Bogus Copyright Claim Silences Yet Another Larry Lessig YouTube Presentation | Techdirt.
Lessig recently gave a “webside chat” on the usual issues of copyright and fair use that was posted to YouTube. The video included clips of music that is covered under copyright, but in this context appear to be fair use. The details aren’t immediately clear, but it seems that Google’s automatic copyright filters stripped the audio track from the video (though it is now available again — with a link to purchase the music featured in the video).
This is an incredibly timely coincidence with my last post about the censorship of digital speech. In this case, there wasn’t even a button to push–an automatic filter indiscriminately altered what Lessig had to say.
The democratization of web publishing, I believe, is an inherently good thing. It would be shameful if speech gets quashed because of a business extending its power over any medium it touches.
Techdirt isn’t usually a source I like to cite, but when Lessig tweets a story about himself, you know it must be legit.
Creating Media as Learning: The Charms and Challenges of Digital Media-Based Assessment
I just listened in on an ELI seminar on assigning and assessing student media projects. The content here was informative (better than many of the seminars I’ve attended), but the real story was going on in the chat during the session. A vibrant dialogue of questions and resource sharing emerged with posts from across the country. Clearly this is a topic that educational technolgists find engaging (I would guess both pedagogically and technically) — if we could find some way to keep this momentum, we might quickly identify solutions that could have broad application. I’m guessing Educause has a mechanism for this, but being new at my job, I’m not aware of it.
A Spurned Parody of ‘Die Hard’ Returns to YouTube, Approved – New York Times
Here’s an interesting story of an “infringing” parody.
The story seems familiar to online video users: fans create a parody video using pirated studio content and post it on YouTube, and the studio’s lawyers quickly have it removed for violating copyright law. But this time the studio’s marketing team relented —and even paid the fans to repost their video.
First, the story assumes that the material that went into the material is “pirated,” despite the fact that parody is a well-established fair use. Not having seen the video, I can’t comment on how infringing it might be, but the opening of the story seems to convey that any use of copyrighted material is “piracy.”
This is also another interesting case of how user created content is finding its way into the mainstream… at least in this case the creators were paid for their efforts (plus being able to use and display the materials, plus the exposure gained by this story).
Wired 14.12: You Tube vs. Boob Tube
Wired has a great article on how YouTube is shaping the future of video…both in moving video entertainment to a more user-created model (which the author calls “monkeyvision” but others have called “semiotic democracy” or “rip/mix culture”), and in terms of how the current media model might try to embrace this new phenomenon. I like this piece because it talks about many of the concepts I’ve been thinking of in a humorous way. The one aspect touched on only briefly is the role of copyright in this new form of creation. Tensions between the rights of both owners of original content and owners of (sometimes “mixed”) content uploaded to YouTube might not survive through deals and the safe harbor clause alone.
Judge rules for Craigslist in discriminatory housing ads case &
Craigslist ruling: Why the EFF is right to be pissed
On a largely unrelated note (except in the loss of control over law on the Internet), a Federal appellate court ruled that Craigslist need not police itself for violations of the Fair Housing Act. Discrimination in classified housing ads holds the esteemed position of being one of the few circumstances when the law leans towards telling a newspaper what it cannot print (Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations). More on this in the future.
This headline from a blog post on CNet sums up well what I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: The state of copyright law ensures that an emergent business which is not on unquestionable legal ground must endure a great deal of pressure from content owners.
What do I mean by the state of copyright law? Currently, service providers are granted immunity from copyright as long as they take down infringing material at an owner’s request (DMCA). YouTube could arguably fit in this category because they don’t monitor what individuals upload until they receive one of these letters (which they obviously follow through on). Yet, on the other hand, if one makes a ‘business model’ out of infringement (Grokster), there is liability for the infringement of users.
The legislation and case law in this case has created a situation which (as is common in copyright) is far from clear for owners, providers, or users. The result: if YouTube chooses to fight, may be a trip to court which would resolve the issue–but in what way? Will the courts create a threshold of how much infringement a business model could allow? This could create further complications for other providers in the future.
As copying becomes easier and managing control becomes more complicated, simpler rules will serve business and users the best because of a decrease in litigation. From what I can tell (at a very quick glance), the Copyright Modernization Act proposes to add greater complexity to this very issue.
I’ll try to post more about the Act and the pending WIPO treaty sometime soon.
Other Sources:
Copyright Axe To Fall On YouTube? (Slashdot), YouTube in Copyright Cross Hairs? (Reuters/Wired)
