What this really boils down to is a cultural problem.
I sympathize with artists here. I completely understand why an artist would want to be able to choose how her music is released. This is partly what copyright is designed to achieve: Control for the artist.
At the same time, it's unreasonable to expect YouTube (or anyone) to negotiate individual agreements with every single artist. That way lies licensing hell, and it is what is preventing any (non pirate) organization from building a truly convenient music service. Copyright is *also* meant to achieve the promotion of arts and culture, and allowing artists to withhold their works from YouTube (or anywhere else) does not achieve this.
Here's the thing. YouTube should NOT be in the position of dictating terms here. They are not a neutral party.
What is needed is a universal set of public rights for how publicly released culture is treated. The deal should be this: If you publish, the public gets rights to the work. The work needs to be available, universally, to anyone who wants to use it or build on it. This makes publicly released music and art *public* goods, which they are ... any cultural artifact is valuable because it is *public*. There's no such thing as private culture; that's called personality.
And, if cultural works are public goods, anyone who wants to gain privately (i.e. profit) off of them has to pay taxes to the public. The public can then compensate the artist commensurately. Alternately, we can also allow private licensing agreements that exempt purchasing entites from the public tax in exchange for channeling direct compensation towards the artist.
This is basically a blanket licensing scheme, with one major change: Instead of charging the public for the artistic works, the costs are bourne by people who want to profit off of these public goods. YouTube is welcome to show advertisements next to the songs, as long as they pay taxes that go back to the artists. You could also impose tracking requirements so that no PRO is needed to determine who the money goes to. If you profit off a piece of public culture, you are required to identify that piece of public culture, and the author gets a tax kickback for their effort.
This would take the power out of the hands of the distributors and middlemen and give it to the artists in one fell swoop. Because an artist is fundamentally entitled to compensation on the basis of publishing their work, the only middlemen who can make money will be the ones that can either drive traffic (thus accruing more licensing taxes back to the author) or that can sign up licensing deals from other users (e.g. advertisers / commericial licensing deals).
I don't know ... copyright is a political hot potato ... I don't actually think it would be political feasible to change copyright that quickly, even for Disney. Especially with an election around the corner where no party can be sure of a victory.
I'm curious to know under what theory this is illegal?
It can't be copyright ... titles aren't creative enough to be considered copyright.
So ... trademark?
But trademark only applies in commerce. And, the "Rocky" movies are not in the industry of hosting runs, which should mean that the Rocky trademark shouldn't applies to runs. At least, not until they host an actual run.
So ... shouldn't the charity have rights to the trademark by virtue of the fact that they were there first?
I don't know much about the series, but there is a Rocky Run in the movie that is set in an actual place? And now the actual place isn't allowed to hold a run?
So, let me get this straight ... a fictitious movie is allowed to appropriate part of reality, but reality isn't allowed to appropriate it back?
As a frequent traveller to the US, I *have* started worrying about these things when I cross the border. Maybe not cash specifically (I don't have that much), but your country is far less friendly than it used to be, and your relationship with your police is ... one of fear.
I don't think it's a stretch to see why these companies are upset
I don't think it's a big leap to see why the companies are upset: The campaign more or less fingers the brands as "sources" of litter, and it's understandable they wouldn't want that to contaminate their brand.
I'm glad the legal case is in the favour of the city here ... I don't think their right to integrity of brand should trump their responsibility for using packaging that turns into litter, but I don't find it even slightly surprising that they are upset about it.
Kind of makes me want to create a campaign that specifically calls these brands out for the type of packaging that they use (and the lifestyle that they encourage).
I believe strongly that we shouldn't be hiding from ugliness. I don't think that works, and we shouldn't be censoring things merely because they are ugly.
At the same time, there's a lot of merit to Violynne's point about the media treatment of the video. The video *is* being sensationalised, and it *is* being used to radicalise American sentiments.
We have an example right here in these comments, we have an Anonymous Coward throwing around words like subhuman and "nuke 'em all" sentiments being expressed publicly. One piece of ugliness is provoking a whole lot more ugliness.
James Foley's goal was to expose what's actually happening in Syria. The video helps accomplish that goal. We should honour that.
At the same time, ISIS' goal is to polarize Americans and provoke enemies. The video *also* helps accomplish that goal. We should absolutely not be supporting that.
