Copywrong?! Could your online video be breaking "the law"?
- added April 19, 2008
- 17 responses
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- echoz
- added this
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Is your seat belt on? Prepare to ruminate...it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
"In February, last year Comedy Central's parent company Viacom served YouTube and Google with a lawsuit seeking more than a billion dollars in damages. The crime? Copyright infringement. The company says that YouTube contained over 160,000 unathorized clips from programmes Viacom owns, including "South Park" and "The Colbert Report." In cases like this, the copyright issue seems clear, but there are other circumstances where the dividing lines are blurry. Video mashups that use multiple sources, lipsynching videos, and even clips where amateurs re-stage famous sketches, could all be on shaky legal ground.
"If you're using someone else's video, music or images, or even someone else's script without permission, then you could be infringing copyright," says Gavin McGinty.
"It doesn't particularly matter if the clip is short: "Copyright infringement is copying a substantial part of a work, either in a qualitative or quantitative sense," he says. "For example, you could put a five-second clip from "The Daily Show" in a video mashup. If that five seconds was the funniest part, that could be seen as substantial."
"The rule of thumb is, if you're likely to be able to spot the origin of the source material, then it's likely to be a substantial part. A valid defense may be 'fair dealing', which is similar but by no means identical tothe American concept of 'fair use'.
"Fair dealing enables you to use small parts of works for personal, noncommercial purposes. The classic examples are research and private study. That wouldn't normally cover posting video online, though. The American version, 'fair use', is so much wider than the UK version."
"In this case, it may depend on where a lawsuit is raised. "You have the issue that the content is accessible in any country in the world. Big media companies have clearance departments to make sure that everything shown in a work is cleared everywhere it's shown."
as gleaned from a recent "Future, Media with Passion" Future Publishing Ltd article
by Gavin McGinty
Technology and Commercial Lawyer at Pinsent Masons
www.pinsentmasons.com
imho this is currently a bigger issue than "climate change" with as many or more future ramifications for culture, creativity and the free expression of ideas.
other valuable resources:
http://freeculture.org/
http://www.lessig.org/
among others I'm sure =D
"In February, last year Comedy Central's parent company Viacom served YouTube and Google with a lawsuit seeking more than a billion dollars in damages. The crime? Copyright infringement. The company says that YouTube contained over 160,000 unathorized clips from programmes Viacom owns, including "South Park" and "The Colbert Report." In cases like this, the copyright issue seems clear, but there are other circumstances where the dividing lines are blurry. Video mashups that use multiple sources, lipsynching videos, and even clips where amateurs re-stage famous sketches, could all be on shaky legal ground.
"If you're using someone else's video, music or images, or even someone else's script without permission, then you could be infringing copyright," says Gavin McGinty.
"It doesn't particularly matter if the clip is short: "Copyright infringement is copying a substantial part of a work, either in a qualitative or quantitative sense," he says. "For example, you could put a five-second clip from "The Daily Show" in a video mashup. If that five seconds was the funniest part, that could be seen as substantial."
"The rule of thumb is, if you're likely to be able to spot the origin of the source material, then it's likely to be a substantial part. A valid defense may be 'fair dealing', which is similar but by no means identical tothe American concept of 'fair use'.
"Fair dealing enables you to use small parts of works for personal, noncommercial purposes. The classic examples are research and private study. That wouldn't normally cover posting video online, though. The American version, 'fair use', is so much wider than the UK version."
"In this case, it may depend on where a lawsuit is raised. "You have the issue that the content is accessible in any country in the world. Big media companies have clearance departments to make sure that everything shown in a work is cleared everywhere it's shown."
as gleaned from a recent "Future, Media with Passion" Future Publishing Ltd article
by Gavin McGinty
Technology and Commercial Lawyer at Pinsent Masons
www.pinsentmasons.com
imho this is currently a bigger issue than "climate change" with as many or more future ramifications for culture, creativity and the free expression of ideas.
other valuable resources:
http://freeculture.org/
http://www.lessig.org/
among others I'm sure =D
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Viacom contends in their press release:
"YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google. Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws. In fact, YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden - and high cost - of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement...
"There is no question that YouTube and Google are continuing to take the fruit of our efforts without permission and destroying enormous value in the process. This is value that rightfully belongs to the writers, directors and talent who create it and companies like Viacom that have invested to make possible this innovation and creativity."
here's that Viacom press release accompanying the lawsuit:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&a...=
here's the complaint/lawsuit in full:
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/Viacom... -
Google’s response:
"We have not received the lawsuit but are confident that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders and believe the courts will agree. YouTube is great for users and offers real opportunities to rights holders: the opportunity to interact with users; to promote their content to a young and growing audience; and to tap into the online advertising market. We will certainly not let this suit become a distraction to the continuing growth and strong performance of YouTube and its ability to attract more users, more traffic and build a stronger community..." -
Where is your freedom to create, build, and imagine going???
