Techdirt. Stories filed under "contentid"

Nintendo Exchanges Goodwill For Control; Issues Mass Monetization Claims On Let's Play Videos

Tim Cushing — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:34:00 PDT

Nintendo's history of aggressive IP enforcement is long and colorful and, occasionally, completely ridiculous. No one protects the brand quite as fiercely as Nintendo does, an unfortunate byproduct of its obsession with maintaining a clean, family-friendly image.

Its latest misadventure into "controlling all things Nintendo" was brought to our attention via a post to Reddit's r/games by a prolific creator of Let's Play videos, Zack Scott. For whatever reason, Nintendo is performing a "mass claiming" of Let's Play videos featuring its titles. Scott notes in his post that Machinima has seen these claims increasing exponentially recently, pointing towards this being an active move on Nintendo's part.

The speculation is now over. Nintendo has released a statement to Gamefront, which reads as follows.

As part of our on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way, we became a YouTube partner and as such in February 2013 we registered our copyright content in the YouTube database. For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips. We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on YouTube, and that is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property.

For more information please visit http://www.youtube.com/yt/copyright/faq.html

A few observations on this statement:

1. In terms of the internet, the present will always be relegated to some distant point in the future for Nintendo. The fact that it took until three months ago for Nintendo to join forces with the world's largest video site is astounding. This is probably has something to do with Nintendo's recent shuttering of several Wii channels, many of which were underwhelming and ignored by a majority of its customers. (The "flagship" of the lineup -- the Nintendo channel -- was one of the worst, featuring haphazardly posted content that seemed to mistake throwing darts at a lineup for curation.)

2. Nintendo's self-consciously squeaky clean image? This IP grab is about that, too. Why else would a company that only recently decided YouTube might be a viable outlet use the phrase "shared... in appropriate and safe ways" to justify slapping ads on tons of pre-existing content uploaded by its customers and fans?

3. "...unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property." Good Guy Nintendo says No Blocking! While other "entertainment companies" have blocked thousands of videos, most video game companies don't. With the exception of Sega's promotional push for its new Shining Force title that took the form of widespread takedowns, most gaming companies take a more hands-off approach, realizing that Let's Play videos are a form of advertising that costs them nothing.

4. Nintendo passes the buck on its particular copyright "strategies" by directing readers to YouTube boilerplate. Weak.

Nintendo is well within their rights to monetize these videos and images. But, as anyone who's had experience with situations like this can tell you, being "within your rights" isn't the same thing as "right," either in the moral sense or in the "opposite of wrong" sense.

Nintendo can (and does) monetize gameplay videos using its IP. There are some valid arguments for fair use that can be applied here (Techdirt contributor E. Zachary Knight runs down a few over at Gamasutra), but when it comes to uploaders v. content companies, the algorithm tends to side with the YouTube partner and the registered content. Once Nintendo makes this monetization claim, there's very little the uploaders can do to fight it.

On the plus side, Nintendo isn't actually taking down videos. This means uploaders may lose the income (many uploaders have never attempted to monetize their uploads), but their accounts will remain strike-free. (Unfortunately, having several videos from the same account claimed by ContentID tends not to reflect well on the account holder and will probably be taken into consideration should other infringement issues arise.)

The money gained from applying pre-roll/post-roll ads to Let's Play videos is likely insignificant in terms of Nintendo's annual income. (It's certainly not going to make up for the WiiU's rather inauspicious debut.) Nintendo's past IP battles make this more about control than income. This also builds Nintendo a useful database of "offending" titles that it can easily block or take down by doing nothing more than changing its ContentID options.

Is the additional control worth it? If nothing else, it will be easier for Nintendo to control its online "representation" as its actions have decreased its customer base. Zack Scott, whose account contains dozens of Nintendo Let's Play videos, has already announced he will no longer be supporting the company.

I think filing claims against LPers is backwards. Video games aren’t like movies or TV. Each play-through is a unique audiovisual experience. When I see a film that someone else is also watching, I don’t need to see it again. When I see a game that someone else is playing, I want to play that game for myself! Sure, there may be some people who watch games rather than play them, but are those people even gamers?

My viewers watch my gameplay videos for three main reasons:

1. To hear my commentary/review.
2. To learn about the game and how to play certain parts.
3. To see how I handle and react to certain parts of the game.

Since I started my gaming channel, I’ve played a lot of games. I love Nintendo, so I’ve included their games in my line-up. But until their claims are straightened out, I won’t be playing their games. I won’t because it jeopardizes my channel’s copyright standing and the livelihood of all LPers.

There are many better ways Nintendo could have handled this (a monetization split with uploaders, an invitation to upload to Nintendo's official channel, DOING NOTHING...), but the company's antagonistic attitude towards anything it doesn't directly profit from made this situation one of the better outcomes, unfortunately.

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YouTube's ContentID Trolls: Claim Copyright On Lots Of Gameplay Videos, Hope No One Complains, Collect Free Money [Updated]

Tim Cushing — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 10:56:00 PST

UPDATE: Direct from Abbi Tatton at Google:

From his post: "An entity going the vague but all-encompassing name of "Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society" has made a number of claims on various uploads."

That's not an entity. If YouTube generated that message it's because Content ID identified compositions in the upload to which a portion of the rights may be administered by any one of a number of collecting societies. Our message in these cases now reads "one or more music publishing rights collecting societies" to make this clearer -- that Facebook parody page doesn't help though. Help Center Page is here with the details.

Odd things have been happening over at Youtube this month, affecting gamers uploading "Let's Play" videos. Well, not so much "odd" as "annoying" and "clearly abusive of Youtube's copyright notification system."

Early in February, the name "Agora Aggregator" began popping at various internet locations, like Reddit's r/LetsPlay and Google's product forums. This entity is apparently casting a porous copyright dragnet over a wide selection of gameplay videos, ranging from Super Meat Boy to F.E.A.R. 3, with several stops in between (Max Payne 3, Far Cry 3, I Am Alive, The Walking Dead).

