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!

...your product was removed due to an infringement claim by Warner Bros. Studios. While the artwork as you claim is original, the characters from the Wizard of Oz are currently property of Warner Bros. As a guideline, designs from the Wizard of Oz that are currently prohibited for sale on Zazzle’s Marketplace are:

• All inspired artwork and character renderings from the Wizard of Oz
• Quotes from the Wizard of Oz Franchise
• All tags and descriptions that reference the Wizard of Oz

- Zazzle

As such, I respectfully request that my material and corresponding artwork be returned to circulation for purchase immediately.

Failure to do so would be an infringement on my copyright of my created artwork which, as verified by the testimony above, does NOT infringe upon Warner Bros. Entertainment’s copyright on the 1939 film or the specific celluloid representations of the characters made in said film. If my copyright continues to be infringed upon I will seek legal action against both Zazzle and Warner Bros. Entertainment.

We want to let you know that we have implemented a global change in the standard takedown process that will benefit the whole Flickr community going forward.

When a photo is removed from the site based on a notice of alleged copyright infringement, we will temporarily show a placeholder and the member will have an opportunity to respond before the image is made unavailable.

If the alleged copyright infringement is found to be fraudulent, the image in question will be restored, and the photopage will look like before.

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.

This has been happening for many years on mixtapes and it’s quite common so 50′s attitude on this not shocking. Its the same attitude of every artist in urban music and it’s been like that from jump. In fact that’s why mixtapes are given away for free and not sold commercially. To put a bar code on a tape or sell it commercially violates many laws, but to give it away for free under the guise of “promotional use” has been the name of the game for decades and largely considered ok. This type of stuff is why these labels suddenly calling websites like us “rogue” for releasing them or trying to shut people down or put them in jail for making, releasing, or offering them for download has always been ridiculous. The attitude 50 is taking here is the same one every urban artist operates under and the promotional department of the major labels have been looking the other way on for years. Hell the major labels have been active participants. If you can’t clear the song you throw it out on a mixtape, or for free to radio mixshows and the blogs/internet as a freestyle/remix. Every major label artist that has made it in the rap genre has utilized these tactics so a loss in this case could be devastating not only to rap as a genre but the labels as well.

This is just another example of how copyright is totally out of sync with reality. This kind of activity is indispensable to culture, and it doesn't stop no matter what the law says—but it does get stifled, and driven underground, which is the opposite of what copyright is supposed to accomplish. As the chapter we posted from Copyfraud notes, several albums that are widely considered to be classics and important moments in music history (like Paul's Boutique or It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back) would be almost impossible to legally release today. Meanwhile, highly acclaimed mashups like The Grey Album are praised by the musicians whose work has been mashed, but are technically illegal and exist only as bootlegs by the grace (read: fear of bad publicity) of the record labels.

The big question is: can artists like 50 Cent do something about this? Hip-hop is one of the most popular and influential genres of music in the world, and its superstars command huge audiences. Most hip-hop fans don't realize that the genre is a legal minefield that exists because most artists cross their fingers and ignore the law entirely, while a rich few pay obscene royalties and settlement fees. Someone like 50 Cent is in the perfect position to raise more awareness of broken copyright law, and I hope that this attack on the lifeblood of hip-hop culture spurs him to do so.

We'll be having our discussion with the author towards the end of the month, so there's still plenty of time to pick up a copy of the book. You can find it at Amazon in hardcover or ebook form (those are both affiliate links, so we get a tiny cut if you buy via them) or get it from lots of other sources. It's also available to check out from many libraries. Stanford University Press also has some ebook rental options. If you don't read the book but still want to participate in the discussion, you can still ask questions based on this sample chapter, as well as Jason's original paper on Copyfraud. He was also recently on the Surprisingly Free podcast discussing the book.

For now, enjoy the rest of Chapter 3! Don't forget to read the first half.

1. Explain how it made the decision to issue a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube.
2. Promptly inform YouTube that it is withdrawing its takedown notice.
3. Express regret to Mr. Vega for the takedown notice.
4. Put procedures into place to ensure that fair use receives full consideration before any takedown notice is issued.
5. Disclose publicly both what procedures have been adopted, and what standards MLS is providing to its representatives to ensure that they give proper consideration to fair use before issuing takedown notices in the future.

FedFlix is a charitable project launched by Carl Malamud, a "rogue archivist" who raises funds to digitise and upload videos created at US government expense. Under US law, government creations are in the public domain and can be freely used by anyone, but the US government is remarkably lax about actually making its treasures available to the public that owns them.

Malamud's group pays the fees associated with retrieving copies from the US government – sometimes buying high-priced DVDs that the government issues, other times paying to have unreleased videos retrieved from government archives – and posts them to YouTube, the Internet Archive and other video sites, so that anyone and everyone can see, download, and use them.

Malamud's 146-page report from FedFlix to the Archivist of the United States documents claims that companies such as NBC Universal, al-Jazeera, and Discovery Communications have used ContentID to claim title to FedFlix videos on YouTube. Some music royalty collecting societies have claimed infringements in "silent movies".

1. Diminished copyright exceptions via contract: Thanks to the digital era, the entertainment industry likes to claim that you no longer purchase content, you merely "license" it. Thus, they're able to establish their own rules to govern what you do with the content, rather than relying on the boundaries of copyright law. As such, for the most part, many have tried to (a) claim copyright/control over more than they have a right to (b) deny you any fair use exceptions and (c) deny you your first sale rights to resell the products you "bought." In other words, by claiming that the sale is a "license" rather than a "sale," companies are effectively able to wipe out the important limitations on copyright.
2. Regulatory capture: The article highlights how copyright policy these days appears to be almost entirely driven by the entertainment industry, who is merely one beneficiary of the law -- but not the intended beneficiary (that would be the public). He uses the examples of the recent "voluntary" (at the strong urging of the White House) agreement between ISPs and the entertainment industry, as well as SOPA, which he notes just takes those "private" powers to extend copyright law even further:

   The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the companion bill to the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act, would further privatize adjudication and punishment. Title I of that law (dubbed the E-PARASITE Act) creates a “market-based system to protect U.S. customers and prevent U.S. funding of sites dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” It achieves this by empowering copyright owners who have a “good faith belief” that they are being “harmed by the activities” of a website to send a notice to the site’s payment providers (e.g. PayPal) and Internet advertisers to end business with the allegedly offending site.
   
   The payment providers and advertisers that receive the notice must stop transactions with the site. No judicial review is required for the notice to be sent and for the payments and advertising curtailed—only the good faith representation of the copyright owner. Damages are also not available to the site owner unless a claimant “knowingly materially” misrepresented that the law covers the targeted site, a difficult legal test to meet. The owner of the site can issue a counter-notice to restore payment processing and advertising but services need not comply with the counter-notice.
   
   There is also a catch: a site owner who issues a counter-notice automatically consents to being sued in U.S. courts (a strong disincentive for sites based abroad). With few checks at all, SOPA gives copyright owners a sharp tool to disrupt and shut down websites. Based on their past conduct, there is no reason to think that copyright owners will use this tool with any measure of restraint.

Matt Cain relieved after 7 strong, 2 H, 0 ER. Giants scored on two singles, throwing error. SF up 3-0 top 9

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