I can't speak for US law, but in Canada, the video would almost certainly violate our hate-speech laws. There's plenty of other jurisdictions that have similar laws. So, I don't think the legal argument is very clear-cut. I'm also not sure it matters.
Ultimately, the solution to this is cultural, because the effect of the video depends more on the viewer than the video itself. I haven't watched the video and I'm not going to. The list of people who *need* to see the video is a very short one; I don't need the trauma and hate that goes with seeing something like that. I don't think anyone else does either — especially those who are at risk of radicalisation.
So ... how do we deal with this in the long term? Use education to make our culture more media literate.
In the short term? I have no idea. I'm glad to see sites like YouTube recognizing that they have some responsibility for how this imagery is viewed. I'm inclined to say that the video is acceptable in some contexts and not in others, and that situations without context (i.e. the raw video on YouTube) is probably not appropriate.
We can take a more nuanced view here; I think it is possible to restrict access responsibly so that the video is publicly available in a context that isn't easily sensationalised, and that doesn't provoke polarisation. I don't think it is possible to encode this kind of responsibility in law, but I *do* think that, for the most part, big media companies could proactively be responsible and have policies about setting context for controversial / graphic / extreme content. And, if big media companies can do this, that takes care of much of the problem; the fact that the video might be available out of context on smaller sites matters much less because they have much less power to provoke large scale change.
So, I'm in favour of YouTube and other sites treating this as a special case. But, I'd rather they would do it by providing context rather than simply deleting the videos.
"I wonder if they're even aware bittorrent is a communications/distribution protocol. Had it been invented a decade or so earlier, support for it would probably be as basic as ftp. "
My thoughts exactly. What, exactly does she think BitTorrent Inc. can do about this? Bittorrent (the protocol) is an open protocol as far as I know ... any attempt to make it "pirate-proof" would simply be ignored by anyone wanting to pirate things, while making it less useful for what it is actually intended to do: Speed distribution of any large file.
Besides ... if she had bothered to do any research, she would know that what the company is *currently* doing has nothing to do with the bittorrent protocol ... Bittorrent Sync and (soon) Bittorrent chat build on the principles of the protocol, but they don't use the protocol directly.
The protocol is out there, and there's nothing anyone, including Bittorrent Inc., can do about it.
"So, in the end, there do seem to be some reasonable concerns by artists about the specific terms in the contract -- but that's going to be true in almost any contract negotiation."
I think this is the crux of it. The problem is, the indies aren't able to negotiate. They're basically being given the entire contract as a EULA, and being told take it or leave it. That's not a negotiation.
I'd be upset too if I wasn't able to negotiate around the problematic terms of the license.
I think the original article qualifies as strategic coverage of strategically covered nudity.
Anyone who knows anything about SEO or advertising knows that sex sells, so covering a story about strategically covered nudity is a very strategic move.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: No, this is NOT Levison's fault
"Although if I wrote the article, I would have used the word "responsibility" rather than "blame"."
That crossed my mind earlier ... if the word responsibility had been used, I wouldn't have been confused.
This confusion, like so many others, boiled down to semantics for me.
The word "blame" carries a sense of culpability that "responsibility" lacks. I interpreted Mike saying Levison should be blamed as meaning he deserved what he got, which I objected to. Whereas, simply saying he bore some responsibility for the situation wouldn't have implied that he deserved his misfortune; it would merely have explained why things turned out the way they did.
Once Mike made clear that he didn't mean to imply guilt — showing that all he meant was "functional blame", that cleared things up for me.
But I do think more careful word choice would have helped. I clearly wasn't the only one confused here.
I'm sorry, saying that it's Levison's fault because he should have been more prepared is bullshit. Levison is not in the wrong here.
Could he have been more prepared? Of course. Should he? It would have been a wise business decision. But he is not in the wrong for missing out on that.
Why? Because simply building a well-engineered product, particularly one that is *more* supportive of personal liberty and privacy, should not require that amount of red tape.
Saying he is at fault for not having a good lawyer on call is tantamount to saying that our liberty and privacy is only as good as the lawyer we can hire; if these rights are not simple enough to invoke without expensive and complex legal help, what good are they to me?
I get that we live in the world we live in; the correct business decision was to be legally prepared. But there is nothing *right* about this situation.