Now, trying to track down Agora Aggregator is an exercise in futility. It very likely doesn't exist outside of Youtube. It's a name that sounds vague enough to be credible but not specific enough to step on any existing company's toes. Here's the general M.O.:

Agora files a claim on a gameplay video, but not the entire video or even a large portion of it. Instead, it files for certain "visual content" located at random points in the upload. The uploader is then notified of Agora's claim. If the uploader challenges the claim, Agora immediately drops it. If it goes ignored, Agora is then given this credit in the About section:

Now that Agora has a "hook" in the video, all it has to do is choose the "monetize" option that Youtube provides, sit back and wait for the video to get views, with a big chunk of the money going to Agora. The reality of the situation is one of annoyance, rather than actual harm, in most cases. The other unfortunate reality is that this sort of low-level trolling on gameplay videos is nothing new. "Companies" using the names IMG Media UK, INgroove, and Netcom have also filed bogus claims in the past.

The bad news is this sort of thing will probably always exist, especially in the case of gameplay videos. Gameplay videos exist in a legal gray area. For the most part, game companies are more than happy to let these serve as free advertising, knowing that watching a video can hardly replace the experience of actually playing the game. (One exception that proves the rule: Sega's massive takedown of anything "Shining Force"-related in "preparation" for the release of a new game in the series.) Some companies even allow uploaders to monetize gameplay videos, provided a portion of the earnings flows back to the developer.

Because of this gray area, many gamers will feel they can't challenge Agora's claim since they themselves do not "own" what they've uploaded. Even if it seems dubious and faintly scammy, the slim possibility that Agora actually exists and has a legitimate claim is enough to deter them from disputing it.

This isn't limited solely to video game footage. An entity going the vague but all-encompassing name of "Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society" has made a number of claims on various uploads. Here's its bio (in full) from its "official" website, which is a Facebook page. (The URL listed on its Facebook page sends you to... MPRCS's Facebook page.)

"Our mission is to file copyright claims so that ads will be placed onto certain videos, and we will be able to make money off of them. We do not seek to have anyone's videos blocked in certain countries or disabled altogether, all we are trying to do is make a bit of money. That's not so bad, is it?"

Sure, it's better than getting videos blocked or disabled, but take a close look at the wording it uses. It pretty much states exactly what it's going to do (make money off the uploads of others), all without feeling the need to demonstrate that it actually has a right to file these claims. There is no other URL for this "company," no list of artists/labels it represents and it has in the past claimed content it clearly has no right to.

They identified my (completely original) song as infringing the copyright of a completely different song that I had never heard of, that I had to search google for, which turned out to be some kind of trance remix of a completely unrelated song…Wtf?

I immediately disputed the claim and received an email from Youtube saying:

“Dear tibetanpunk,

Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society has reviewed your dispute and released its copyright claim on your video, “Sonic Sunset No.2“.” (shameless plug)

Much like Agora Aggregator, MPRCS immediately backs down if challenged. Despite the fact that there's clearly something shady going on, MPRCS sounds ambiguously "official" enough that even Youtube itself makes statements in its defense.

So how do collecting societies affect you as a YouTube user? If you’ve ever received a notice indicating that one of your videos may include copyrighted content administered by "Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society," or “one or more music publishing rights collecting societies,” it means that YouTube's Content ID system identified one or more musical compositions within your video to which a portion of the rights may be administered by a collecting society.

While this information may be true (as Youtube states it), it is highly unlikely that the "Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society" is truly representing anyone but the person who lucked into this low-level abuse of Youtube's copyright claim system. One more strike against this so-called "Collecting Society?" Its profile photo is a watermarked Shutterstock picture.

As for Agora Aggregator, it already appears its trolling days are numbered. In a few short weeks, its system has been exposed, leaving it with precious few successful claims. But whoever's behind this remains undeterred. A new "company," Digital Minds Entertainment, has begun making the same sort of copyright claims against random points in gameplay videos. It may be Agora or it may be someone else with the same bad idea. Some unlucky bastard working his way through Far Cry 3 has hit the bogus copyright claim trifecta.

Even if Agora Aggregator goes down, and Digital Minds Entertainment follows, more will pop up to take their place. The system (such as it is) seems to have the success rate of an untargeted mass mailing -- low enough to be almost negligible, but still high enough to make it a worthwhile venture.

Youtube can't do much to prevent this abuse. It has to err on the side of the rights holders, even if the rights holders don't actually hold the rights. This is a necessity. It allows it to show it takes proactive steps against infringement, a requirement in order to benefit from the Safe Harbor protections. The other issue is the massive volume it deals with -- 72 hours uploaded every minute -- which makes it impossible to police uploads with any level of detail. The system is exploitable, and the people behind these "companies" know it.

Since it can't be stopped, the only method left to battle these trolling "companies" is to expose them as quickly (and loudly) as possible. This is only a stopgap, rather than a solution. What's happening now is mostly an annoyance. The real problems will develop later when uploaders being challenging legitimate claims, assuming them to be invalid, and have their accounts closed down. In essence, Agora (and others) are the boy who cried wolf. Only this time, when the real wolf arrives, it will be the townspeople that suffer.

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Copyright And The Harlem Shake: Selective Enforcement

Mike Masnick — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 08:36:03 PST

For those of you who have managed to avoid the viral sensation of February, known as "The Harlem Shake," consider yourselves lucky. People still seem at a total loss how this became "a thing," but it involves the opening 30 seconds of a song released nearly a year ago, called The Harlem Shake, by Baauer, with the first half involving someone in a wacky costume (often involving a helmet) dancing while others around them ignore it, followed by a bass drop and suddenly everyone around is dancing crazily, often involving costumes, stuffed animals (or real animals), people in sleeping bags and much much more. It's gone quite insane (and, yes, we know it's not "the real Harlem Shake" but so what?) with way, way, way, way too many people, companies and organizations all doing their own versions. There were reports of 4,000 Harlem Shake videos being uploaded to YouTube every single day, and over 60,000 being on YouTube already. If you want (and I warn you to be careful), you can spend hours going through video after video. The KnowYourMeme link up top has collected some of the most popular ones. I cannot vouch for how many such videos it takes before you are driven insane, so be forewarned.

