards ceremonies on Ustream. After airing footage of Neil Gaiman's award winning episode of Doctor Who, the show was flagged for infringement and pulled from the live stream -- right before Gaiman got to speak. Suddenly, everyone watching the official livestream online saw: This lit up Twitter, as tons of people were watching the show via the stream -- and suddenly you had folks like sci-fi author Tobias Buckwell, Macworld Editorial Director Jason Snell and many other high profile people complaining about the over-aggressiveness of automated copyright enforcement. What made things even worse was the fact that all clips shown were cleared prior to airing.

This was, of course, absurd. First of all, the clips had been provided by the studios to be shown during the award ceremony. The Hugo Awards had explicit permission to broadcast them. But even if they hadn't, it is absolutely fair use to broadcast clips of copyrighted material during an award ceremony. Unfortunately, the digital restriction management (DRM) robots on UStream had not been programmed with these basic contours of copyright law.

io9 has it absolutely right. Even if the clips were not cleared, they still likely fell under fair use. This is one of the major weaknesses of automated enforcement which we have repeatedly warned about. Such tools are completely incapable of determining fair use and proper licensing, yet many sites continue to use and promote their use -- often because the government and the entertainment industry insist that they must. As io9 laments in the passing of the Hugo awards:

And with that, the broadcast was officially cut off. Dumb robots, programmed to kill any broadcast containing copyrighted material, had destroyed the only live broadcast of the Hugo Awards. Sure, we could read what was happening on Twitter, or get the official winner announcement on the Hugo website, but that is hardly the same. We wanted to see our heroes and friends on that stage, and share the event with them. In the world of science fiction writing, the Hugo Awards are kind of like the Academy Awards. Careers are made; people get dressed up and give speeches; and celebrities rub shoulders with (admittedly geeky) paparazzi. You want to see and hear it if you can.

But UStream's incorrectly programmed copyright enforcement squad had destroyed our only accesss. It was like a Cory Doctorow story crossed with RoboCop 2, with DRM robots going crazy and shooting indiscriminately into a crowd of perfectly innocent broadcasts.

By killing the broadcast of the show, Ustream's bots ruined a very special occasion for a number of creative individuals. It blocked access fans of science fiction had to see their favorite writers receive the awards their craft had made possible. Such award shows are something to celebrate, but because of over enforcement, this show has become nothing but another casualty in the war on copyright infringement. Another life snuffed out in the name of "the artists." Tell me, what artist wants her name used as the reason behind an award show being snuffed out? What artist wants to be known as the reason why thousands of fans didn't get to hear Neil Gaiman's speech or the speeches of other writers as they accepted their awards?

The point is, our ability to broadcast was entirely dependent on poorly-programmed bots. And once those bots had made their incorrect decision, there was absolutely nothing we could do to restart the signal, as it were. In case anyone still believes that copyright rules can't stop free speech or snuff out a community, the automated censorship of the Hugo Awards is a case in point.

Welcome your new robot overlords internet. The robots have spoken. Copyright is the almighty mainframe from which these robots take orders. They kill indiscriminately. They kill without feeling, without remorse. Even free speech and communities are not safe. This is the world asked for by the copyright maximalists. They have set up a world in which no speech is safe as long as it contains copyrighted content, authorized or not, fair use or not.

Yet, all this is ignoring the harm that Ustream has now done to its own reputation. After this incident, why would any show or event willingly use Ustream's services to live-stream? Knowing that your show could be taken down midstream at any moment will not breed confidence in the service.

Of course, Ustream has come out with an apology for this unfortunate event. However, this may be too little, too late for some people.

On Sunday night, The Hugo Awards were streaming live on Ustream (The Hugo’s are like the Academy Awards for science fiction). Very unfortunately at 7:43 p.m. Pacific time, the channel was automatically banned in the middle of an acceptance speech by author Neil Gaiman due to “copyright infringement.” This occurred because our 3rd party automated infringement system, Vobile, detected content in the stream that it deemed to be copyrighted. Vobile is a system that rights holders upload their content for review on many video sites around the web. The video clips shown prior to Neil’s speech automatically triggered the 3rd party system at the behest of the copyright holder.

It may be Vobile's fault, but it was Ustream's decision -- even if under pressure -- to use Vobile in the first place. It seems that they should have recognized the weaknesses of such an aggressive system.

Our editorial team and content monitors almost immediately noticed a flood of livid Twitter messages about the ban and attempted to restore the broadcast. Unfortunately, we were not able to lift the ban before the broadcast ended. We had many unhappy viewers as a result, and for that I am truly sorry.