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I kinda like the way Demitri Martin sums it up ;) Apparently the video was taken down from YouTube by Viacom, so Comedy Central style...check it out.
http://www.eddie.com/2007/03/23/viacom-vs-google-on-you... -
question for me, is what constitutes free speech and fair use, especially if it happens to be creative.
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Google is great and all, but.. Well the whinging of pre university/high school children, plus the overuse and exploitation of thier clips by the old media as if content created by the members of the web is just free stock video, is just a few of the meny reasons why I dropped all my videos off YouTube and switch them to more professional services like Revver, Veoh, and Current.
Though do to the DMCA(yes that double edge sword enacted back at the turn of the millennium), we do have a thing called "fair use" which allows us to 30 seconds of copy protected content, Be it a song or video. All for non commercial usages.
How do you think guys like Version and what not get away with putting catchy top hit songs in the background of thier video adverts while the artist doesn't get paid or contacted.
Also, one thing to note is that there's a podcast that goes on about these very same issues at http://copyright20.com/ -
seems you always have an appreciably empirical perspective. much thanks denzuko!
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I have no problem with Comedy Central yanking their work. It makes more room for independents to get their work noticed on YouTube. If I don't have to compete with South Park, then people might notice all my great videos such as "She has a Mandigo" and "The Kinky Karate Callgirls!" Now that's entertainment.
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Srew them! I'll do whatever I want? Everyone for himself. Whatever happened to sharing?
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I was wondering when someone was going to act upon what is going on in youtube? I think it's been made to seem like there is a fine line between what is and isn't illegal as far as copyright infringement goes. Someone needs to get proactive concerning big corporations like google and demand that "fair use" be strictly enforced. Obviously, without stifling creativity or the freedom of speech.
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- naty_forty
- 3 months ago
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@echoz your quite welcome, and rather like to beleave it comes from the fact I've been around the web so long that I've seen a lot of this stuff, or even the patterns that lead up to these issues. Well, that or the fact that its just the same stuff hackers have been facing since the '70s and what not.
@naty_forty your quite right that things should be acted upon. Though this is an issue that spans not just YouTube but the whole copy protection system in general. what we need to do is really help people understand what Creative Commons is and how it adds to the general copy protections already in place. Another thing is helping the advocacy group http://www.freepress.net/ and what not. -
While there has to be strict copyright control - as a writer I don't want others to profit off of my work when the funds should go to feed my kids - the writers of laws to strengthen the laws should beware. If you make the laws too strict, then so many people are going to ignore them that, in effect, you're actually weakening what is there now.
What should be done is enforcing what's already there.-
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- OldManOnCampus
- 3 months ago
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this thread is entirely relevant and bears your attention as well... -
The measure was before the House in 2006 and has since been off the table in Congress. However, this should be brought up before the three Presidential contenders and see what their thoughts are on this issue...If I had the time and resources, I'd do it myself...
See this URL
http://firefox.org/news/articles/1396/1/Editorial-Calli...-
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- OldManOnCampus
- 3 months ago
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RE: Oldman's link above...
well, if it ain't broke...why "fix" it? ...unless you really intend to "fix it" (illegitimately)
I *strongly* advise caution on trivializing concerns regarding the true intent of stock houses and large corporations requiring creators to PAY a private company to protect their works from otherwise "de facto" public domain use.
copyright should benefit all creators, not big business with deep pockets with an eye to capitalize on the unsuspecting (or those without the cash to "protect" their works!)... although I'm not clear on it, I strongly suspect there is a big business interest these big corporations are pushing for...it's just smells like bs and it's also claimed they keep trying to *reintroduce* that bill... We've seen patterns like these before. Beware! -
Your fear is well-founded, and I was not trivializing it...
However, let's make this an issue in the Presidential campaign and find out if members of Congress INTEND to put anything in play this year...and let them know WE know about it...
We can see get every conservative talk show host in the country bringing this up and yakking this up...
however, that won't happen if there's nothing pending before either house of Congress.-
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- OldManOnCampus
- 3 months ago
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Exactly! Working together = happy people. I'm a writer and indie film maker and believe me I no all about "surviving" off my work and I wouldn't want people taking away from my mouth, mouths when we all can work together!
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