For those who have not seen them, this video was basically the first, but this one that quickly followed it more or less established the basic parameters of the meme.

Over the weekend Baauer's song hit number one on the charts and it appears to be doing fairly well around the globe. Also, the song has resulted in a sold out show in NY for Baauer and what is likely to be a fair bit of money. That's because, rather than freak out about others using "his" song (which includes a bunch of samples), Baauer and his label Mad Decent have a deal with INDmusic, which helps indie labels/musicians claim YouTube videos via ContentID and place ads on them. So, combine a top selling song on iTunes, plus allowing the free use of it on YouTube (and monetizing it via ads) and it seems like a tidy profit is being made.

So, for a bit, this was looking like yet another story of how letting people build something on your music was enabling a nice way for one artist to make money, without flipping out about "copyright infringement." But... then we learned that it wasn't quite that simple. As highlighted by The Verge, while Mad Decent and Baauer have mostly let people do what they want with the song, they did send a takedown to Soundcloud over Azelia Banks posting her lyrics over the entire Baauer track, and also posting a video:

That quickly turned into a bit of a Twitter fight, with Banks calling out Baauer: And, from there we get the following exchange: Of course, it seemed like there absolutely had to be more to this, as it was unlikely that Banks put together that song and video so quickly after the meme took off (especially since the video doesn't reference the meme at all). Indeed, in an interview with the Daily Beast Baauer (real name: Harry Rodrigues) explains:

“I’m not happy about it,” says Baauer. “She had a version that we were going to release because I’m a big fan of hers. We knew she likes to beef with producers. So she laid something on ‘Harlem Shake’ and it was so/so. Didn’t love it. And that was a little while ago, and since all this video stuff happened, our plans all changed. Because of that, we decided to just release the song on it’s own with no vocal version. So we told her, ‘Please don’t release your version.’ And she said, ‘Well, I’m going to put it online anyway.’ And we said, ‘Please don’t. We’d really like it if you didn’t.’ And she did.”

Still, while lots of folks are defending Baauer here (in part because Banks does have a reputation for getting into arguments with people, and in part because she also went on a homophobic rant), she did have a point when she tweeted this: Art is supposed to be inspiring, and you should be happy when someone is inspired by your art. In fact, one might argue that Baauer's statement to Banks that "its not ur song" could potentially come back to bite him as well. In that same Daily Beast interview, he talks about how he created the song:

“I just had the idea of taking a Dutch house squeaky-high synth and putting it over a hip-hop track,” he says. “And then I tried to just make it the most stand-out, flashy track that would get anyone’s attention, so put as many sounds and weird shit in there as I could. The dude in the beginning I got somewhere off the Internet, I don’t even know where, and the lion roar just makes no sense.” He laughs. “There’s the sound of flames in there, too, it’s just really low.”

He doesn't know where the "dude in the beginning" comes from -- though, the folks at Reddit have figured it out (because Reddit knows everything). You have to imagine that wasn't licensed, though, if he didn't know where it was from. Who knows about all of the other samples. Personally, I think it's great that he created something by building on the works of others, and was inspired to create something that has become such a huge hit. But you'd think that someone who made the song by pulling bits and pieces from others wouldn't be so fast to sling claims of "ownership" back at someone else who built off of his work. Yes, there's more to it than that and, for the most part, Baauer seems reasonably giddy with all the insanity (and he definitely seemed to do a nice job with his Reddit AMA thanks in particular to this exchange).

It would just be nice if artists who really build on the works of others didn't jump to claiming ownership when others build on their works as well.

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Viral Video Of 9-Year-Old Girl Football Star... Taken Down Because Of Music

Mike Masnick — Fri, 9 Nov 2012 08:35:55 PST

If you follow the "hot viral video of the week" you probably have seen or heard about Sam Gordon, the 9-year-old girl who is pretty damn good at football, (the American kind for all you foreigners), as shown in an impressive highlight reel her father put together: As tends to happen with these sorts of things, Sam was everywhere this week, with all sorts of press coverage including appearances on morning TV shows and such.

Just one problem. The original video had all sorts of famous songs in it:

Without the music in that video — Jane’s Addiction covering The Doors’ “LA Woman” and The Germs’ “Lexicon Devil” (as part of a medley) and the Beastie Boys’ “Soul Fire” (also in a sense a cover) — this video wouldn’t be nearly as effective, and thus not as viral. Her father Brent Gordon, who originally uploaded the video, chose these songs because they are exactly what this video needs. As any Hollywood director knows, pairing the right music with any video makes it way more effective.

Normally, the Beastie Boys, Jane’s Addiction, The Germs, and The Doors could choose to get paid when a video with their music goes viral like this. But that does not appear to be the case here, at this point anyway.

Sure enough, soon after people started pointing that out -- and even though the video had something like 2 million views lined up already, it went down due to a copyright claim. It looks like ContentID showed up late, because the "takedown" mentions a bunch of possible copyright holders, without saying who made the final call: After all that, Sam's father, Brent changed the music to something that wouldn't get pulled down -- though people are already complaining that the new music is "lame."

We’re pleased to see that the video is online, because that Sam Gordon is a sight to behold, with amazing moves and no small amount of moxie, which is the main reason people liked the video so much. But it’s a shame that the music is now so bad that we couldn’t even make it through one viewing without muting it. With the other soundtrack, I ended up watching it five times in a row.

