Except for music, Vimeo strictly controls, monitors, and curates (in its words) the audiovisual works it copies, performs, and distributes. It prohibits – and uses its personnel and tools to review, monitor, and delete – all sorts of videos, including television programs, movies, and movie trailers, as well as “gameplay videos,” “commercial” videos (such as product promotions or real estate tours), “sexually explicit” videos, and “fan vids,” among others.... It enforces its discretionary and subjective guidelines to eliminate content that is not “Vimeoesque.”... All in order to mold its website and control its image.... Despite its pervasive involvement in and control of the content on its website, Vimeo does nothing to limit the infringing use of music on its website.

One of the early “creations” by Vimeo’s founder was a video format in which he “lip synched” to a commercial, copyrighted recording, synchronized the recording into the video during editing, and uploaded the video, making it available to every Vimeo user.... He named this “a lip dub,” and it was promoted as the “signature” Vimeo video genre, something that “put us [Vimeo] on the map.” .... As Vimeo and its users know, these popular lip dub videos, by definition, copy and incorporate copyrighted music without consent or license. ... (If Vimeo “suddenly started to ban videos with copyrighted music, like lipdubs, then I would be pissed but I would have to realize it’s their final decision.”) That also is apparent from Vimeo’s instructions on its home page on how to create lip dubs.... (“Like a music video. Shoot yourself mouthing along to a song then synch it with a high quality copy of the song in an editing program.”).

Lip dubs were heavily promoted. Vimeo provided a “Lip Dub Stars” channel, labeling it a channel “we like” and securing commercial sponsorship for it.... Lip dubs were featured as a “Vimeo Obsession” on Vimeo’s home page.... “Lip dub” became one of the top seven key words that drew visitors to Vimeo ..., and appeared (in several variants) in an internal chart of top “searches per day” on the Vimeo Website

As the article quoted above points out:

The decision sets an important precedent. As far as we are aware, this is the first time damages have been awarded where a third party had content removed from the Internet without legal justification. In light of this decision, if a person falsely tells a file-sharing or social media website that they own copyright in an image or movie to have it taken down, and in fact that is not the case, it could be actionable as an unjustifiable threat.

One is that Tanya Steele not only didn't turn up for the court case in Australia -- perhaps understandable, given the distance of Brisbane from New York -- but didn't even file a submission explaining her actions, so we don't really know her side of the story.

The second is that the article says: "The trailer for the video is now on YouTube". What's odd is that following that link brings up an ominous black screen with the following message:

This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Tanya Steele.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Etsy is an online marketplace for handmade goods, where users can set up a storefront and create listings for things they’ve made.  There are over 800,000 active “shops” filled with these handmade goods — far too many for Etsy to monitor manually. Further, because of the eclectic nature of goods listed, it’s difficult to technically filter through the objects listed.

All that means that it’s not feasible for Etsy to proactively prevent listings that may be perceived to violate US copyright or trademark law.  That’s a problem, because  under SOPA, anybody who is a “holder of an intellectual property right harmed by the activities” of even a portion of the site, could serve Etsy’s payment processors with a notice that would require them to suspend Etsy’s service within 5 days. That means that a trademark violation in one of the storefronts could lead to payment suspension across the entire site. Unlike DMCA notices, which should be targeted to specific infringements, payment provider suspensions will likely target entire accounts.  And even if Etsy protests, the bill's vigilante provisions, which grant them immunity for choking off a site if they have a "reasonable" belief that a portion of a site enable infringement, give the payment processors a strong incentive to cut them off anyway.

Like Etsy, Flickr takes copyright issues seriously, and complies with DMCA safe harbor requirements by taking down photos when it gets a valid complaint, establishing a repeat infringer policy, etc.. But it doesn’t proactively monitor its user-generated content for copyright infringement. The language of SOPA is vague enough that an individual or corporate rightsholder could claim this lack of monitoring as “taking … deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the … site to carry out acts that constitute a violation.” Flickr uses an ad network to place advertisements, and accepts payments for premium accounts. Both of those revenue streams could be suspended in a matter of days by a single complaint, and the process of reactivating them could be long and complex.

That Flagpole Sitta video made me incredibly happy, just when I thought there was NOTHING that could make me listen to that song again. A thousand thank you's.

As for the issue of geoblocking, we're incredibly upset that the youtube versions of our videos can't be embedded. Just one more example of major labels accelerating their own demise. We (and every individual band out there) have exactly zero leverage in this particular battle, however. So we post to other sites as well.