This article is actually worth reading. It's actually written by somebody who knows what they are talking about.
"Buffy vs Edward remix was mentioned by name in the official recommendations by the US Copyright Office (pdf) on exemptions to the DMCA as an example of a transformative noncommercial video work."
But what does it mean? What is an official recommendation by the Copyright Office - an actual license to reuse stuff? Or just a recommendation with no legal consequences at all?
So artists are supposed to create works employing fair use, and then hope they'll get a recommendation by the Copyright Office? If yes, they can publish their work, if no, they'll have to trash it?
The article links to an independently hosted HTML5 copy of the video, in case you want to see it first-hand. It's very cleverly done, quite amusing (at least if you're a Buffy fan), and definitely looks like fair-use:
Thanks for the link. I hadn't seen this video before. It's really well done, and indeed is an original and convincing critique of the insufferable Twilight series. This sort of speech can only take place in a context of fair use. They had to show Ed's pasty mug so they could stake him.
I think there is a real possibility that this maneuver could blow up in Liongate's face. Presumably there are some important decision-makers who take the argument for fair use seriously: that's why this dispute process exists in the first place. This video is an exemplar of what normal non-lawyer people would classify as fair use, if they're familiar with the concept at all. If Liongate's lawyers are willing to get in the mud over a few ad dollars (rather than the high-sounding crap we usually hear from the content industry), and they get their way, then clearly the system requires more protection for fair use. They might not have run this plan by all the suits at MPAA.
Basically it looks like YouTube is too scared of lawsuits to acknowledge any fair use rights exist at all. Either you agree with ads, or your content is getting removed, the whole appeals process may work only if the content is not actually copyrighted, but is completely useless for fair use grounds as claimant can just repeat their claim of copyright ownership (which is true) and have it deleted anyway.
That's absurd. Youtube provided extensive avenues of dispute and appeal. I think Lionsgate is wrong in this case (although I'm not wholly sure, because using their source material for ~30% of the video is pretty substantial in my view), but Youtube isn't there to act as a court or arbitrator. by law, it has to respect the claims of copyright holders. It is not the agent of those seeking to use copyrighted material on fair use grounds. The authors dispute is with Lionsgate, not YouTube.
I think fear has little to do with it. They put in an automatic system because of the fact that they need to deal with so many claims.
It's not that they fail to acknowledge fair use, it's that they err on the side of being restrictive in every situation because the law tells them to do so. When a DMCA takedown is filed they need to respond by removing the purportedly offending content. It's not their responsibility to mediate or investigate the claim. The number of takedown notices submitted also make that impossible.
On the other hand, laws exist to prevent people from submitting takedown notices in bad faith. Lionsgate doesn't have a claim of copyright ownership, the author has copyright. The author uses materials that were authored in a production that Lionsgate now has rights to, but the new production is a new work that uses elements that it has legal right to use.
I think that the fact that they once claimed audiovisual copyright and then dropped that when the term expired and claimed a second time for visual copyright is evidence that they are abusing the automated controls of youtube and acting in bad faith. If they weren't, they would have been justified in delivering a legal copyright notification to have the video taken down when the first appeal was filed.
Instead they dropped the claim and issued another, slightly different claim to abuse the mandated automated system.
What it looks like to me is that YouTube refuses to play the role of the judge.
The role of YouTube in this dispute has been simply to provide a platform for the parties to work it out. YouTube is not the organization that is denying the fair use claim, Lionsgate is.
Takedowns on YouTube are, for corporations such as the record labels and movie studios, largely done under their ContentID system, not under the DMCA notice system. Google has a reputedly poor process for disputes that can lead to DMCA notices [1], but here it appears that the takedown was still ContentID rather than DMCA.
This is the one-sided system that the free market got us, where Google facilitates the removal of legal material. If you are lucky, you can get to the point where you follow the DMCA's rules.