And thus it was proven for the umpteenth time that A) The right music makes all the difference in a video, and B) Copyright, while necessary, tends to rain on parades, especially when multiple rights-holders get involved.

Of course, depending on your general position in this debate, you can make one of two arguments here. The copyright hardliners will say that this proves the importance of good music and that Gordon should have paid up in the first place. Those who find problems with today's copyright system will note that it's not like your average person is going to even be able to license, let alone want to pay for, songs to stick on a video like this (especially without knowing that it's about to go crazy viral). The music industry could make this easier with a simple database / store option ("want this song for your non-commercial video? $1 -- click here to buy the license") but they don't seem to want to do that. So, instead, we get this situation where no one wins. The video has crappy music. The good music providers don't get paid. How is that a good solution?

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Video About Fair Use, Remix & Culture Taken Down Over Copyright Claim (Of Course)

Mike Masnick — Thu, 8 Nov 2012 07:27:08 PST

A few years back, we had a post highlighting an absolutely fantastic video by Julian Sanchez about the value of remix culture. The video made a key point that often gets lost in these debates: that remix culture is often more about the culture than the remix, but that copyright law makes that difficult. It focused mainly on a viral remix video that took a song from the band Phoenix, called "Lisztomania," but which was put to video clips of people dancing in various John Hughes films (mainly from the classic scene in "The Breakfast Club.") That was interesting enough, but what was even more interesting was how it then followed that lots of others recreated the video in their own image. So groups got together in various hipster locations (Brooklyn, San Francisco) and created their own videos recreating the dance moves on their own to go with the new song. It was really quite interesting, and showed how important remixing and fair use was to culture, and how it could take something and make more with it.

Fast forward to the present, and even though this video has been up for years, Julian discovered that his original video was taken down on a copyright claim. If you go to it now, you see this: For what it's worth, this does not seem to be targeted at just Sanchez. In looking around, it looks like a bunch of the "original" videos of the Hughes brat pack dancing to Lisztomania videos are all down with the same message. From this, it appears that it's the publishing company, rather than the band or its label. Kobalt has claimed to be a new sort of publishing company, though this seems like a horrifically old school approach, killing off a popular viral video -- and doubly so with the Sanchez video which almost certainly qualifies as fair use. It was completely not commercial, only used a part of the song, included significant commentary, did not limit the market for the song and clearly was not a replacement.

And, yet, it's gone. Even worse, when Sanchez appealed the takedown, which was rejected, and there appears to be nothing else Sanchez can do: Note that in this screen, it's not Kobalt, but Glassnote and SME (which I believe is Sony Music). Glassnote is an indie label who released the song, but in partnership with Sony, who handles the distribution.

It's also odd that there doesn't appear to be any further appeals process. After all, just last month YouTube said it had changed its appeals process to avoid exactly this situation. The "old" model allowed whoever made the claim to "reject" the appeal and there was no further action possible. The "new" situation is supposed to require the claimant to file a DMCA notice, at which point the DMCA process takes over.

Users have always had the ability to dispute Content ID claims on their videos if they believe those claims are invalid. Prior to today, if a content owner rejected that dispute, the user was left with no recourse for certain types of Content ID claims (e.g., monetize claims). Based upon feedback from our community, today we're introducing an appeals process that gives eligible users a new choice when dealing with a rejected dispute. When the user files an appeal, a content owner has two options: release the claim or file a formal DMCA notification.

But, as Sanchez notes, there doesn't appear to be any such appeals process available to him (at least not in an obvious manner).

Either way, Glassnote/Kobalt/SME is playing with fire here. First off, taking down such a popular viral video -- one that clearly only served to help promote the song massively -- just seems stupid and shortsighted. But, going further and taking down Sanchez's video commentary on remix culture, which used part of that song seems doubly questionable, seeing as it's almost certainly fair use. It might not be the same issue as the Lenz case, in which Universal Music may get into trouble for issuing a bogus DMCA without properly considering fair use, since it's unclear that any actual DMCA notice was filed (instead, this looks like it was all a problem via ContentID). However, going around and censoring videos that are clearly fair use isn't going to end well. Though, really, YouTube's broken ContentID system isn't helping either.

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Google Finally Changes ContentID Appeals Process

Mike Masnick — Wed, 3 Oct 2012 23:53:53 PDT

While some aspects of YouTube's ContentID feature have been quite cool, creating new ways for content creators to monetize their works, there have been significant problems too, especially in taking down legitimate content with little recourse for the uploader. Thankfully, it appears that the folks at YouTube have finally realized that the counter-notification/appeals process for ContentID takedowns was bogus. A lot of people get DMCA takedowns and ContentID takedowns confused, but they're different. With the DMCA, you have an official counternotice process, and if the copyright holder doesn't sue (realistically, file for an injunction), then YouTube puts your content back up after 10 business days. However, with ContentID, there are no legal rules. Google handled ContentID disputes by letting the copyright holder simply "reject" the dispute -- and that was about the end of it, even in cases where they were putting ads on someone else's content. Now, however, YouTube has revamped the appeals process so that if someone disputes a ContentID takedown, the copyright holder would need to file an actual DMCA claim if they want to keep claiming infringement:

Users have always had the ability to dispute Content ID claims on their videos if they believe those claims are invalid. Prior to today, if a content owner rejected that dispute, the user was left with no recourse for certain types of Content ID claims (e.g., monetize claims). Based upon feedback from our community, today we’re introducing an appeals process that gives eligible users a new choice when dealing with a rejected dispute. When the user files an appeal, a content owner has two options: release the claim or file a formal DMCA notification.

This is a much more reasonable process that doesn't allow people claiming copyright to effectively take over a video regardless of whether or not the video's uploader disputes it. This probably should have happened a long time ago, but it's good to see it finally has.

The announcement also claims that their system is becoming better at avoiding "invalid claims." It sounds as though there's some sort of threshold now, where if something is borderline, it goes into a manual review queue, rather than automatically being taken down. So the more "gray area" cases will get a human review first.

We'll see how all of this works out, but it's good to see that Google is taking many of the complaints about ContentID's overeager takedowns seriously.

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Copyright Killbots Strike Again: Official DNC Livestream Taken Down By Just About Every Copyright Holder

Tim Cushing — Wed, 5 Sep 2012 01:32:42 PDT

Here we go again. Less than 24 hours ago, content-protection bots killed a livestream of the Hugo Awards, thanks to the brief appearance of fully approved clips from an episode of Dr. Who. The whole situation was completely absurd to anyone harboring the tiniest vestige of common sense, but IP-protection software isn't built on common sense: it's built on algorithms.

This time, content protection via crawling bots have taken down another approved, perfectly legal stream. The victim this time? The Democratic National Convention's official stream, hosted at YouTube. As Wired reports, if you're looking to catch up on last night's activities, including a speech by Michelle Obama, don't bother:

The video, posted by the official YouTube account for the convention, DemConvention2012, was blocked, according to YouTube, for ostensibly infringing on the copyright of one of many possible suspects:

This video contains content from WMG, SME, Associated Press (AP), UMG, Dow Jones, New York Times Digital, The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA), Warner Chappell, UMPG Publishing and EMI Music Publishing, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.
Sorry about that.
When contacted by Wired for comment, Erica Sackin, an Obama campaign staffer who works on digital outreach, had no knowledge of the outage, asked this reporter for the url and then upon seeing the takedown, said, "I'll have to call you back."

The video has since been updated to state that "This video is private." There's probably quite a bit going on behind the scenes at the moment, but fortunately Wired snagged the complete list of claimants for future reference. Take a good, long look at that list. There's a few of the usual suspects in there, including AP, UMG and Warner, entities not known to be shy about claiming content that isn't theirs.

Now, these entities aren't directly responsible for this takedown. This is more of an automated match situation, but it still doesn't change the fact that the inherent stupidity of the action, automated or not, does absolutely nothing to lock down stray, unmonetized content and absolutely everything to highlight the ridiculous nature of copyright protection in a digital age.

If Google can work with copyright holders to produce content matching software, it seems like it might be possible to designate certain accounts or entities as "off limits" from the wandering killbots. If the stream is authorized by, I don't know, the party of the current President of the United States, maybe, just fucking maybe, everything's "above board."

Sure, defining legitimate, pre-approved accounts may prove to be as difficult as determining which content is infringing and which isn't, but this should be the sort of thing that content holders should be working toward, rather than simply moving from disaster to disaster, smugly secure in the knowledge that filthy file sharers are getting content-blocked thousands of times a day.

Nice going, huge list of content holders. Your boundless, maximalist enthusiasm is just another nail in the coffin containing what's left of copyright's reputation.

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Major Labels Claim Copyright Over Public Domain Songs; YouTube Punishes Musician

Mike Masnick — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 11:54:58 PDT

We've talked in the past about how YouTube's ContentID system fails at fair use and the public domain -- whereby it is unable to distinguish public domain material. That has resulted in ridiculous situations, often where large companies with huge catalogs end up shutting down perfectly legal content. Sometimes it's crazy stuff like taking down a video because of birds chirping in the background, but other times it can result in public domain music being pulled down.

Musician Dave Colvin appears to be dealing with the latter, as he noted in a frustrated Facebook post about how the publishing arms of the major labels keep claiming copyright on public domain cover songs that he's been recording and posting to YouTube. The end result is that, even though all of these claims are bogus, YouTube is threatening to take away his ability to monetize his account, and have already disabled it on a public domain song.

I am fed up with YouTube. Several times I have provided evidence that my video "O Little Town of Bethlehem" is a Public Domain song and each time I get an email saying the song is owned by either Warner Chappell or UMPG or Sony. Now they have disabled my being able to earn any money for the number of times the video is viewed. We are only talking about pennies but no one "owns" a Public Domain song.

They now have threatened to totally disable my account from monetizing any of my videos because of multiple "false" claims of ownership. Since there is no way to speak to a human being directly, there will never be a way to convince them of the error of their ways....Fed up!

(And just to cut this argument off before it even begins: you can absolutely make money from public domain material, you just can't stop others from doing the same thing). Again, this isn't the first time we've seen this kind of thing, and it's a situation that YouTube really needs to figure out a solution to.

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Curiosity's Mars Landing Video Disappears From YouTube Due To Bogus Copyright Claim

Mike Masnick — Mon, 6 Aug 2012 11:21:40 PDT

We hear from copyright system supporters that bogus copyright takedowns are rare and we only highlight the "exceptions." Of course, it seems like there are an awful lot of these exceptions. The latest is that with the massive success of last night's Mars landing of the Curiosity Rover, NASA posted the video to YouTube for those who didn't watching the thrilling, suspenseful landing live... except, if you checked out NASA's own YouTube page a few hours later, you got this:
screenshot courtesy of Motherboard It's back now, but as Vice's Motherboard blog explains, this kind of thing happens all the time. They spoke with Bob Jacobs, NASA’s Deputy Associate Administrator for Communications, who said that this happens about once a month, and almost always happens with NASA's popular videos.

“We spend too much time going through the administrative process to clear videos slapped with needless copyright claims,” says NASA’s Bob Jacobs. “YouTube seems to be missing a ‘common sense’ button to its processes, especially when it involves public domain material paid for by the American taxpayer.”

Jacobs is quite reasonably annoyed at the lack of consequences for these bogus takedowns:

“There seems to be few consequences for companies that engage in such activities, which often include legitimate news organizations. We do agree that people who make false copyright claims against our material should be held accountable, regardless of their automated systems.”

What's amazing here is that Scripps is a repeat offender with NASA. Back in April, people noticed that it had forced the removal of NASA's (again, public domain) footage of the Boeing 747 that carried the space shuttle Discovery to the Smithsonian (its "final journey"). But, of course, there aren't many (or even any) serious consequences for these kinds of mistakes. While it's not clear what happened, it seems likely that Scripps replayed the footage itself somewhere, and via some semi-automated process uploaded it to YouTube's ContentID, in which it claimed copyright on all its works. But, of course, it was actually broadcasting public domain video from NASA. Unfortunately, YouTube can't recognize that Scripps is the latecomer here, rebroadcasting others' public domain material, and thus took down the material, only to have it corrected later.

Given that Scripps is now a repeat offender, it seems that perhaps YouTube should cut it off from automatically censoring others' videos.

Oh, and if you want to know one of the reasons we're so concerned about a possible broadcast treaty (which the US government is now supporting), it's because it actually would make these kinds of claims quasi-legal, in that broadcasters who broadcast public domain material could then claim a separate "broadcast right" over that footage. Even without that, we see operations like Scripps abusing the law. Do we really want to expand that power?

Now, since the video is back up, here's the actual (public domain) footage, in case you missed it (and if you did miss it, you should watch it, as it really is incredible):

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Copylaundering: Jay Leno Airs Campaign Video From YouTube, NBC Claims Ownership Of Original

Leigh Beadon — Fri, 25 May 2012 03:05:00 PDT

This is easily one of the best responses to copyfraud I've ever read. Sure, Jay Leno is a pretty easy target for a roast, but musician Brian Kamerer does a brilliant job of taking him to task over a bogus YouTube takedown. I strongly suggest reading the whole thing, but here's the short version of what happened.

A few years ago, Brian helped a friend, who was running for mayor, create an intentionally silly campaign jingle and commercial, which they uploaded to YouTube. Two years later, they heard from another friend that the video had appeared on the Jay Leno Show as part of a segment about local campaign commercials. They just got a kick out of it, and moved on—until now, another three years later. Brian discovered that the YouTube video had been taken down on a copyright claim... by NBC (most likely as the result of a ContentID match as NBC uploaded old episodes into the system). So Leno mines the internet for material to air on his show—without permission or even the courtesy of letting them know—and then, years later, the network claims ownership of that material and accuses the actual creators and copyright holders of infringement. Brian is unimpressed, to say the least—and even supplies a script for how he imagines things went down:

JAY LENO

Hey remember those loser kids, we played their bit once, remember those guys? Let’s get em.

WRITER

What? Who? Why?

JAY LENO

Those guys, we took their video about three years ago and played it, I loved that song, remember?

WRITER

Oh yeah, sure, I remember those guys. So, what is it you want to do to them?

JAY LENO

I want to have the boys at NBC say that we own the video, so that if they try to watch their video on YouTube, they won’t be able to, and it will look like they stole the video, like Carlos Mencia!

WRITER

Or we could just leave those two nice boys alone. After all, you loved that song, remember?

JAY LENO

You’re fired! Secretary! Get me someone who has the balls to frame these two unknown assholes, so that eventually their work will be blocked on YouTube! And I need fifty more classic cars!

He's kidding of course—he knows that's not how it really happened. The real problem is that the system is broken: the law favors the accuser and permits this kind of copyfraud, giving NBC absolutely no incentive to narrowly target its takedown efforts. But Brian, quite reasonably, points out that he's not interested in excuses—everything that happened revolves around the public face of Jay Leno, and he sees no reason that Leno shouldn't bear the blame.

I know you’re reading this going, “Brian, you don’t understand! It’s not me, it’s just some NBC internet robot that scans YouTube videos and then compares the videos to the vast NBC library and just blocks the YouTube videos that match up, because the robot assumes the video has been stolen. Besides, you don’t own anything on YouTube! Don’t be mad at me, funny man Jay Leno! I liked your video! It’s the robot’s fault. The robot fucked up.”

Don’t hide behind NBC on this one, dude. And don’t blame YouTube. And forget about the robots. I’m not talking to the robot now. I’m talking to you, Jay Leno. Where does the buck stop on The Jay Leno Show, if not with Jay Leno himself? The buck stops with you Jay.

As more people fall victim to copyfraud—including this process whereby a TV network launders your copyrights into their own—and tell the story publicly (and entertainingly) as Brian has done, the aggressive entertainment companies are going to have a harder time recruiting stars as mouthpieces for the anti-piracy cause. Increasingly, they are going to see their own artists rebelling against their bogus takedowns and over-enforcement, as some already are. Combine that kind of pressure with transparency efforts like Google's newly available takedown data, and eventually something's got to give—starting with any remaining shred of public respect for copyright law.

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After Years Of Trying To Kill YouTube, Movie Studios Are Embracing & Profiting From It

Mike Masnick — Mon, 7 May 2012 07:19:00 PDT

When the Betamax/VCR first came out, Hollywood insisted that it was pure evil and that it would be "the Boston Strangler" to the movie business. And, if you looked at how the devices were used at first, you could easily argue that the vast, vast majority of the usage was, in fact, infringing. In part, that was because the movie studios were so freaked out about such devices, they couldn't even comprehend offering licensed movies for home viewing at the time. Instead, the device was purely about "theft." Of course, after a drawn out trial, the Supreme Court (very closely) came down in favor of the VCR, and said that because it had substantial non-infringing uses, it was legal. Just a few years after that, the home video market for the major Hollywood studios was so large, that it was widely claimed that the VCR saved Hollywood, rather than killing it.

This story is not a unique one. We seem to see the same thing with every disruptive technology that old guard entertainment firms can't comprehend. When radio was introduced it was declared that it would kill the music industry. The RIAA worked hard to have the MP3 player declared illegal.

It happens over and over again -- and each and every time, soon afterwards, new markets emerge, new opportunities become abundantly clear, and the platform that was supposedly pure evil and bent on the destruction of the industry turns out to be a huge new revenue base and opportunity, usually providing revenue in ways that simply weren't possible before that new technology came along.

