Film Distributor, Copyright Enforcement Company Join Forces To Kick Creative Commons-Licensed Film Off YouTube
from the would-rather-be-fast-than-be-correct dept
Infringement takedown notices: can’t live with them, rights holders won’t let your service live without them. YouTube once again is the flashpoint, with a Creative Commons-licensed film being taken down in response to a takedown notice. The Aaron Swartz documentary, “The Internet’s Own Boy,” was briefly knocked offline by a bogus copyright claim (that it was likely an error doesn’t make it any less bogus) filed by Remove Your Media, LLC.
Brian Knappenberger, the director and producer of the film (which is also available through paid streaming services, along with other non-paid outlets like the Internet Archive), confirmed that no one on his side of the film had anything to do with it.
“It wasn’t done by us,” Knappenberger told the Daily Dot. “I’m trying to figure out [who issued the claim].”
The Daily Dot contacted Remove Your Media, which refused to offer any insight on this bogus copyright claim.
A representative for Remove Your Media, Eric Greene, refused to name the client who hired him for the takedown, though he noted it was “a distributor outside the U.S.”
Greene then deployed the most unfortunate excuse anyone can offer post-World War II.
“We were just following orders,” Greene said.
Apparently, the documentary’s foreign distributor confused CC-licensing with regular old copyright, if it even bothered to check on the film’s US distribution rights before it issued the notice. (The Internet Archive’s upload is one of the few places foreign viewers won’t run into a “Sorry, but this content is not available in your country” message.)
A representative for one of the film’s U.S. distributors attributed the takedown to “miscommunication,” and expressed confidence it would be resolved soon.
And, what do you know, it actually was. As of this point, the film has already been restored to its fully playable glory, something of an anomaly in an era when even clearly erroneous takedowns take hours or days to be reinstated — if they ever are.
On one hand, with a platform of YouTube’s size, mistakes are inevitable. On the other hand, if the DMCA provided for a notice-and-notice system, minor debacles like this could be easily averted. Instead, it’s a notice-and-takedown system that makes it all too easy to pull the trigger and let those at the other end deal with the damage. Companies attempting to protect their content are all too willing to move quickly, rather than move carefully, resulting in a lot of collateral damage — sometimes including to their own assets.
Fortunately, this was fixed quickly, and even if it wasn’t, several viewing options remain. But this is yet another indication that the ease of YouTube’s takedown system is only making things progressively worse, rather than reaching some sort of balance between YouTube users and rights holders.
Filed Under: aaron swartz, brian knappenberger, censorship, copyright, creative commons, dmca, internet's own boy, takedown
Companies: remove your media
Comments on “Film Distributor, Copyright Enforcement Company Join Forces To Kick Creative Commons-Licensed Film Off YouTube”
i'm betting...
…it was ONLY restored because someone had enough smarts to know that taking THIS particular film down might bring down the revenge of the nerds, part III, in 4(chan)-D ! ! !
if this had been a lower profile film about worm farming, or whatever, i bet they’d still be SOL…
“We were just following orders,” Greene said.
So were the KGB under Stalin.
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Yes, as Tim alluded to in the article, Nuremberg demolished that particular excuse.
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No, the commenter gets points for cleverly avoiding a Godwin’s Law citation.
Illegally upload a copyrighted film? $100,000 fine and 5 year federal prison sentence. Illegal DMCA report? Nothing happens, ever.
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nono it gives lip service to the “penalty” of perjury.
Of course most of them avoid that by using a computer, so they can claim no human was involved so it can’t be perjury.
Even when they double down and claim a human reviewed the review, there is still no penalty.
Of the corps, by the corps, for the corps.
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Lip service and perjury, where have I heard that before…
Familiar Business Model
So Remove Your Media provides a service much like a rentable botnet of infected computers would, but tailored for copyright holders. For a fee one can launch denial of service attacks – in the form of bogus copyright claims and take-downs – with total anonymity.
