Google lets video uploaders claim copyrights on public domain/free footage
Paulo sez,
I'm the guy who made the cloudy timelapse video popularly used later "Anonymous Message to Scientology."Link (Thanks, Paulo!)Three days ago, Google's copyright bot flagged my own video as infringing because 236.com (Arianna Huffington's comedy news outfit) had posted a parody video using my footage with a content identification sig on it. When I asked who had flagged my video as infringing in preparation for a dispute, I was told that 236.com had graciously allowed me to keep "their copyrighted video."
Basically I put out a free public domain video for the internet to use as they wished, 236.com made a thirdhand derivative parody, and through Google Video they made an aggressively claim of copyright over my own material. At the time of this writing my video has not been restored.
the latest
latest episodes
Was Paulo's original video licensed with a share-alike license, or simply a "do-whatever" public license?
If not, it doesn't seem to me that 236.com is making an aggressive copyright claim. (I would, however, agree that it'd be good karma for them to release their material in the public domain if it makes use of other public domain content.)
Otherwise, blame for the whole thing rests on Google's mistaken implementation of copyright-understanding.
Isn't this why Creative Commons, etc. exists? So that you can be nice without being screwed for it.
Well I'd say principle rules. Aggressive or no, it was el wrongo.
Bastages!
I don't get it.
A message to Rudi Guiliani is not funny without the specials.
Stop screwing with the integrity of CC! All my shoddy artwork is under CC, and though nobody would ever stoop to such a level as swiping it and making a claim, I still protest out of principle.
I have many words to say on this and none of them are kosher.
The video is back to running as of some time before 1 minute ago.
This points out a provision that needs to be added to future creative commons or similar licenses:
"This license, and any rights hereunder, shall immediately terminate as to any licensee who attempts to exert exclusive rights over this work. Without limiting the foregoing, any person who issues a DMCA notice requiring that this work be taken down because it infringes their rights shall immediately lose any rights to ever use this work."
The exact text probably needs work, but the idea is that if you claim an exclusive right to the work, you lose all rights to use it in any manner.
The author should use the instructions clearly provided on the Google site. Namely:
-------
To file a dispute, please send an email to video-copyright@google.com that includes the following information:
1. Your full name, street address (including State, Post Code and Country) and telephone number
2. Your Google Video user account name
3. The title of your video or the initial Google Video URL (if one was provided to you)
4. A statement of the reason for your dispute, for example:
1. This video contains solely my original content
2. This video does contain someone else's content but does so in a way which which does not require permission (e.g., it is a fair use of the work). Please provide a brief explanation.
3. This video does contain someone else's content but I have their permission. Please provide a brief explanation.
5. The following statement: "Under penalty of perjury, I have a good faith belief that the material was disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification."
6. Your name as your electronic signature
Once your dispute email has been received, your video will be restored and your dispute will be reviewed by the alleged copyright owner.
---
If he did this, and THEN his video were not restored, he would have reason to be upset. As it is, it seems to me there was a failure in some algorithm or another. Not optimal, but not a huge deal.
If he did this, and THEN his video were not restored, he would have reason to be upset.
I'm pretty certain that I would be upset if I got a takedown notice for something that I created. It's good that Google has a dispute resolution procedure, but it's still a pretty big slap in the face.
Oh man, that really sucks.
We're gonna be seeing more of this too. I predict this is the summer of internet copyfight clusterf*ck madness - where the rubber hits the road, the masses hit the mainstream media and ... and ... some other alliterative description for cultural conflict:
Feces hits the fan?
Either way - what happened was just stupid.
Make it stop.
Cheers.
Public domain is not a license. Works that are based on other works in the public domain may be copyrighted.
That being said 236.com can't claim copyright over Paulo's original work and force it off Google Video.
See: http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html#224
for more info on public domain.
Only thing I can say is that this SUCKS.
good luck to the original uploader.
DDOS, yes? (Note: I'm not trying to incite any action,but noting what is most likely going to happen next...)
This, to me, is a PERFECT example of the sort of crap that will happen if the orphaned works legislation becomes law. But instead of occasional isolated incidents and misunderstandings, it will be the norm, and corporate strategy.
My guess is this is probably not a deliberate action on 236.com's part. My company's also had this problem happen to us (in both directions -- our videos being challenged erroneously, and YouTube challenging other people erroneously on our behalf).
Here's the problem -- many of us producing videos on the Web are in YouTube's partner program. Not sure if BBtv is in the program as well -- but basically, when you're in the program you can "claim" your videos to monetize them. As far as I know, this is the only way to revenue share on the display advertising YouTube puts alongside your videos. But it also comes with a digital fingerprinting service that YouTube is still working the kinks out of.
