Archive for the ‘YouTube’ tag
McCain used Brown’s Music in Commercial
According to Wire, John McCain believed he was a used by the Republican National Committee for a commercial using a Jackson Brown song without permission. Nevertheless, he is still being held accountable, and Los Angeles federal judge, R. Gary Klausner, did not believe his testimony regarding this matter. In February, the judge refused to remove McCain’s name from the lawsuit for violating the right’s to Brown’s “Running on Empty” popular song. According to McCain, “I was not involved all in any way in the writing creation, production, distribution, or dissemination of the video, nor do I have any knowledge whatsoever of how this video was written, created, produced or disseminated or who was involved in any aspect of the writing, creation, production, distribution or dissemination of the video. I was completely unaware that this video even existed until I was informed of it after this lawsuit was filed.” Last August, the commercial was showcased on YouTube to criticize Obama’s energy policy and the song was purchased on iTunes. Brown believes that the commercial falsely suggested he endorsed McCain and the Republican Party.
VideoBay
The founders of the Pirate Bay recently launched Video Bay, a video-sharing site. The launch of this site came the same day when the controversial Pirate Bay site was sold to a Swedish software company. Global Gaming Factory, located out of Sweden, purchased the Pirate Bay website for nearly $8 million. This news comes recently after the Pirate Bay’s three founders and investor were found guilty of assisting in copyright infringement and ordered to pay a collective fine of nearly $4 million as well as being sentenced to a year in prison. The founders appealed this judgment and were denied. Pirate Bay has more than 20 million users and although does not store any copyrighted material, streams its content through its BitTorrent file-sharing technology.
The new owner of the site is considering utilizing a new model by compensating content providers. Global Gaming Factory said “We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for the content that is downloaded via the site.” The Video Bay site is comparable to that of Google’s YouTube and comes with the warning “Don’t expect anything to work at all.” The site offers a variety of music videos and television clips.
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.
YouTube’s copyright filtering system goes crazy
It seems that the filtering system from YouTube just pushed the limit of what you can do with content to a new level. The EFF’s Blog reported that in January, a teenage girl singning “Winter Wonderland” has seen her video removed by the filtering system since it was considered infriging on Warner Music copyright. The main problem seems to come from YouTube’s system who is unable to make a difference between a real copyright infrigement and fair usage of it. The EFF intend to appeal the decision.
So be carefull with posting your next birthday party video, as you may or may not know, the “Happy Birthday to You” song is copyrighted and you may end in violation the law 
User Counter Claims for YouTube Videos Removed by Warner Music Group
The Los Angeles Times reports that some users are filing counter claims against Warner Music Group for their removal of popular YouTube videos.
Chatham, who plays in a bluegrass group called the Whappers (no, they’re not signed to Warner), is fighting back. Since receiving the e-mail from YouTube regarding Warner’s claim, Chatham has filled out copyright counterclaim papers. If Warner doesn’t respond within 10 days, YouTube may put the banjo video back online, according to a YouTube support page.
He says he can’t understand how the innocent clip of him playing his cover version on a couch — a video that was once chosen by YouTube to be featured on its home page — could be illegal.
“It’s me just sitting there, playing on my banjo,” he said. “If someone actually stopped and looked at it, they would be like, Oh, well, that’s just some guy being silly.”
Neither Warner, nor the company’s lawyer, nor YouTube would …
… comment on the case. But Chatham appears to have been dinged for performing a copyrighted song without permission. The legal definition of “performance” in situations like these remains a gray area and may continue to be until YouTube hobbyists begin to bring these cases to court.
This and other cases of removal has left many users wondering what exactly their protections are against big media companies like the Warner Music Group. While it is understandable that YouTube fears legal proceedings from Warner Music Group more than from its users, it does not make the legal rights of the users any less valid. Perhaps Warner Music Group’s removals have been overzealous? What if any legal responsibility should concern Warner regarding removals?
User Outrage:
YouTube Users Affected by Warner Music Dispute
It appears to be somewhat unclear what rights users have over derivative content made from original works. In this article, CNet: YouTube users caught in Warner Music spat, Warner Music extended the rights to use their music to YouTube’s community of users, then revoked those same rights later. Warner even went as far as to request removal of any derivative works that were created by users, with some questioning the authority and spirit of such requests concerning derivative creative works.
The article also aserts that some affected users have attempted to respond to the complaints, recieving little help (CNet):
But he has so many questions about whether his video truly violates copyright law and if so, what part of the video infringes? That’s the other problem raised by the quarrel between Warner Music and YouTube. When users are dragged into it, there’s few places to get answers. Vidal said he called Warner Music and talked to about half a dozen people in the eight days since his video was removed. He has yet to hear back why exactly the video was pulled down or whether he and the record company can strike a separate deal.
To its credit, Viacom set up a support hot line to help answer questions and address disputes when it began pulling content from YouTube.
Although unlikely, it is possible for a person to seek damages for false copyright claims, especially if organizations are unresponsive to attempts to resolve such issues. Could Warner Music be exposing itself to some degree of liability by so liberally removing YouTube content?