It sure looks like the same exact thing is happening with YouTube. As you probably know, Viacom is still engaged in a drawn out lawsuit against YouTube over many thousands of clips that Viacom insists were infringing and a massive blight on its bottom line.

And yet... because YouTube had the time to develop, something interesting has been happening. By now you're hopefully all familiar with ContentID. While it has its quirks and issues, one thing that is clear is that it's become a tremendous source of revenue for content creators to monetize works uploaded by others. But it's not just others. NPR has a story about how the major MPAA Hollywood studios -- including Viacom -- are now profiting nicely by purposely uploading all sorts of clips from their various movies, knowing that people are searching for and watching key moments... which they can monetize:

Oh, and the fun part: she gets to watch movies, pick the most memorable moments, and upload those clips to YouTube. Today, it's L.A. Story.

"We always pick a clip that has a beginning, middle and an end," says Strickland, pointing out the various fields she has to fill out in the content management system before she uploads a clip to YouTube. "I put everyone that's in the scene: so Steve Martin, Richard Grant, Victoria Tennant, Sarah Jessica Parker, I put some of the memorable dialogue — 'SanDeE your breasts feel weird, oh, that's because they're real' — then you put discussion topics, character types, settings, eras, what they're doing."

It consists of hours of tedious work to ensure this licensed content will show up first when you go searching for your favorite movie clip on YouTube. Not an easy task when 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

This is a company that all the big MPAA studios are hiring to go out, find these clips in their own movies, and upload them (and then do things to get them to the top of Google searches). Apparently, it's quite lucrative for the studios. Of course, what's funny is that the same people who are now celebrating this new revenue stream are also the ones who just a few years ago insisted not only that YouTube was illegal, but that it was dead, because no money could be made from it. But, somehow, these things have a way of working themselves out if they're allowed to do so.

This is one of the things that is so troubling to me about the abrupt shutdown of Megaupload. While, at an initial glance, it's easy to insist that the service must be illegal, the company was actually very actively trying out unique new business models for artists, which many artists celebrated. But we'll never know how well those would have worked. When the VCR, radio, the MP3 player and YouTube first came on the scene, the industry insisted they were all just as bad as Megaupload. In hindsight those arguments seem pretty silly -- but it seems like we'll never be able to get that same hindsight for Megaupload. And that's a real shame for the content creators who almost certainly would have embraced new business models enabled by this new technology.

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How Rumblefish Ended Up Claiming Copyright On A Song Uploaded By The Band Who Actually Held The Copyright

Mike Masnick — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:35:00 PDT

A few years back, we wrote about the company Rumblefish claiming copyright on public domain works on YouTube and getting them taken down. Recently, the company got a lot of attention for claiming copyright on someone's video because it had some birds chirping in the background, and a very mistaken Rumblefish process not only believed it owned the birdsongs, but then an employee doubled down and refused to back down when challenged on this. The company did eventually admit a big mistake after this received a ton of publicity -- but many of us were still worried about the process that allowed Rumblefish to make such a bogus claim in the first place.

Here's a story of another Rumblefish takedown -- but the details suggest one of the reasons why these things may be happening. John Boydston, from the band Daddy A Go Go, recently contacted us after he discovered that Rumblefish was claiming copyright on a video he had put up on YouTube, for an original song called I Wanna Be An Action Figure. The song was written by Boydston and he holds the sole copyright. It was released on a CD back in 2002. The video was produced (by Boydston again) just last year and posted to YouTube last October. Even so, Boydston received a notice from YouTube saying that music in that video "may have content that is owned or licensed by rumblefish." Boydston filed a dispute over this -- but was told that it would take a month to hear back -- and in the meantime ads might appear next to his videos with the proceeds going to Rumblefish.

Thankfully, the process didn't take that long. Within a day of filing the dispute claim, YouTube sent Boydston an email telling him that "rumblefish has reviewed your dispute and released its copyright claim on your video." So, at the very least, that's an improvement over the birdsong situation.

So, what happened? Boydston searched around for a while to actually find a contact at Rumblefish and had a short email exchange where he was told that the "system is working the way it should." It turns out that Boydston signed the band up with CDBaby to be his online distributor. They offer his music off of the CD Baby site, but also distribute it to tons of other properties, like iTunes, Amazon and various streaming services. And... it turns out, mixed in with a long list of music stores and streaming sites, is Rumblefish. The company is supposed to help potentially license the song to others, with a cut of the proceeds going back to Boydston (I assume after Rumblefish and CDBaby take their cut). So part of that is that Rumblefish automatically registers all such music with YouTube's ContentID, and sets it to "monetize." That, of course, leads to the silly result that any time an indie artist who uses CD Baby puts their own work up on YouTube, Rumblefish may end up claiming the work as its own (though, in theory, some of the proceeds would eventually get back to the author). Unfortunately, this is not clearly explained at all.

CDBaby does let its musicians opt-out of each individual service, and having gone through this whole experience, Boyston has decided to uncheck Rumblefish, and no longer allow them to claim his own music on YouTube.

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Huh? Totally Clueless German Court Says ContentID Isn't Good Enough, YouTube Must Block Infringement By Keywords

Mike Masnick — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:45:00 PDT

We've discussed a few times the legal fight in Germany between YouTube and the overbearing collections society GEMA. German law is a bit bizarre in that it has very little regard for secondary liability protections, and often seems to default to blaming third parties for the actions of their users. On top of that, GEMA is incredibly powerful and controlling in Germany. When I was there a few years ago (in part to discuss this case), I had musicians explaining to me that they had "secret websites" because GEMA wouldn't let them offer their own music for free. The GEMA/YouTube dispute centers around the fact that GEMA wants YouTube to pay a fixed fee every time a video that includes a GEMA-covered song is played (and GEMA has actually suggested the fee for each stream should be identical to the cost of a download -- no joke). After suing YouTube/Google, GEMA refused to negotiate, making Germany the only modern country in the world in which a collection society didn't work out a deal with YouTube (and meaning that Google started blocking tons of music videos in Germany).

