On Sunday, January 18, 2009 Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen performed at one of the Inaugaration celebration concerts - specifically at Lincoln Park. A video of their duet performance of “This Land Is Your Land” was, of course, posted on YouTube. It has since been removed at the request of HBO.
I’d link to the video, but obviously it’s no longer available. You can see one single shot though in the embed here.
What I find most interesting about this, however, is the fact that YouTube lists exactly who requested the video be removed. Obviously this is not a new practice, but it is worth taking note of the fact that YouTube is trying to lay the blame for the lack of a video where the blame is due, thereby easily deflecting the blame from themselves as well as making sure YouTube doesn’t get any negative response from their take-downs.
UPDATED AT 7:30 CST:
The video now appears to be available at YouTube. Looks like HBO has lifted their ban.
Fewer people are downloading music from the internet illegally because they are frightened about having their connections cut off, according to new research.
According to an article in today’s Telegraph (UK):
Around 39 per cent of music fans currently download tracks from illegal sites, compared to 43 per cent last year, the annual digital music survey of 1,500 people found.
However, of those, 72 per cent said they would stop if they were contacted by their internet service provider (ISP).
A recently released study has claims that the current ‘Intellectual Property’ situation in the world is not working well. Driven by a fear of losing out, and bolstered by an attitude that profit is the aim of IP, progress is hampered. Not only by the entertainment industry, also in biotechnology where medicines are sometimes restricted or withheld,
I never thought I’d see the day when YouTube was accused of taking down videos based on too little of a copyright claim, but that’s apparently what’s been happening recently in the ongoing battle between Scientology and the group “Anonymous” (basically the anti-Scientology group).
According to an article at Ars Technica, the majority of the videos have been reinstated, but only after being taken down in the first place. Obviously as YouTube makes efforts to better curtail illegal content being uploaded to their site they are not doing due diligence to affirm the copyright ownership of the claimant. This brings up a question on the fine line between when should and when shouldn’t something be displayed. Obviously if something is up without permission of the copyright holder and the copyright holder asks to have it removed, it should be removed (barring fair use, etc). But what about people who claim to own the copyright and use the DMCA as a way to pull content they just frankly do not like? Is the DMCA perhaps still too strict? Or is YouTube being overly cautious nowadays?
Article Description:
A mysterious entity called American Rights Counsel demanded that 4,000 videos criticizing Scientology be pulled form YouTube late last week. After the counter-notices poured in, the videos went back up, but the war between Scientology and the mask-wearing group “Anonymous” appears to be heating up. Next battle: Broadway.
Yeah… I’m being lazy on this one and just copying the press release. Does anyone really go to these things? Or isn’t this just preaching to the choir?
(By the way, you can tell how much they really care and how much they understand the Internet by how unfriendly and long the URLs are for “more information” listed below). I’ve gone ahead and linked them for you.)
The Copyright Alliance is hitting the road this fall to engage artists, creators, educators and others about the organization’s exciting new one voice initiative.
Those who join the effort can access a network of other creators who recognize the importance of copyright via an interactive members-only web site. The site provides resources and information about copyright to creators and the ability for them to have their voices heard in policy debates. It also allows artists to engage each other in discussions about related interests, such as marketing strategies, creative inspiration or distribution opportunities.
Representatives from the Copyright Alliance will exhibit at the following events, to which members of the media are invited.
CNet posted an interesting article / editorial regarding Comcast’s recently announced usage cap for residential customers. He has some very valid points, including the fact that the cap is far above and beyond what most residential customers would ever need - and that there is another level of service (still less than $100 a month) with no cap at all.
Personally I think the caps are fine, and hopefully they will allow Comcast to focus on the bigger problem, which is just how expensive speed is, and why we’re still so slow here in the U.S.
In a recent post here at IPThieves, we discussed the problems with issuing take-down notices as a sole method for copyright holders to try to stave off so-called “illegal” sites from giving away copyright-protected material for free. Since then, we’ve spent some time really looking at more effective methods of the copyright holders could use to stop piracy or theft of their intellectual property.
Of course, one of the most popular methods from the RIAA has been to try to scare individuals into not downloading music illegally in the first place by suing or threatening to sue people who do so. Whether this has worked or not is highly questionable, although it is definitely the case that they have created quite a bit of ill-will by directly going after their potential customers.