This is what frustrates users the most. While it only takes moments, seconds maybe, to really screw up a user, it can takes days if not weeks to make things right. Again, it is great that Ustream took notice of the problem, but without proper plans in place to fix the problem right away, then what point is in even trying? At the time of this writing, there is still no indication that the account streaming the Hugo awards is back. If you're going to set up a system that can snuff out a stream in an instant, it seems only reasonable that you should be able to turn that stream back on.

Ustream has said that it has turned off Vobile for the time being, which is the right move. But perhaps it can use this as an explanation for why such solutions are overkill the next time the entertainment industry or the government come calling.

Hopefully, this serves as yet another example to lawmakers, policy makers, the entertainment industry and online service providers: as much as some of them think that automated copyright enforcement is a panacea, it can often create even more problems. Snuffing out a broadcast like this doesn't help make anyone respect copyright any more. It makes them think it's pointless and obsolete.

Filed Under: automated enforcement, copyright, fair use, hugo awards, licensed, live streaming, neil gaiman
Companies: ustream, vobile

Andy Samberg, Neil Gaiman, Trent Reznor, Aziz Ansari, Adam Savage & More Tell Congress: Don't Pass PIPA Or SOPA In Our Names

from the protecting-artists? dept

A group of some pretty damn famous people within the entertainment industry just made it clear that the folks pushing PIPA and SOPA do not represent their best interests. To hear the MPAA and the US Chamber of Commerce tell the story, they're pushing these bills in order to "protect artists." But more and more we're seeing the very artists they claim they're protecting say they want no part of these laws. The guys from The Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer), famous both for their YouTube videos and their work on NBC's Saturday Night Live, along with a number of other notable names in the entertainment industry -- including Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, Trent Reznor, Aziz Ansari, Adam Savage, Damian Kulash (and the rest of OK GO), the band MGMT, and a bunch more -- have written a letter saying that, as internet users, they don't think these bills are a good idea:

We fear that the broad new enforcement powers provided under SOPA and PIPA could be easily abused against legitimate services like those upon which we depend. These bills would allow entire websites to be blocked without due process, causing collateral damage to the legitimate users of the same services - artists and creators like us who would be censored as a result.

We are deeply concerned that PIPA and SOPA’s impact on piracy will be negligible compared to the potential damage that would be caused to legitimate Internet services. Online piracy is harmful and it needs to be addressed, but not at the expense of censoring creativity, stifling innovation or preventing the creation of new, lawful digital distribution methods.

We urge Congress to exercise extreme caution and ensure that the free and open Internet, upon which so many artists rely to promote and distribute their work, does not become collateral damage in the process.

When even the very people that the entertainment industry insists its "protecting" with these bills are being quite vocal against them, you have to wonder why they're being pushed so hard? Once again, it seems that these bills aren't about protecting artists at all. They're about protecting the gatekeepers, who want to control those artists...

Filed Under: adam savage, amanda palmer, andy samberg, aziz ansari, neil gaiman, pipa, protect ip, sopa, trent reznor

How Firefly Fans Made One University's Campus Safe For Free Speech

from the that-coat-is-brown dept

Back in September, we wrote about a situation at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, where campus police couldn't be bothered to actually read the text on a post put up by professor James Miller, which referenced a quote in the pilot episode of Firefly, with a picture of Nathan Fillion, the actor who played the character who spoke the line. The quote was one about fairness, but the campus police interpreted it as a threat, took it down, and threatened the professor. In response, Miller put up a second poster, mocking the takedown of the first poster: Once again, the university police got involved, taking down the poster and claiming that it "depicts violence and mentions violence and death." And saying that the "campus threat assessment team" had determined that the poster would "cause a material and/or substantial disruption of school activities and/or be constituted as a threat." That seems like an interesting (i.e., "wrong") interpretation of the First Amendment (remember, this is a state school), and the group FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) got involved, sending a letter on behalf of Miller. Amazingly, the University doubled down on this form of censorship, standing by the original takedowns.

We hadn't followed the story since then, but thanks to JJ for passing along that FIRE recently put up a video detailing the full story, with an appearance by Neil Gaiman, whose tweets about the story first alerted us (and, as it turns out, tons of others) to the story. As he notes, you should never, ever upset science fiction fans who feel their favorite show has been cancelled in an untimely way.

Of course, as FIRE's director notes, this story ended up with the University backing down, but only because of the widespread outrage from Firefly fans. It's too bad that these kinds of issues often only get attention when they have a hook like that. Hopefully more people recognize that free speech issues are free speech issues even if they don't involve a particular TV show...

Filed Under: fire, free speech, james miller, nathan fillion, neil gaiman, university of wisconsin-stout

You Shouldn't Need An Excuse For Having Fun & Creating Something

from the creating-stuff dept

There's a music conference going on in Boston tomorrow called Rethink Music, which has received some attention because a group of the content creators attending -- Ben Folds, Amanda Palmer, Damian Kulash and Neil Gaiman -- have decided to spend the latter part of today writing, recording and releasing an eight-song album. When I heard about it, I thought it sounded like a fun project, from a group of very creative folks, all of whom are known for their many, many examples of experimenting widely with different ideas when it comes to creating, promoting and releasing content. A collaboration of all of them together as a fun experiment? Why not?

However, some apparently found it offensive. Jeremy Schlosberg wrote a post for Hypebot complaining that we're facing the "tyranny of novelty," in that in today's digital music environment, there's more of a focus on doing something new, rather than doing something good:

We have succumbed to the tyranny of novelty, and music will take a beating until we wake up from this collective trance in which we’re all only chasing the newest, "nowest" thing, in which the only values we can agree upon are buzz generation and viral success. In this environment, a unique real-time experience is worth paying for simply because it is a unique real-time experience.

Amanda Palmer has posted a good response to this, in which she notes that this just seemed like a much more fruitful way to spend today rather than the typical night-before-a-conference get together in which there's a dinner and speakers all sit around and chat (which, can actually be fun in its own way -- but perhaps not as productive):

we're doing this for one main reason: because we're all going to be in the same place at the same time and we couldn't bear the thought of just sitting at a panel table, discussing the internet and not actually taking advantage of the time and the resources to MAKE SOMETHING. we, all four of us, are artists who LIKE MAKING SHIT.

we could have met up the night before our panel, caught a few of the other talks, got drinks together, attended the speakers dinner at the conference, chatted about our careers, had a nice leisurely dinner with each other, and said goodnight-i'll see-you-at-the-panel-in-the-morning.

that would have easily taken 8 hours.

instead, we're doing none of that and we're going to lock ourselves in a studio and make something together. WE decided to do this, nobody asked us to.

It's also worth noting that the four of them are connected in various ways (mainly via Amanda). Neil, obviously, is married to Amanda. Ben produced one of her albums. And Damian and Amanda have performed together.

I had three separate, but distinct, reactions to the whole kerfuffle:

1. I think Schlosberg has set up a false dilemma here in thinking that the "tyranny of novelty" is somehow new or being driven more by the way things are in this digital age. He does admit that it's always been a part of the music industry, but I think he's overreacting somewhat in thinking that this means that great music isn't also being produced. Admittedly, there was some extra hype in the press release about how this little experiment shows how the music industry is changing, but we should all know better than to key in on a throwaway hype line in a press release.
2. Some of the discussion goes back to the same old question of the magic bullet. People want to find out what is the answer to the struggles the recording industry has had, and they want to assign way too much credibility to a key example or event, rather than recognizing that while you can pull lessons from all sorts of experiments, there is no magic bullet. That doesn't mean you can't learn from each experiment and pull out interesting lessons and see where they can be applied. It just means there's no universal "this is how it's done."
3. Finally, it seems sort of silly that anyone should have to defend getting together with some other creative friends to create some content, in the name of "but that content creation strategy is a gimmick." Let them create and stop worrying about it. In a time when people keep telling us that there are fewer and fewer incentives to create (not that I believe that), shouldn't we be cheering on a bunch of folks who get together and say "let's make something, just for the fun of it!"?

I have no idea if what comes out of this experiment will be good. I don't think it defines "the future of the music business." I just think it's yet another cool experiment. Part of the nature of experiments is that sometimes they work and sometimes they don't -- but you can learn from both situations just the same.

Filed Under: amanda palmer, ben folds, creation, culture, damian kulash, neil gaiman

How Neil Gaiman Went From Fearing 'Piracy' To Believing It's 'An Incredibly Good Thing'

from the epiphanies dept

Public Knowledge points us to a wonderful short clip of Neil Gaiman, being interviewed by the Open Rights Group, explaining how he has completely changed his mind about "piracy" and copyright: He admits that early on, when he saw his works "pirated" on the web, it made him quite upset. At first, he (totally incorrectly) believed that if he didn't fight online copies, it might mean he'd lose his copyright (a myth based on a weak understanding of trademark law that sometimes people confuse with copyright law). Thankfully, he learned that wasn't true. However, where it gets interesting is when he realized that whenever his works got "pirated," it actually seemed to help his sales:

"Then I started to notice that two things that seemed much more significant. One of which was that places where I was being pirated -- particularly Russia (where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading it out into the world) I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. And then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia it would sell more and more copies."

He then mentions that after a lot of persuading, he got his publisher to release a free digital copy of American Gods, and sales went up by 300%, even though it had already been selling quite well before that. And that was his epiphany moment that you're "not losing sales" by having stuff out there. And he explains how "piracy" is just a giant way of lending books, and points out that, when asked this question at talks, he asks how many people in the audience found their favorite author because someone lent them a book vs. going into a book store and buying it. And only 5 to 10% of people found their favorite authors first by buying the books.

"That's really all this is. It's people lending books. And you can't look on that as a lost sale.... What you're actually doing is advertising. You're reaching more people. You're raising awareness. And understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web was doing is allowing people to hear things, allowing people to read things, allowing people to see things they might never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that's an incredibly good thing."

Filed Under: copyright, neil gaiman, piracy, sharing

Neil Gaiman And Todd McFarlane Fight Over Whose Derivative Character Is Owned By Whom

from the angels-in-thong-bikinis-in-the-courtroom dept

ChurchHatesTucker sends in the Associated Press report about the ongoing legal fight between writers/comic artists Todd McFarlane and Neil Gaiman, over who owns what rights to what characters. The CityPages blog actually has a version of the story with a lot more details. Frankly, the whole thing seems a little silly. McFarlane created Spawn, and later brought on guest writers. Gaiman did issue #9. Here's where it gets tricky. McFarlane (and two others) had left Marvel to start their own comic company, Image Comics, which published Spawn. Having been upset about how Marvel set up deals as "work-for-hire" (such that Marvel kept the copyright on any works done by artists/writers), Image was designed to be more creator-friendly, allowing them to retain their own copyrights.

All that sounds good, right? Except... what happens when you're talking about multiple artists all dipping into the same world? That's what caused the mess we're in now. Gaiman's Spawn introduced some new characters, which he claimed the copyright over. But, of course, those characters come out of the Spawn world, and thus, you could make the case, are clearly derivative of McFarlane's own characters. Potentially in an attempt to get around having to pay Gaiman royalties (this is the part that's very much in dispute) a later issue of Spawn introduced some new characters, which have some similarities to Gaiman's characters. And thus, the royalty fight is on. It sounds like there's some personal issues between Gaiman and McFarlane underlining all of this as well.

Honestly, the whole thing seems a bit silly, really. Though, it's a situation created by today's ridiculous level of copyright protection. Work-for-hire deals certainly have their own trouble, but when you give out separate copyrights to lots of different people involved in a project, you also end up with a bit of a thicket, which appears to be the problem McFarlane faced. In the end, though, Gaiman created a derivative work for the Spawn world and should be happy that others built on his works to do more.

In fact, to make the case against Gaiman, I'd like to quote one Neil Gaiman a couple years ago, talking about a similar lawsuit involving derivative works based on Harry Potter:

My main reaction is, having read as much as I can about it, given the copyright grey zone it seems to exist in, is a "Well, if it was me, I'd probably be flattered".... I can't imagine myself trying to stop any of the unauthorised books that have come out about me or about things I've created over the years, and where possible I've tried to help, and even when I haven't liked them I've shrugged and let it go.... My heart is on the side of the people doing the unauthorised books, probably because the first two books I did were unauthorised, and one of them, Ghastly Beyond Belief, would have been incredibly vulnerable had anyone wanted to sue Kim Newman and me on the grounds that what we did, in a book of quotations that people might not have wanted to find themselves in, went beyond Fair Use.

Seems like perhaps Neil Gaiman involved in this lawsuit should talk to that Neil Gaiman.

Though, as CHT notes in his submission (quoting from the AP report), at least this trial gave us: "Images of the characters in dispute, including the angels in thong bikinis, were projected in Crabb's courtroom throughout the daylong hearing." So maybe it's not all bad.

Filed Under: copyright, derivative works, neil gaiman, spawn, todd mcfarlane, works for hire

Crowdsourcing Doesn't Guarantee Quality... But It Can Be Great Advertising

from the to-crowdsource-or-not-to-crowdsource dept

Earlier this month, BBC Audiobooks America started an audiobook project based on Twitter messages where Neil Gaiman kicked off an exquisite corpse process of stringing together about 1,000 Tweets to forge a storyline. Dozens of Twitter users contributed tweets to be edited into a coherent plot that will be released as a free audiobook download. From this publicity stunt, an approximately 50-page book (or 2-hr audiobook, actually) has been created from Gaiman's fans. And presumably, the collection of tweets could also be remixed and edited -- and improved -- to possibly gain further participation from Gaiman (who contributed the first line of the story and will read aloud the completed audiobook) and the attention of any number of other authors. It's not exactly a brand-new idea to compose a story in this way, but it's a very interesting way to advertise and connect with fans to whet their appetites for more content to come (and even pay for).

However, the crowdsourcing aspect of this particular audiobook has been criticized in detail for exhibiting the worst of literary clichés as well as a meandering plot with too many characters and unresolved arcs. But generalizing this crowd's apparently unsatisfying result to all possible collaborative-author processes seems a bit disingenuous. Perhaps it's one of my pet peeves, but the schadenfreude surrounding crowdsourced works that aren't "as good as Shakespeare" seems to focus too much on some artificial failure, and not the potential or the realized successes. Maybe fiction isn't the best target for collaborative authorship, but the suggestion that collaborative writing won't ever work for good storytelling is far from proven. In fact, many popular stories (TV shows, etc) are written by teams of authors. (So the question could be posed: where does the optimal number of authors arise?) Conversely, the overwhelming number of unsuccessful stories written by single authors should not discourage writers from working alone, either. Bad stories happen.

The real triumph of this crowdwork is that this experiment engaged with its audience and promoted Gaiman and BBCAA for future works. From the BBC's perspective, a ton of content was generated largely for free, and a promotional audiobook was created in just a few days. Had the BBC commissioned a single author to compose a similar work, there wouldn't be any guarantees of a compelling book in the end. And working with a single author might require more complex licensing rights and royalties. So crowdsourcing this project sounds like an advertising coup -- generating a promotion appropriately disguised as free content. It's not Shakespeare, but it's a whole lot better than a banner ad, right?

Filed Under: advertising, crowdsourcing, neil gaiman

Watch Neil Gaiman Read His Whole Latest Book Online For Free... And Note That It's Still A Best Seller

from the yeah,-but,-free-doesn't-work dept

Famed author Neil Gaiman certainly is no stranger to embracing the economics of free infinite goods to help sell more not-free scarce goods. Richard now points us to yet another way that's working for Gaiman. In a new blog post about a just completed book tour for his new children's book, The Graveyard Book, Gaiman notes two interesting points. First, during the book tour, at each stop he read a different chapter of the book outloud -- and each of those stops was filmed and put online. So, as he notes: "For now, the whole book is up online for free and I have no plans to take it down."

At the same time (or, actually, just before that), he also mentions that the book is number one on the NY Times' bestsellers' list for children's books. As Richard notes, this seems to fit the model we discuss all the time: "Give away a transient copy in one medium, while selling lots and lots of copies in another, more natural and permanent medium? Who'd have thought that would work...?" Indeed.

Filed Under: business models, free, neil gaiman, the graveyard book

Yet Again, Giving Away Free eBook Increased Sales Of Author's Books

from the and-again-and-again-and-again dept

Someone pointed this out on Friday, but I thought we've seen so many stories of it that it didn't necessarily merit mentioning. However, all weekend long more people submitted it, so perhaps it is worth pointing out. Neil Gaiman, who was part of Harper Collins experiment with giving away free ebooks, discovered (like so many others) that giving away the free ebooks helped increase sales. And, of course, it wasn't just for the one book that was offered for free, but across all of Gaiman's works. The other bit of information is that, as we expected, HarperCollins found that many people were not at all happy with all of the restrictions it put on the ebooks (including that you had to read it on their website rather than download it):

Response to our Browse Inside Online Reader was mixed -- with 44% saying they enjoyed the experience at 56% saying they did not. The chief complaints were that you had to have an internet connection to read the book, you had to scroll to see the whole page and that the load time was sometimes slow. 69% of respondents said that they would like to be able to download. Some people complained that since they couldn’t bookmark where they left off, they got lost between reading sessions.

Of course, plenty of people pointed this out when Harper Collins first announced the plan. But, better late than never. Gaiman notes: "the 56% of people who didn't enjoy the online reading experience may be a lot happier with how we do it next time out."

Filed Under: business models, ebooks, free, neil gaiman
Companies: harper collins