Here we go again

Posted on August 7, 2007 by Antonio

To paraphrase Charlie Brown: “AAAAAUUUUUUUGH!”

Publishers Join Case Against YouTube – The Huffington Post:

A group of music publishing companies said Monday it is joining a copyright infringement lawsuit against Google Inc.’s video-sharing site YouTube.

The National Music Publishers’ Association said it was joining the lawsuit out of concern that many songwriters weren’t receiving proper compensation when their music appeared on YouTube videos.

The lawsuit also includes as plaintiffs The Football Association Premier League and Viacom Inc., a media company that owns MTV, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.

The plaintiffs say YouTube is breaking the law by hosting video clips that they hold the copyrights to. However, YouTube says it’s complying with the law by immediately taking down any clips found to be violating copyrights after receiving notification.

Will mashups become thought crime?

Posted on August 6, 2007 by Antonio

As mashups become the dominant aesthetics of our time (people act like this is such a new thing, but punks and hip hoppers, please pat yourselves on the back, were doing it long before YouTube, not to mention Dada), it is ironic that corporate “take-downs” are beginning to proliferate the Web. Ultimately this will bite them in the arse, just as the RIAA is doing so by suing music customers. The Center for Social Media is now launching a big research project on the subject. The video link above is a good overview of some the reasons why this is such an important topic for concern.

Remix Culture — Videos — Center for Social Media:

There is a ton of new creativity in the user generated space, and much of it builds on unauthorized uses of copyrighted material. In this new era of participatory media, where should we draw the line between infringement and fair use? Take a look at our new video, highlighting some of the ways that existing content is being repurposed. This video is designed to provoke discussion, so please share your thoughts with us on our blog. To download a quicktime version of this video right click here.

Technorati Tags: Center for Social Media, RIAA

Bound by law

Posted on July 6, 2007 by Antonio

Boundbylaw

Watch out! A comic super hero who battles copyright.

CSPD Comics:

A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the “Rocky” theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true? “Eyes on the Prize,” the great civil rights documentary, was pulled from circulation because the filmmakers’ rights to music and footage had expired. What’s going on here? It’s the collision of documentary filmmaking and intellectual property law, and it’s the inspiration for this new comic book. Follow its heroine Akiko as she films her documentary, and navigates the twists and turns of intellectual property. Why do we have copyrights? What’s “fair use”? Bound By Law reaches beyond documentary film to provide a commentary on the most pressing issues facing law, art, property and an increasingly digital world of remixed culture. This book is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

You can view a free digital version here.

Or buy it from Amazon.

Can technology kill fair use? Or, those darned algorithms!

Posted on June 13, 2007 by Antonio

You may have seen the above video which cleverly uses Disney clips to describe the complexities of fair use law, a tool that enables media critics and audiences to quote and comment upon existing copyrighted material. The article below describes a new technology being developed in partnership between Disney, Time Warner and YouTube/Google to embed video with some kind of finger printing to detect copyright violations on uploaded video. The problem I have with these kind of algorithms is that they are completely insensitive to context. I fear a video like the above would simply be flagged and removed for violations without the subtle interpretation the law requires. I think this is a scary development so I hope hackers find a way to destroy it.

YouTube to test video ID with Time Warner, Disney | Reuters:

The technology, developed by engineers at YouTube-owner Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research), will help content owners such as movie and TV studios identify videos uploaded to the site without the copyright owner’s permission, legal, marketing and strategy executives at YouTube told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

The so-called video fingerprinting tools, which identify unique attributes in the video clips, will be available for testing in about a month, a YouTube executive said.

Technorati Tags: copyright, fair use

Geek actvism

Posted on December 11, 2006 by Antonio

A hacker manifesto:

Science Addiction Â» 95 Theses of Geek Activism:

1. Reclaim the term â€˜hackerâ€™. If you tinker with electronics, you are a hacker. If you use things in more ways than intended by the manufacturer, you are a hacker. If you build things out of strange, unexpected parts, you are a hacker. Reclaim the term.
2. Violating a license agreement is not theft.
3. All corporations are not on your side.
4. Keep in touch with everyone you can vote for and make sure you know where they stand on the issues you care about.
5. More importantly, make sure they know where you stand on the issues you care about.
6. Everything will enter the public domain some day- even Mickey Mouse.
7. Read the original 95 theses. Yes, they are irrelevant to these causes. Yes, they are religious- and not even close to my religion. And yes, they are 500 years old. But they do demonstrate how stating your beliefs clearly, effectively and publicly to challenge the status quo can change the world. Of course, I have no delusions of grandeur!
8. Use TOR for privacy and anonymity.
9. Trusted computers must not be trusted.
10. Democrats may seem to be on your side, but keep an eye on them. They may only be the lesser of two evils.

Technorati Tags: GeekActivism95Theses