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stories filed under: "commentary"
Overhype

Overhype

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Feb 3rd 2009 3:39pm


Filed Under:
commentary, copyright, demands, fair use

Companies:
eff, fox, progress illinois, public citizen



Fox Demands Site Give Up Fair Use Rights, Run Special Fox Ads, To Do Any Commentary

from the fair-use-doesn't-work-that-way dept

Here's a follow up to our story last Friday about Progress Illinois having its YouTube account restored. The YouTube account had been taken down following multiple DMCA takedown notices from Fox, leading YouTube to institute its usual policy of shutting such accounts down. Progress Illinois sent a counternotice, and after Fox failed to sue the activist group, the account was turned back on. Paul Alan Levy points us to some more troubling details about the discussions between Progress Illinois and Fox. Apparently, Fox sought to have Progress Illinois waive its fair use rights on all future Fox material and demanded that it be allowed to run ads on the Progress Illinois site in exchange for allowing the content to be placed on YouTube. On top of this, Levy notes that Fox is apparently preparing a deal with another video site (that will include its desired ads), which Fox will apparently demand sites use in reporting on Fox News reports. As Levy suggests, Fox may then use this to suggest that any "unauthorized" clip of a Fox broadcast fails the "impact on the market" prong of the fair use test. If true, that could create quite an interesting test case the first time Fox employs that argument on a site doing commentary. Its lawyers do know that failing one prong of the test doesn't automatically disqualify a fair use defense, right?

23 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Culture

Culture

by Mike Masnick

Thu, Jan 15th 2009 11:38am


Filed Under:
chilling effects, commentary, copyright, fair use, filters, takedowns, videos



YouTube Bans Video Essayist; Apparently Commentary No Longer Considered Fair Use

from the sigh dept

On Wednesday, at the Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the Net 2009 conference, during the panel on digital copyright, NBC Universal's Alec French made the case for technology-based filters on various websites, claiming that the filtering technology is so incredibly good these days that it can even understand fair use, and not block it. That seemed like quite a claim, and one at odds with pretty much everything we've seen. Of course, it may be in how he (and the entertainment industry) defines fair use. The example he gave was a Saturday Night Live video that was stitched together from clips from various newscasts, rather than the original SNL video. French pointed out that the software could tell the difference, and such a clip would be allowed to stay up.

Unfortunately, things don't always work that way in reality. Michael Geist points out that YouTube has banned a video essayist, claiming that his commentary videos, which included clips from various movies, had to be taken down due to copyright violations -- and since it happened three times (yay, three strikes), his entire account was banned. So, here's a case where it seems that since the clips were used for commentary -- which is a clearly accepted fair use -- and, yet not only were the videos taken down, the guy's entire account was banned.

Geist points out that this isn't YouTube's fault, since it's just obeying the DMCA. But he does fault the DMCA for creating such a chilling effect on commentary and creativity. But there's a larger point too. French insists that computers can somehow tell what's fair use and what isn't -- at a time when humans still argue about it pretty much every day. I'm sure there will be some copyright system supporters who speak up in the comments (as they often do) that we're crazy to think such videos were fair use. Given that, how can anyone actually believe that a technology system can accurately determine in any automated way what is and what is not fair use?

33 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
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