Archive for the ‘Fair Use’ tag
Apple claims iPhone jailbreaking violates their copyright
CNET reported that Apple recently told the U.S. Copyright Office that it believes iPhone jailbreaking is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and infringes on its copyright, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The EFF is trying to get the Copyright Office to grant a DMCA exemption on behalf of iPhone owners who have chosen to jailbreak their iPhones, or bypass the restriction Apple places on standard iPhones that only allows the installation of applications from approved sources: the App Store. In its response to the Copyright Office (click here for PDF), Apple disagreed that such an exemption was proper because the very act of jailbreaking the iPhone results in copyright infringement.
The EFF’s argument is that jailbreaking your iPhone is protected under fair-use doctrines, and that the Copyright Office should grant an exemption because “the culture of tinkering (or hacking, if you prefer) is an important part of our innovation economy.” But Apple’s response is that few users of jailbroken iPhones actually jailbroke it themselves; instead, they downloaded software created by other parties to make that happen.
YouTube Content ID Tool Capable of Muting Video Sound
- YouTube now mutes recognized copyrighted songs in user’s videos.
As the court cases against YouTube and similar services, they are testing the employment of various strategies to keep them out of hot water. One such tool, YouTube’s Content ID Tool, is capable of identifying music in the audio stream of a video and muting it. This link to YouTube, YouTube: Joni Mitchell - Summertime (1998) !STEREO OPTION!, clearly demonstrates their ability to remove the sound from a video. In this particular case, the user, MYoutcastOR, clearly was infringing the song “Summertime” by Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell that is featured on the album Gershwin’s World, which is a Polygram Records record. Ploygram Records is owned by Universal Music Group, who is currently battling tube site Veoh.
This has several intended and unintended effects. On the upside, it allows youtube to leave creative works that might have um, “borrowed” some tunes to help them make their point in arguably viewable and working order. Whatever visual and textual messages were contained in the video are not lost. However, on the negative side this filter cannot determine when the occurance of such music would fall under the terms of fair use, and other exceptions to the copyright doctrines. And finally, for the users it results in un-removed YouTube dead pages like the one meationed in this article, which frustrates users, and hurts user exerpience.
Iconic image of Obama’s campaign sets off “Fair Use” battle
The Associated Press claim that the iconic red-and-blue Barack Obama “Hope” image that was everywhere during Obama’s last campaign is based on one of their pictures and they want part of the revenue pie.
Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, and has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.
AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees as he claims “Fair Use” of the image in the creation of the new artwork.
Fair use is a legal concept that allows exceptions to copyright law, based on, among other factors, how much of the original is used, what the new work is used for and how the original is affected by the new work.
SIDENOTE: After the publication of this, wikipedia was defamed by a user named “Obey Master” to include the following,
Not to be mistaken for “”’Fairey use”’”, where street artist Shepard “obey” Fairey is a law unto himself and uses images without permission on a regular basis.
IPRHA took it upon itself to correct this insertion. Edit history on wiki (link)