Following Rumblefish claiming copyright via YouTube's ContentID system (and putting ads on the video to monetize it) of a guy's nature video because the birds singing in the background sounded too much like a Rumblefish-licensed track, Rumblefish's CEO has gone into PR crisis mode, setting up an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit to address the story. While he gets a smidgen of kudos for the funny title of it:

I'm the CEO of Rumblefish, I guess we're the newest up and coming bird music licensing company - I'm also a copyright, music licensing, entrepreneur guy. Ask me anything.

the details aren't leaving many satisfied. The key explanation is basically that it was a "series of unfortunate errors":

Here's what happened. YT ID'd a song in our catalog improperly, it was disputed, one of our content ID reps re-instated the claim mistakenly. The issue was brought to our attention b/c of a post tonight. We reviewed the video, I watched it myself, and it was clearly a mistake. We released the claim on Sunday eve a few hours after our mistake came to our attention. That's what happened.

We review a substantial amount of claims every day and the number is increasing significantly. It's been rather challenging. We have millions of videos now using our songs as soundtracks and keeping up is getting harder and harder.

This is, almost certainly, an accurate reflection of the specific events, but hardly touches on the key error. That the Rumblefish rep re-instated the video "mistakenly." Remember, this was a nature video. There was no music. No one who watched the actual video would think that it involved someone taking "bird songs" off of some Rumblefish licensed track and placing it on the video.

Separately, this highlights an ongoing problem that we've discussed concerning YouTube's ContentID program. While it has been a great way to enable copyright holders to make money from content uploaded by others, it also can (and often is) abused to either take down content or to monetize someone else's content.

A whole bunch of folks have been sending in this Slashdot story about a guy who had one of his videos "claimed" via ContentID on YouTube due to a purpoted match with content that Rumblefish claims to hold the copyright on. We actually saw this post early on, because it links to an old Techdirt post about questionable Rumblefish takedowns. In this case, the guy says that there was no music in the video, but that Rumblefish said that the birds singing in the background violated its copyright:

"I make nature videos for my YouTube channel, generally in remote wilderness away from any possible source of music. And I purposely avoid using a soundtrack in my videos because of all the horror stories I hear about Rumblefish filing claims against public domain music. But when uploading my latest video, YouTube informed me that I was using Rumblefish's copyrighted content, and so ads would be placed on my video, with the proceeds going to said company. This baffled me. I disputed their claim with YouTube's system — and Rumblefish refuted my dispute, and asserted that: 'All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content: Entity: rumblefish; Content Type: Musical Composition.' So I asked some questions, and it appears that the birds singing in the background of my video are Rumblefish's exclusive intellectual property."

While it's still not fully clear what happened, the idea of claiming copyright on birds singing is actually not an entirely new concept (though, yes, it is ridiculous). In 2010, we wrote about Apple getting sued buy a guy, Martyn Stewart, who had recorded a bunch of bird sounds. Someone else had used those sounds in an app called iBird. As I said then, I'm not sure that there really is much "copyright" to claim over recording birds, but even if someone wants to make an argument that recording birds is copyrightable, it's pretty clear that the guy in the story above was just recording his own sounds -- not using someone's "copyright"-covered bird songs...

It's fascinating to watch birds, not just because birds can fly, but also because some birds are incredibly intelligent and can perform some pretty cool tricks. If you can step away from playing with Angry Birds for a bit, watch a few of these much calmer bird videos.

• A flock of starlings is called a murmuration -- and when a large group of these birds swarms around, there's a really cool "phase transition" effect. Thankfully, these are birds and not killer bee formations.... [url]
• Crows can use a vending machine and create tools without much training. Don't make crows angry, because crows could plot their revenge -- and also teach their kids to get back at us. [url]
• Earthflight is a series of videos featuring birds from all over the world. The bird's eye view of South America looks like they put a GoPro helmet on a condor. [url]
• To discover more interesting biological curiosities, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Unfortunately, there are no dog collars like the ones in Up that can translate what dogs are saying into perfect English. But the technology to create an animal translator could actually be on the way. Considering how well machines can translate between two different human languages, though, the goal of conversational translation seems a tad lofty. Here are just a few quick links on animal communication projects.

• A prototype device for two-way communication with dolphins is going to try to talk with wild dolphins near the Florida coastline. This project is also trying to co-develop a language with dolphins, instead of trying to force a human-made language upon our flippered friends. [url]
• Pet parrots released into the wild are apparently teaching other birds how to say some human expressions. And just like high school kids learning a foreign language, these birds have picked up a lot of swear words. [url]
• Chimps that were taught sign language have been observed teaching sign language to their young. Monkey see. Monkey do! [url]
• To discover more interesting biological curiosities, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.