The Spirit of Butes Farm flew itself from Newfoundland to Ireland. GPS along with more computing power than a cruise missile is readily available., Anybody any ideas about detecting obstacles out to about a quarter of a mile.i
Knappenberger should file a criminal copyright infringement complaint in response. After all, Remove Your Media is a for-profit enterprise knowingly infringing on a copyrighted work, as defined in the Copyright Act.
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Absolutely. Remove Your Media is claiming rights it does not have. It should be tried for fraud.
Still available elswhere!!!
I wrote a lot about this part of the comment then realised that Youtube is not stupid they know that they have a major problem and if they do not find a solution very quickly they will become a has been just like many services that were much much bigger than them and that died almost overnight.
There, fixed that for you. :p
if the DMCA provided for a notice-and-notice system, minor debacles like this could be easily averted.
DMCA has this exact system built in, but YouTube and others choose not to use it, in part because they fail for the most part to have full contact information for the people posting on their services. YouTube could have easily sent the notice onto the poster and given then a reasonable amount of time to asnwer, AS IS IN THE LAW. They choose not to do so, and instead take things down and wait for yelling. That is their choice, not something forced on them by DMCA.
Think of it as the dividends for supporting and allowing widespread anonymous posting, they created their system and operate as if the poster is always unreachable.
Re: Translation
“Blah blah blah, google pirate evil blargha flargha.”
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Don’t lie when the truth can be found within the legal framework within 30 seconds.
‘reasonable framework’ has no strict definition, and thus can easily be interpreted to be ‘as soon as we send them the notice’.
And as for the poster always being unreachable, that’s also fundamentally flawed on a service that requires your name.
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DMCA has this exact system built in, but YouTube and others choose not to use it, in part because they fail for the most part to have full contact information for the people posting on their services. YouTube could have easily sent the notice onto the poster and given then a reasonable amount of time to asnwer, AS IS IN THE LAW. They choose not to do so, and instead take things down and wait for yelling. That is their choice, not something forced on them by DMCA.
You must be reading a different DMCA than the rest of the world.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512
“upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.”
If you could point me to where it says you can also just notify the user, I’d like to know. I’ve read the statute many, many times, and as far as I know, it’s not in there. I could be wrong, and perhaps you’re aware of some part of it I’ve looked over that completely contradicts 512(c)1(C), but I’d be surprised.
Furthermore, all of the descriptions of counternotices describe conternotices for “that has been removed or to which access has been disabled.”
Nowhere in the law, that I’m aware of, is there a notice-and-notice provision, despite your insisting it’s there.
So, I’d appreciate it if you could find that section of the law and point it out to me.
Thanks.
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The silence responding to you is deafening. Or blinding since we are on text-only.
More than Just Copyright Damage
Damages can also include damage to reputation, the claim by the studio that you are a copyright pirate.
Also psychological damage from the implied threat of criminal action and, the loss of your work (artists place a great deal of value in their work).
Then there is the effort you must make to recover your work, charged out as a reasonable rate, including preparation of documentation and any legal fees with regard to recovery of work.
Finally there is the loss of income whilst the work was done, especially during it’s critical early launch phase which can have a major long term economic impact on the work.
Finally a claim for punitive damages based upon how little effort the DMCA claimant made prior to attempting to fraudulently claim your work, how negligent were they in that claim. Claiming a computer did makes it even worse for them ie total disregard for the harm they cause.
The irony
Eric Green own both Remove Your Content LLC and Remove your Media LLC. One is for the adult copyrights and the other is for non adult copyrights.
http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agents/r/removeyl.pdf
http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agents/r/remove_media2.pdf
He did it in the past and left yet another excuse.
https://torrentfreak.com/google-removes-pirate-bay-frontpage-from-search-results-091002/
All you have to do to become a copyright agent is pay a yearly fee of around $105 and sign the document http://www.copyright.gov/ no exams, you don’t have to be a lawyer, nothing.
http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agent.pdf
https://twitter.com/EricLive
Remove Your Media LLC is in fact a company that is involved with illegal distribution of cartoons and anime series ; they use YouTube’s features to terminate Channels that might seem an eyesore to them ,even if that channel is by the rule. Remove your Media LLC founders are making Millions of dollars each year by illegal distribution of copyrighted material on YouTube.