Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Wed, 23 May 2012 11:59:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120523/10481319049/another-bogus-copyright-claim-silences-millions-rickrolls-briefly.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120523/10481319049/another-bogus-copyright-claim-silences-millions-rickrolls-briefly.shtml took down the original "Rickroll" video of Rick Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up" -- perhaps the most well known internet meme ever. It seems that that video was taken down yet again, this time due to a "copyright claim from AVG Technologies." Not surprisingly, soon after the news of this came out the video was put back up.

TorrentFreak claims that this AVG is the same as the maker of the popular anti-virus software, who almost certainly has no legitimate copyright claim to the video. And while there are other options out there, as well, it once again raises some questions about bogus takedowns, and the "silence first, ask questions later" process that is almost mandatory under the DMCA. Sure, the world isn't suffering much from a bogus Rickroll takedown (and some may argue they benefit), but just the fact that random third parties seem to be able to take down super popular videos raises serious questions about why we've set things up to work this way.

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]]> some-might-find-that-a-good-thing http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120523/10481319049 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:29:47 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100224/1120408291.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100224/1120408291.shtml criminals for not taking down videos fast enough, suddenly people started noticing that the original infamous Rickroll video had been taken down, due to a "terms of service" violation. While some assumed that it was a copyright takedown, usually Google is pretty good about clarifying when it's an actual copyright takedown. This was clearly something different. After a few hours of people screaming about missing Rick Astley, Google put the video back up, saying it was caused by too many people "flagging" the video as violating the terms of service, leading to yanking the video.

In the end, this demonstrates the difficult position that Google is put in. It's getting sued by entertainment companies, threatened by politicians and now convicted of crimes for being "too slow" in taking down "bad" videos (with "bad" often being loosely defined). So it creates systems to try to speed up the process, and the end result is that those systems can be abused as well, leading to videos getting taken down without due process. What's amazing is that people still think that Google can easily figure out which videos should be kept up and which should be taken down -- but when you consider just how much content is on the site, and the difficulty of reviewing any complaints, and the likelihood of both false positives and false negatives in reviewing videos, it's really incredible that anyone thinks it's reasonable for Google to take responsibility for the content.

The "rickroll" incident is a pretty clear indicator of why trying to put secondary liability on a third party like Google will almost certainly lead to more incidents like this -- where legitimate content is taken offline due to a legally mandated itchy trigger finger.

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]]> this-is-what-you-get http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100224/1120408291 Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:58:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090410/1151284463.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090410/1151284463.shtml Never Gonna Give You Up has come out saying that Google "exploited" him, because he earned a grand total of £11 last year, even while the video was a hit on YouTube.

There are probably more details here, because no one actually says how much Google paid overall. For example, part of the problem may simply be the deal that Waterman himself signed concerning his royalties. But, more to the point, it's not Google that's doing any exploiting at all. Here's the simple logic process to run through (which Waterman and all the folks supporting this PR stunt failed to do):

• How much attention did Waterman's song get last year thanks to YouTube?
• Fine, take away YouTube. How much attention would Waterman and his song have received last year

Yup. No one would be talking about Waterman or his song at all in the absence of YouTube and the rickrolling phenomenon. The only "exploiting" being done is now, by Waterman, because he got totally lucky in that a bunch of internet jokesters happened to pick his song (mainly for how bad it is) to use as part of an internet joke. He deserves to get paid for that? It could have just as easily been any other ridiculous pop hit in the 80s. And, if it had been, then no one would be talking or caring about Waterman at all.

Furthermore, it was never YouTube making use of the music, but it was all these people on the internet, adopting the meme. YouTube was just the platform they used for it. So, no, Waterman wasn't exploited by YouTube in the slightest, though he seems to have no trouble at all trying to exploit the fact that he got lucky and whine about it -- even though it's the only reason his name is now in the news again.

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]]> ok,-let's-work-this-through http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090410/1151284463 Wed, 9 Apr 2008 05:03:56 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080408/182513790.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080408/182513790.shtml Rickrolling, the geek-inspired prank of tricking folks into watching a video of Rick Astley's pop hit "Never Gonna Give You Up," has been way too popular over the past few months, but looked like it was finally going to die a painful death thanks to NY Times' coverage and YouTube's April Fool's joke. But, apparently the fun was just getting started. The NY Mets have been running a contest to see what song will be played during the 8th inning of home games all season. While there were a bunch of preset choices, the Mets also left a write-in options -- leaving open the opportunity for Digg and Fark to "Rickroll the Mets."

And... it worked... sorta. Apparently, the write-in votes dominated the contests, but the Mets are backing out of the agreement. Instead of accepting the Astley song, they're playing it and a selection of other songs over the next few games to see which one gets the biggest fan reaction -- and will then use that song all year long. However, the Astley song got the home opener nod, and was played during the 8th inning of Tuesday's game.

Now here's where the story gets interesting. Digg celebrated the achievement by linking to a video on YouTube of the song playing. But the folks at MLB Advanced Media wasted absolutely no time at all in rushing out a DMCA notice to take the video down, suggesting that it wasn't a big fan of being Rickrolled. Of course, it wasn't fast enough for the video to be saved by others [ed: link removed]. And, of course, there were some fans at the ballpark who also recorded the Rickrolling live. Man, that's a lot of booing. While MLB shouldn't be able to take down those fan videos, given how MLB has claimed ownership over all sorts of stuff, I wouldn't put it past them to try. Either way, would it really have been so troublesome for MLB to leave that brief video clip up?

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