When it comes to pirate and illegal download sites, networks and software, there are generally three different types:
One is the group of people who want to trade or allow for free downloads of the material because they genuinely believe that information should be free, and they consider intellectual property to be a form of information - therefore to enforce their philosophy, it is almost a moral obligation for them to build systems to allow this trading and sharing.
The second group of people share and trade for a bit more selfish reason, which is that they do it so they can also receive content, information, etc. for free. This is the main concept behind most p2p networks - people share their content and they in turn can gain access to content from other people.
The third group, however, look at this as a business model. These are the sites that offer large quantities of unlicensed, copyright-protected content to their users (usually for free, although Grooveshark is a whole different story) and financially leverage the traffic generated through ads and other promotions paid for by third parties.
One area that has specifically focused on this third type is the phenomenon of guitar tablature web sites (or other “print” content sites). Ultimate-Guitar.com, for example, continually ranks among the top five music websites - and the vast majority of its traffic has been from the unlicensed displays of tablature for copyright-protected songs. Although it has not officially announced any numbers, the site is expected to generate several million dollars of ad revenue each year - all of which goes directly to the site owners and operators.
So, for this third “advertising-supported-business” group, one question that no one seems to ask is why are advertisers continuing to support them? The answer, of course, is because this is where their potential customers are. It’s why you’ll see ads for cell-phone companies, credit cards and other products aimed at a younger late-teen to early thirties audience plastered all over ultimate-guitar.
Then again, most of these types of sites are using ad networks to get their advertising - the most popular of which is Google Adsense. But one quick look at the Google AdSense Program Policies makes it completely clear that these types of sites are not allowed to display Google Ads:
Website publishers may not display Google ads on web pages with content protected by copyright law unless they have the necessary legal rights to display that content. Please see our DMCA policy for more information.”
If Google is really telling the truth here about their policies, then shouldn’t these sites be taken off the adsense network? If publishers and copyright holders are smart about this, wouldn’t it make sense to cut off the money source, at least for this third group of advertising-supported businesses that are relying on someone else’s property to make their money?
Sure, the sites could switch to other networks, but the majority of networks have the same policies. And for those that don’t, one could argue that the ad networks themselves (including Google) are directly profiting from the theft of intellectual property, since the networks also take a share of all the advertising revenue generated by their partner sites (before giving the site itself their share).
Wouldn’t that mean Google is directly profiting from the theft of intellectual property? Of course it would - but then again this seems to be the basis for most of Google’s business model (take YouTube for example). And who’s willing to take on Google?
With all the illegal file trading sites on the Internet, one major thing keeps popping up among them.  This is the fact that more and more of these sites are hosting in other countries, most notably Russia. The reason for this is that in countries like Russia and some others, copyright law is quite different than it is here in the United States, and the sites are free to do whatever it is they like.
Of course, just hosting in Russia isn’t enough to avoid the issue. Ideally the sites are also registered to companies or individuals in these other countries so they can avoid all legal issues. That said, with a lot of the action that is going on currently, most of the crackdown (other than the RIAA) has been to send sites “take-down” notices. This generally also includes sending a notice to the site’s web hosting comany as well, implying that the host itself may also be culpable for any potential broken laws, lawsuits, or even (usually threatened) jail time.
Generally when it comes to sites that actively participate in what is considered (in the U.S. at least) to be copyright infringement, it is one of two cases: 1.) the site owner doesn’t realize he or she is breaking any laws, or 2.) the site owner knows, or expects a high possibility, that what he or she is doing may be breaking laws, but does it anyway.
In the instances of example one, a take-down notice will probably work by scaring the individual into taking the site down. For this reason, some of what the RIAA has been doing has been effective, in that there are people out there who are scared from what they’ve heard on the news (whether suing your potential customers is a good business tactic is another question altogether).
It’s in the instances of example two, however, that take-down notices risk even furthering the problem by simply moving the site somewhere else. Look at textbooktorrents.com. They were down, and are now back up on another server, and based on the current message on their site they are likely to move servers again the next time they are taken down at their host. The same thing has happened several times with The Pirate Bay.
One can assume the inevitable result of all of this is that sites like these will all be hosted in other countries where copyright law currently allows it. So what then? If intellectual property really is one of the most valuable products of the United States, will the government eventually step in and force Internet Service Providers to block access to specific sites? This currently seems unlikely, especially given the recent judgment by the FCC against Comcast for their throttling of bandwidth to torrent sites.
But if not this, then what? Eventual legal persecution of people downloading the files? Again, this seems to make as much sense as the drug war focusing on arresting everyone who does drugs but doing nothing about the dealers. