WARNER CONTINUES TO CATCH THOSE COPYRIGHT CRIMINAL MASTERMINDS

Warner has caught two other criminal masterminds who, until now, had cunningly avoided justice and posted copyright infringing material, spreading fear and unfairness on the poor millionaires who control the music industry's lives. Their reign of terror is over, however, thanks to the ever-watchful eye of Warner and their justice tool: the YouTube's automated blocking device.

Yup, Warner is removing videos of your kids singing now, much like UMG's removal of the Lenz kid dancing to a Prince song, and why wouldn't they? they already removed thousands of videos of people playing cover tunes in their rooms, including teenagers singing without a backing track, without any kind of legal backlash or regard for fair use. Granted, in some cases it's difficult to determine weather it's fair use or not. Lets try it with these two examples, shall we?

This one features a kid lip-syncing to "Jukebox Hero" by Foreigner (who, ironically, found their new singer in YouTube singing covers). The second one is an even younger kid smacking lips to "I Love My Lips,"song originally by a cucumber in an episode of "Veggie Tales."It's unclear weather the copyright claim was for the song or the cucumber up some of these Warner executives' ass.

Thanks to the ever-alert fellows at YouTomb and the Electronic Frontier Foundation we can find about this stuff, otherwise it would go unnoticed, and the record labels would be able to get away with anything. Keep supporting them in any way, and lets put a stop to this complete abuse of copyright laws.

Corynne McSherry's article "The Fair Use Massacre Continues: Now Warner's Going After Babies"for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Pictures taken from YouTomb.

Fred at NYU

For those of you who haven't run into the arms of the Electronic Frontier Foundation after getting your videos removed from YouTube, you should know Fred von Lohmann is the Senior Staff Attourney at EFF who's actually fighting to protect us, and the user-generated content against the abuse of copyright holders such as Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group.

This is a recent appearance he made at NYU Law titled "Public Interest Cyber-Lawyering on the Electronic Fronteer."If you have an hour of down-time, please watch it, as he goes deeply into the blocking and removal of videos in YouTube by the big record labels and companies, specially WMG, and what to expect if you're considering taking legal action. He explains what's going on n a very user-friendly way, as in, you don't have to be an NYU lawyer to uderstand what he's talking about.

EFF article causes some stir

Holy crap! I did not expect the EFF article I posted here yesterday to cause so much stir, but many sites are commenting on it, including Billboard. Here are some articles commenting about both, the EFF article, and the current WMG hostile video take-over.

YouTube's copyright system goes wrong, EFF intends to sue
By Samantha Rose Hunt, TG Daily

EFF Mounts Fight Over YouTube Takedowns
By Antony Bruno, Billboard

EFF seeks mashup makers to fight YouTube filtering
By Julian Sanchez, Ars Technica

EFF Gears Up To Fight Back Against Bogus YouTube Takedowns
By Mike Masnick, Techdirt

YouTube Users Lash Out At Warner Music (And Google) With Protest Videos
by Michael Arrington, TechCrunch

I don't think that we can find clearer evidence that what we're doing is working. If you've had one, or more, videos removed, or even if you didn't but one of your favorite videos was, and you feel it was unfair, please take a moment of your time and write to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Our freedom of playing music in our own homes is at stake.

YouTube's January Fair Use Massacre

This is what it's come to. Teenagers singing "Winter Wonderland" being censored off YouTube.

Fair use has always been at risk on YouTube, thanks to abusive DMCA takedown notices sent by copyright owners (sometimes carelessly, sometimes not). But in the past several weeks, two things have made things much worse for those who want to sing a song, post an a capella tribute, or set machinima to music.

First, it appears that more and more copyright owners are using YouTube's automated copyright filtering system (known as the Content ID system), which tests all videos looking for a "match" with "fingerprints" provided by copyright owners.

Second, thanks to a recent spat between YouTube and Warner Music Group, YouTube's Content ID tool is now being used to censor lots and lots of videos (previously, Warner just silently shared in the advertising revenue for the videos that included a "match" to its music).

EFF, along with many other public interest groups, have repeatedly expressed our concerns to both copyright owners and YouTube about the dangers of automated filtering systems like the Content ID system. These systems are still primitive and unable to distinguish a tranformative remix from copyright infringement. So unless they leave lots of breathing room for remixed content, these filters end up sideswiping lots of fair uses.

And that's exactly what has happened these past few weeks. And while today it's Warner Music, as more copyright owners start using the Content ID tool, it'll only get worse. Soon it may be off limits to remix anything with snippets of our shared mass media culture -- music, TV, movies, jingles, commercials. That would be a sad irony -- copyright being used to stifle an exciting new wellspring of creativity, rather than encourage it.

It's clear from the Warner Music experience that YouTube's Content ID tool fails to separate the infringements from the arguable fair uses. And while YouTube offers users the option to dispute a removal (if it's an automated Content ID removal) or send a formal DMCA counter-notice (if it's an official DMCA takedown), many YouTube users, lacking legal help, are afraid to wave a red flag in front of Warner Music's lawyers. That's a toxic combination for amateur video creators on YouTube.

So what can we do?

First, YouTube should fix the Content ID system. Now. The system should not remove videos unless there is a match between the video and audio tracks of a submitted fingerprint. When we made this suggestion in October 2007, YouTube assured us that they were working on improving the tool. Well, it's been more than a year. If YouTube is serious about protecting its users, the time has come to implement this fix. (Some will point out that this implies that record labels and music publishers can never use the Content ID tool to remove videos solely based on what's in the audio track. That's right. I think that adding a soundtrack to your home skateboarding movie is a fair use. If copyright owners feel differently, they can send a formal DMCA takedown notice, and with any luck, we'll see each other in court.)

Second, YouTubers, EFF wants to help. If Warner Music Group took down your video, ask yourself if your video is (1) noncommercial (i.e., no commercial advertisements or YouTube Partner videos) and (2) includes substantial original material contributed by you (i.e., no verbatim copies of Warner music videos). If so, and you'd like to counternotice but are afraid of getting sued, we'd like to hear from you. We can't promise to take every case, but neither will we stand by and watch semi-automated takedowns trample fair use.

by Fred von Lohmann for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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