University degrees are useless for what? Career? Sure, always have been. Expanding your mind. That's what universities have always been for.
It's only in the last 30-40 years when a degree suddenly meant employability except in specialized fields (the "professions"). Except it never did mean employability. We've all been taken in by a combination of education salesmanship and corporations who thought they could offload their training costs onto the public dime.
Turns out, the corporations were wrong, good employees are trained, not hired ready-made. Universities never were designed for career skills.
Universities are designed to grow knowledge. And it's only a small portion of the population that are suited / inclined towards this sort of life. For those who are suited, universities and the degrees they grant are incredibly useful. They form the backbone infrastructure of modern science.
But if you go in thinking you are going to be prepared for some other life, you're going to be disappointed.
Spend 4+ years of your life doing *anything*, and you'll be well prepared to do that thing. If you want a career, go get four years of work experience. If you want to think, get a degree. Both are useful options. The only "useless" thing about degrees is that people think they are intended as credentials rather than a mark of achievement.
On the post: YouTube's Offer To Musicians Isn't As Bad As Some Believe, But YouTube Should Still Change Its Policies
Re: Re: The is a cultural problem
The Realpolitik of Copyright law *does* stem from artists rights, even if your Constitution doesn't acknowledge it.
On the post: YouTube's Offer To Musicians Isn't As Bad As Some Believe, But YouTube Should Still Change Its Policies
The is a cultural problem
I sympathize with artists here. I completely understand why an artist would want to be able to choose how her music is released. This is partly what copyright is designed to achieve: Control for the artist.
At the same time, it's unreasonable to expect YouTube (or anyone) to negotiate individual agreements with every single artist. That way lies licensing hell, and it is what is preventing any (non pirate) organization from building a truly convenient music service. Copyright is *also* meant to achieve the promotion of arts and culture, and allowing artists to withhold their works from YouTube (or anywhere else) does not achieve this.
Here's the thing. YouTube should NOT be in the position of dictating terms here. They are not a neutral party.
What is needed is a universal set of public rights for how publicly released culture is treated. The deal should be this: If you publish, the public gets rights to the work. The work needs to be available, universally, to anyone who wants to use it or build on it. This makes publicly released music and art *public* goods, which they are ... any cultural artifact is valuable because it is *public*. There's no such thing as private culture; that's called personality.
And, if cultural works are public goods, anyone who wants to gain privately (i.e. profit) off of them has to pay taxes to the public. The public can then compensate the artist commensurately. Alternately, we can also allow private licensing agreements that exempt purchasing entites from the public tax in exchange for channeling direct compensation towards the artist.
This is basically a blanket licensing scheme, with one major change: Instead of charging the public for the artistic works, the costs are bourne by people who want to profit off of these public goods. YouTube is welcome to show advertisements next to the songs, as long as they pay taxes that go back to the artists. You could also impose tracking requirements so that no PRO is needed to determine who the money goes to. If you profit off a piece of public culture, you are required to identify that piece of public culture, and the author gets a tax kickback for their effort.
This would take the power out of the hands of the distributors and middlemen and give it to the artists in one fell swoop. Because an artist is fundamentally entitled to compensation on the basis of publishing their work, the only middlemen who can make money will be the ones that can either drive traffic (thus accruing more licensing taxes back to the author) or that can sign up licensing deals from other users (e.g. advertisers / commericial licensing deals).
On the post: Die Another Eh: What Does It Mean Now That James Bond Is In The Public Domain In Canada?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Is Disney's work next in 2017?
On the post: Citizen Organizing Small Get-Together 'Rocky Run' Sent C&D By MGM Because Of Course She Was
Under what theory is this illegal?
It can't be copyright ... titles aren't creative enough to be considered copyright.
So ... trademark?
But trademark only applies in commerce. And, the "Rocky" movies are not in the industry of hosting runs, which should mean that the Rocky trademark shouldn't applies to runs. At least, not until they host an actual run.
So ... shouldn't the charity have rights to the trademark by virtue of the fact that they were there first?
So ... not trademark?
Then ... what?
How IS the Rocky 50K Fat Ass Run illegal?
On the post: Citizen Organizing Small Get-Together 'Rocky Run' Sent C&D By MGM Because Of Course She Was
How can this be illegal?