Unfortunately, the court has now ruled in the case, and the results seem ridiculous. It has said that YouTube is liable when users post videos (third party liability concepts still just don't make sense to German courts). Even more ridiculous, however, is that the court has said that YouTube's famous ContentID system is not enough. Instead, it must also install a keyword-based filter to block GEMA songs from being uploaded. Keyword-filters? Really. We've done this before a bunch of times and it doesn't work. At all. Keyword filters are really stupid ways to deal with these kinds of things. First off, they tend to block all sorts of legitimate content. But, more importantly, users figure out how to get around them in less than an hour. They just start coming up with easy-to-decipher substitutes. Comparing a keyword filter to ContentID is like comparing a human strapping on wings to a modern fighter plane. One of them works and can actually get the job done. One of them just makes you look like an idiot.

The only "concession" the court appears to have given YouTube is that it only expects such filtering to work going forward, rather than having them search the archive. That, of course, is barely a concession at all. If I remember correctly, this particular court, in Hamburg, is somewhat notorious for siding with copyright holders, so I wouldn't be surprised to see an appeal on this case...

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Guy Gets Bogus YouTube Copyright Claim... On Birds Singing In The Background

Mike Masnick — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:24:30 PST

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...

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An Explanation For Why UMG May Be Right That It Can Pull Down MegaUpload's Video [Updated]

Mike Masnick — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:58:00 PST

See the update at the end

The legal fight between Megaupload and Universal Music Group keeps getting more and more... odd. After the court gave UMG basically a day to respond, the company filed its response and made a rather surprising point: that a deal with YouTube/Google lets it take down videos it has no copyright over. This seems odd, and lots of people are screaming about some crazy clause that lets UMG censor anyone's videos. But I think I understand what's going on here -- and it's a very specific situation, where UMG sorta used a loophole -- so read on for the details. UMG is still being questionable, sleazy and short-sighted... but probably legal.

The key part of the company's legal response likely is accurate and probably kills MegaUpload's case. There are a few different ways that content can be taken down off of YouTube concerning copyright claims. One is via ContentID, the automated system that matches fingerprints. One is via a DMCA takedown notice. And one is via YouTube's Content Management System. This last one doesn't get much attention and isn't that well known, but it's basically halfway in between the other two (loosely speaking), granting partners the ability to spot and block videos that aren't matched by ContentID, but without sending a DMCA takedown. If you're familiar with the details of the system (which it appears MegaUpload and its lawyers were not), it was actually easy to tell this was a CMS block by the message that appeared on the blocked video. It said "This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it on copyright grounds." That's the message that shows up on CMS blocks. DMCA takedowns say that the video is "no longer available."

So, on that point, UMG may very well be correct in its filing, that it's not subject to DMCA sanctions because it didn't actually file a DMCA notice. This is kind of a weak excuse, frankly, and really calls into question how YouTube's CMS system works, more than anything else. In theory, this also means that the only retribution that can happen for UMG wrongly taking down the videos of others is that Google cuts them off. But seeing as Google has a big partnership with UMG to build and run Vevo, that's unlikely to happen. That's a bit scary, but it suggests UMG more or less has a free pass to shut down certain videos it doesn't like without much recourse (well, beyond public ridicule).

That said, a part of UMG's explanation isn't entirely clear, but I have some guesses as to what happened. UMG claims that its agreement with YouTube goes beyond just copyright, and that it's allowed to pull videos for other (unnamed) reasons. This is new, in a sense, because YouTube has always suggested that CMS is for copyright issues -- and, in fact, the original message on the video, did, in fact, say that it was a copyright issue. YouTube later changed that message to say it was a terms of service issue. And that provides a clue.

I believe that part of the Vevo agreement is that UMG gets to "pull" videos of its own artists from YouTube for the purpose of putting them on Vevo. That's the intention anyway. I know when Vevo launched, that was part of the deal. All the YouTube videos of UMG artists magically jumped over to Vevo. So, I'm guessing that UMG basically used this loophole, which was supposed to be about taking videos off YouTube for the purpose of putting them on Vevo, and realized it could just "take the videos off YouTube" as long as they had UMG artists in them, without ever putting them up on Vevo.

In other words, due to the specific nature of the Vevo agreement -- which was intended to move videos from YouTube to Vevo -- UMG can pull videos that show its artists off of YouTube. Of course, in this case, it used it for an entirely different purpose, which was to try to censor this ad. That backfired in all sorts of ways, and it sounds like YouTube told UMG to knock it off, knowing that this was not the intention of the agreement at all. And, for what it's worth, UMG has stopped getting the video blocked, and says it will allow it to stay up for now.

This situation is messy and silly, but it seems like an unintended result of contract language over Vevo that UMG exploited. It may be legal, but in the end, it was pretty dumb by UMG. This whole thing, in true Streisand Effect fashion, actually drove a lot more attention to the ad. And even if it was legal, it sure makes UMG look petty and vindictive.

Update: Received a response from a YouTube spokesperson which makes this a little more interesting.

Our partners do not have broad take-down rights to remove anything they don’t like from our service. In limited cases, if they so choose, and based on exclusive agreements with their artists, partners can take down live performances.

That confirms some of what I thought: that UMG does not have the right to take down any videos (as people keep implying), but that it may be able to take down some videos. The new bit of info is that it's just live performances. So, that would suggest UMG is even slimier. They tried to claim that those video clips of artists in the MegaUpload song were "live performances." That's clearly bogus.

Update 2: And... MegaUpload has conceded that its restraining order request is moot, and so the judge has denied it (pdf), while giving the company the right to file for a preliminary injunction and for discovery. So, not much of anything, but the case will likely continue.

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