While I agree categorically with the necessity of allowing fair use, and the perniciousness of copyright cartels, I was nonetheless very tickled by this whine:
>But sure enough when I checked my channel, Lionsgate was monetizing my noncommercial fair use remix with ads for Nordstrom fall fashions which popped up over top of my gender critique of pop culture vampires.
The rebelliouspixels version, with its extensive on-screen critique is fair-use since it appears to be a critique. But if the original YouTube version lacked that, then the video devolves into little more than a fanfic video by a Buffy-loving Twilight-hater.
Even the rebelliouspixels version appears to contain far more "quoting" of the original material than is needed for its critique.
In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner....
Most fair use analysis falls into two categories: (1) commentary and criticism, or (2) parody....
A parody is a work that ridicules another, usually well-known work, by imitating it in a comic way. Judges understand that, by its nature, parody demands some taking from the original work being parodied. Unlike other forms of fair use, a fairly extensive use of the original work is permitted in a parody in order to “conjure up” the original.
"
> This past summer, together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I even screened the remix for the US Copyright Office at the 2012 hearings on exemptions to the DMCA. Afterward my Buffy vs Edward remix was mentioned by name in the official recommendations by the US Copyright Office on exemptions to the DMCA as an example of a transformative noncommercial video work.
It's surprising how much weight the community gave your opinion, because the truth is that it really doesn't matter what your opinion is.
My comment isn't meant to be snarky; it's meant to point out the /ultimate/ absurdity of our copyright system - that you literally /cannot determine/ if something is or is not fair use without a judgment. As in a judge.
So while you make important points about the presence or absence of commentary, the fact that the video was transformed /at all/ means that it's no longer a determinable question.
> This is what a broken copyright enforcement system looks like.
Alright, so how do we fix it? How can content producers protect themselves from legitimate copyright infringement on services such as YouTube that allow unverified uploads on a massive scale?
>How can content producers protect themselves from legitimate copyright infringement on services such as YouTube that allow unverified uploads on a massive scale?
That framing of the question is inherently biased. It assumes that if no good solution can be found, some bad solution that solves that problem is the only alternative, regardless of whether it creates even more serious problems for other people.
It also assumes that the "problem" is sufficiently major to justify the implied "whatever it takes" approach to solving it. Notwithstanding that substantially all of Hollywood's collected works are available on The Pirate Bay and in a thousand other places, the studios continue to make record profits. While an elegant solution to the problem you mention would be convenient, the decidedly inelegant approaches currently on the books or theorized by pundits are not inherently superior to the default alternative of doing nothing at all just because "something must be done" is a popular piece of political rhetoric.
It can be easily fixed by removing phrase "copyright infringement" from the language. Then content providers could easily protect themselves from anyone copying content produced by them, by not producing that content.
People who know how to make money of the content production without government issued monopoly on copying will step in to fill the gap (if there'll actually be any gap).
He's been responding, and responding to counter-responses, and then responding to secondary-takedowns, then counter-responding to secondary takedown denials for quite a while. I think it's appropriate to bring this into the public view.
ghubbard|13 years ago
Tichy|13 years ago
So artists are supposed to create works employing fair use, and then hope they'll get a recommendation by the Copyright Office? If yes, they can publish their work, if no, they'll have to trash it?
greenyoda|13 years ago
http://www.rebelliouspixels.com/popupvideo
hollerith|13 years ago
ADDED. Version without the pop-ups: http://www.rebelliouspixels.com/downloads/Buffy_vs_Edward_36...
jessaustin|13 years ago
ecspike|13 years ago
jessaustin|13 years ago
smsm42|13 years ago
anigbrowl|13 years ago
zeidrich|13 years ago
It's not that they fail to acknowledge fair use, it's that they err on the side of being restrictive in every situation because the law tells them to do so. When a DMCA takedown is filed they need to respond by removing the purportedly offending content. It's not their responsibility to mediate or investigate the claim. The number of takedown notices submitted also make that impossible.