Like BBtv, we put people's video in our videos ALL the time -- many of our shows highlight viewer contributions and great stuff from around the web. We always get permission and clearance from the creators -- or do it under some a policy of fair use (for instance, our recent O'Reilly mashup) -- but the digital fingerprinting software doesn't really get derivative works. For instance, we put out nearly all of our videos under Creative Commons Non-Commercial w/ Attribution licenses, but there's no way for us to make that blanket allowance with the YouTube system. On several occasions now, people who very nicely gave us permission to use their personal videos, or used some of our footage in one of theirs, found themselves facing a copyright violation notice and warning from YouTube when our "claimed" video from the partner program came up with a match.
We've raised the issue with our contacts at YouTube and they've been great about it -- as far as I know, they're working on it and trying to keep this from happening, and they respond quickly when people raise issues.
In the meantime, we've had to let everyone on our team know to watch out for these situations and respond immediately (we can see in a control panel when it happens , as I'm sure 236.com can, though they might not know about it), apologize profusely, and remove the claim right away.
Personally, I'd rather have the option to opt out of the auto-claim service altogether -- we WANT people to take and spread and improve on our content, and any money we're "losing" when someone else on YouTube reposts all or part of our own original content couldn't possibly be equal to the amount of time we spend fixing these things.
I know some of the people at 236.com, and will send this post to their attention.
BTW, more info on YouTube's video ID system:
http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=83766&hl=en_US
That's good to hear, Moth. Do keep us updated, because I'd much rather know that 236.com is not an evil corporation hellbent on domination video by video.
Don't get me started on YouRube. I was one of the originals on there, from the very beginning. My "Wallyworld" channel had 336 videos up, 1200 subscribers, featured thrice in different categories, 7.5 Million views. And they canned me - "permanently suspended" for yep...infringing copyright. First was a video about the Kurdish girl stoned to death, second was a newsclip anout American soldiers liberating retarded Iraqi kids tied to their beds and lying in their own piss. Third was a Public Domain (at least that's how it was tagged on Internet Archive) clip of a very early Camel cigarette commercial. Now I now this has probably been done by a bot. And I now they have to by law suspend accounts of those deemed to be "repeat offenders" but the part that really sticks in my craw is there is no redress. There is no "Community Liaison" person you can contact and you can Whistle Dixie for any Google minion to answer your email.
But I'll give this link to the people at YouTomb - a research project of MIT Free Culture. The purpose of the project is to investigate what kind of videos are subject to takedown notices due to allegations of copyright infringement with particular emphasis on those for which the takedown may be mistaken. Although their initial focus is on videos hosted by YouTube, they are interested in other video collections as well. cheers, Malcolm, Paris
Yeah, it's got nothing to do with what license the original author chooses to use. The problem is that the copyright bot assumes "all rights reserved" on all works.
Even if the original author used GNU-GPL on the video, my guess is the copyright bot has a lookup table that has a one-to-one relationship of "this video belongs to this author". On top of that, the bot probably assumes whichever video it detects first must belong to the original author.
So, if you do have a video you want to release, you'll have to make sure you release it on all the video-sharing sites at once. If you only release it on youtube, and someone else takes it over to google, then the googlebot will simply assume the secodn person is the owner.
Whoever wrote the bot is an idiot.
Paulo pirated by parodists and plundered of public property? Peut-etre!
Hey, what do you know, I got to predict the future. See my comment on a previous article which Cory wrote about systems for automatically identifying copyrighted content.
This sort of problem is entirely foreseeable and virtually unavoidable. It is a fundamental problem with any automated system which attempts to recognize copyright violations. Expect to see a lot more of this in the future.
Keith
@GregLondon #19: I suspect rather than being an idiot, the person(s) who wrote the bot had a strict deadline imposed on them for legal reasons and they coded to simplistic legal requirements derived by a lawyer who has not had that much experience with the various public licenses that are available. Which kind of makes the lawyer (or the person who hired an unqualified lawyer) more of an idiot than the coder.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Never attribute to stupidity what can be explained by project management.
I'm Sarah Bernard from 236.com.
Please know that we certainly did not intend for our posting the video, 'A Message to Rudy from Anonymous', on YouTube to result in Paulo's work to be blocked. It appears the blocking was an inadvertent result of YouTube's content identification program. When we learned that the work was blocked, we worked with YouTube to fix the situation as quickly as possible.
We're really sorry about the unintended effect.
(@Moth#15: thanks)
I'm pretty sure I missed out on the active discussion in this thread, but I thought I should chime in.
So this is bad right? But the Orphaned Works Proposal is good? Surely I can't be the only person who sees the similarities here.
After the fact appologies of "Sorry kid, you wuz just collateral damage of our corporate greed." WTF? Why is anyone surprised at this sort of action from Huffington and Company INC!!! After all, they just hired Hillary Rosen (of RIAA infamy) last week.
Just an update on the situation: Sarah Bernard of 23/6 did apologize to me by email for the mistaken automated takedown, but Google Video still has not restored the content for me. Some users can see it, others get the "Video is unavailable" error screen, and when I emailed them to ask about this, I got a form response letter sent to the wrong name. It's just all kinds of FAIL, and I'm now moving everything away from Google Video and YouTube.
http://hownow.brownpau.com/archives/2008/05/owning_the_clouds_apology_withdrawal/