So, let me get this straight ... a fictitious movie is allowed to appropriate part of reality, but reality isn't allowed to appropriate it back?
That's twisted.
On the post: Canadian News Outlet Warns Canadians That US Law Enforcement Officers Will Pull Them Over And Seize Their Cash
Yes, I do worry about this stuff
On the post: Brands Use Trademark To Get Toronto To Pull Clever Anti-Litter Campaign Just Because
I don't think it's a stretch to see why these companies are upset
I'm glad the legal case is in the favour of the city here ... I don't think their right to integrity of brand should trump their responsibility for using packaging that turns into litter, but I don't find it even slightly surprising that they are upset about it.
Kind of makes me want to create a campaign that specifically calls these brands out for the type of packaging that they use (and the lifestyle that they encourage).
On the post: Obama Review Of Military Gear Handed To Law Enforcement; Thinks Real Problem Is 'Training And Guidance'
The War on Terror is over...
America lost.
On the post: The James Foley Beheading Video And How Americans Conceptualize Their Enemies
Visceral videos and radicalisation
I believe strongly that we shouldn't be hiding from ugliness. I don't think that works, and we shouldn't be censoring things merely because they are ugly.
At the same time, there's a lot of merit to Violynne's point about the media treatment of the video. The video *is* being sensationalised, and it *is* being used to radicalise American sentiments.
We have an example right here in these comments, we have an Anonymous Coward throwing around words like subhuman and "nuke 'em all" sentiments being expressed publicly. One piece of ugliness is provoking a whole lot more ugliness.
James Foley's goal was to expose what's actually happening in Syria. The video helps accomplish that goal. We should honour that.
At the same time, ISIS' goal is to polarize Americans and provoke enemies. The video *also* helps accomplish that goal. We should absolutely not be supporting that.
I can't speak for US law, but in Canada, the video would almost certainly violate our hate-speech laws. There's plenty of other jurisdictions that have similar laws. So, I don't think the legal argument is very clear-cut. I'm also not sure it matters.
Ultimately, the solution to this is cultural, because the effect of the video depends more on the viewer than the video itself. I haven't watched the video and I'm not going to. The list of people who *need* to see the video is a very short one; I don't need the trauma and hate that goes with seeing something like that. I don't think anyone else does either — especially those who are at risk of radicalisation.
So ... how do we deal with this in the long term? Use education to make our culture more media literate.
In the short term? I have no idea. I'm glad to see sites like YouTube recognizing that they have some responsibility for how this imagery is viewed. I'm inclined to say that the video is acceptable in some contexts and not in others, and that situations without context (i.e. the raw video on YouTube) is probably not appropriate.
We can take a more nuanced view here; I think it is possible to restrict access responsibly so that the video is publicly available in a context that isn't easily sensationalised, and that doesn't provoke polarisation. I don't think it is possible to encode this kind of responsibility in law, but I *do* think that, for the most part, big media companies could proactively be responsible and have policies about setting context for controversial / graphic / extreme content. And, if big media companies can do this, that takes care of much of the problem; the fact that the video might be available out of context on smaller sites matters much less because they have much less power to provoke large scale change.
So, I'm in favour of YouTube and other sites treating this as a special case. But, I'd rather they would do it by providing context rather than simply deleting the videos.
On the post: Hollywood Funded Group Demands BitTorrent Inc. 'Take Responsibility' For Piracy
Re: Protocol
My thoughts exactly. What, exactly does she think BitTorrent Inc. can do about this? Bittorrent (the protocol) is an open protocol as far as I know ... any attempt to make it "pirate-proof" would simply be ignored by anyone wanting to pirate things, while making it less useful for what it is actually intended to do: Speed distribution of any large file.
Besides ... if she had bothered to do any research, she would know that what the company is *currently* doing has nothing to do with the bittorrent protocol ... Bittorrent Sync and (soon) Bittorrent chat build on the principles of the protocol, but they don't use the protocol directly.
The protocol is out there, and there's nothing anyone, including Bittorrent Inc., can do about it.
On the post: Germany Says It Won't Agree To CETA With Current Corporate Sovereignty Chapter
Re: Why the change of heart?
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2014/07/crumbling-ceta-investor-state-dispute-settlement-rules-threa ten-take-canada-eu-trade-agreement/
On the post: Senator Lindsey Graham Doesn't Know Details Of NSA Abuse, But Sure It's Fine Because 'WE'RE AT WAR!'
At war with Radical Islam
Did he actually say the US is at war with a religion?
On the post: More On Indie Labels And YouTube: Some Legitimate Concerns, But Still A Lot Of Misplaced Anger
Not a negotiation
I think this is the crux of it. The problem is, the indies aren't able to negotiate. They're basically being given the entire contract as a EULA, and being told take it or leave it. That's not a negotiation.
I'd be upset too if I wasn't able to negotiate around the problematic terms of the license.
On the post: After Using Promise Of Drone Memo Release To Push Its Appeals Court Nominee Through, Administration Returns To Dragging Its Feet
What about the rest of the world?
But what about all the non-Americans that have been killed. I realize that American law doesn't cover them. But International law sure as hell should.
These look like war crimes to me. Or, if they are committed against civilians, far worse than that.
Isn't killing citizens of other nations on their own soil considered an act of war?
On the post: Google AdSense's Idiotic And Hypocritical Morality Police Force Us To Remove Ads On News Stories
Re: Re:
Anyone who knows anything about SEO or advertising knows that sex sells, so covering a story about strategically covered nudity is a very strategic move.
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: No, this is NOT Levison's fault
That crossed my mind earlier ... if the word responsibility had been used, I wouldn't have been confused.
This confusion, like so many others, boiled down to semantics for me.
The word "blame" carries a sense of culpability that "responsibility" lacks. I interpreted Mike saying Levison should be blamed as meaning he deserved what he got, which I objected to. Whereas, simply saying he bore some responsibility for the situation wouldn't have implied that he deserved his misfortune; it would merely have explained why things turned out the way they did.
Once Mike made clear that he didn't mean to imply guilt — showing that all he meant was "functional blame", that cleared things up for me.
But I do think more careful word choice would have helped. I clearly wasn't the only one confused here.
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
Re: Re: Re: Re: No, this is NOT Levison's fault
Because you may not have meant this, but this is exactly what I understood when I read the article.
For me, it was this line that got me:
"That said, Levison still should shoulder some of the blame."
I interpret saying someone should be blamed as a moral indictment of their behaviour.
Since that's not what you meant, I apologize ... but please be aware of how your "shoulds" come across.
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
Re: Re: Re: No, this is NOT Levison's fault
My point is that we should not be assigning blame on the basis of a broken reality.
Levison didn't deal with reality. The consequence was losing a painful battle.
We should not be justifying the RIGHTNESS of that loss by shrugging our shoulders and say "that's reality, he should have been prepared".
In this case, the reality is wrong, and needs to be fixed.
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
No, this is NOT Levison's fault
Could he have been more prepared? Of course. Should he? It would have been a wise business decision. But he is not in the wrong for missing out on that.
Why? Because simply building a well-engineered product, particularly one that is *more* supportive of personal liberty and privacy, should not require that amount of red tape.
Saying he is at fault for not having a good lawyer on call is tantamount to saying that our liberty and privacy is only as good as the lawyer we can hire; if these rights are not simple enough to invoke without expensive and complex legal help, what good are they to me?
I get that we live in the world we live in; the correct business decision was to be legally prepared. But there is nothing *right* about this situation.
On the post: DailyDirt: Are College Degrees Useless Now?
Useless for what?
It's only in the last 30-40 years when a degree suddenly meant employability except in specialized fields (the "professions"). Except it never did mean employability. We've all been taken in by a combination of education salesmanship and corporations who thought they could offload their training costs onto the public dime.
Turns out, the corporations were wrong, good employees are trained, not hired ready-made. Universities never were designed for career skills.
Universities are designed to grow knowledge. And it's only a small portion of the population that are suited / inclined towards this sort of life. For those who are suited, universities and the degrees they grant are incredibly useful. They form the backbone infrastructure of modern science.
But if you go in thinking you are going to be prepared for some other life, you're going to be disappointed.
Spend 4+ years of your life doing *anything*, and you'll be well prepared to do that thing. If you want a career, go get four years of work experience. If you want to think, get a degree. Both are useful options. The only "useless" thing about degrees is that people think they are intended as credentials rather than a mark of achievement.
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