On the other hand, laws exist to prevent people from submitting takedown notices in bad faith. Lionsgate doesn't have a claim of copyright ownership, the author has copyright. The author uses materials that were authored in a production that Lionsgate now has rights to, but the new production is a new work that uses elements that it has legal right to use.
I think that the fact that they once claimed audiovisual copyright and then dropped that when the term expired and claimed a second time for visual copyright is evidence that they are abusing the automated controls of youtube and acting in bad faith. If they weren't, they would have been justified in delivering a legal copyright notification to have the video taken down when the first appeal was filed.
Instead they dropped the claim and issued another, slightly different claim to abuse the mandated automated system.
gtCameron|13 years ago
The role of YouTube in this dispute has been simply to provide a platform for the parties to work it out. YouTube is not the organization that is denying the fair use claim, Lionsgate is.
bjustin|13 years ago
This is the one-sided system that the free market got us, where Google facilitates the removal of legal material. If you are lucky, you can get to the point where you follow the DMCA's rules.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/youtube-finally-o...
ajanuary|13 years ago
danielweber|13 years ago
ghshephard|13 years ago
jeltz|13 years ago
pervycreeper|13 years ago
>But sure enough when I checked my channel, Lionsgate was monetizing my noncommercial fair use remix with ads for Nordstrom fall fashions which popped up over top of my gender critique of pop culture vampires.
natmaster|13 years ago
cjensen|13 years ago
The rebelliouspixels version, with its extensive on-screen critique is fair-use since it appears to be a critique. But if the original YouTube version lacked that, then the video devolves into little more than a fanfic video by a Buffy-loving Twilight-hater.
Even the rebelliouspixels version appears to contain far more "quoting" of the original material than is needed for its critique.
ghshephard|13 years ago
From: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/...
"What Is Fair Use?
In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner....
Most fair use analysis falls into two categories: (1) commentary and criticism, or (2) parody....
A parody is a work that ridicules another, usually well-known work, by imitating it in a comic way. Judges understand that, by its nature, parody demands some taking from the original work being parodied. Unlike other forms of fair use, a fairly extensive use of the original work is permitted in a parody in order to “conjure up” the original. "
ryusage|13 years ago
It's definitely fair use.
appleflaxen|13 years ago
My comment isn't meant to be snarky; it's meant to point out the /ultimate/ absurdity of our copyright system - that you literally /cannot determine/ if something is or is not fair use without a judgment. As in a judge.
So while you make important points about the presence or absence of commentary, the fact that the video was transformed /at all/ means that it's no longer a determinable question.
beedogs|13 years ago
If you don't know what "fair use" is, you probably shouldn't be opining on this.
unknown|13 years ago
[deleted]
discountgenius|13 years ago
Alright, so how do we fix it? How can content producers protect themselves from legitimate copyright infringement on services such as YouTube that allow unverified uploads on a massive scale?
AnthonyMouse|13 years ago
That framing of the question is inherently biased. It assumes that if no good solution can be found, some bad solution that solves that problem is the only alternative, regardless of whether it creates even more serious problems for other people.
It also assumes that the "problem" is sufficiently major to justify the implied "whatever it takes" approach to solving it. Notwithstanding that substantially all of Hollywood's collected works are available on The Pirate Bay and in a thousand other places, the studios continue to make record profits. While an elegant solution to the problem you mention would be convenient, the decidedly inelegant approaches currently on the books or theorized by pundits are not inherently superior to the default alternative of doing nothing at all just because "something must be done" is a popular piece of political rhetoric.
scotty79|13 years ago
People who know how to make money of the content production without government issued monopoly on copying will step in to fill the gap (if there'll actually be any gap).
zokier|13 years ago
ghshephard|13 years ago
Natsu|13 years ago
beedogs|13 years ago
go back to reddit, please.
sigzero|13 years ago
jb17|13 years ago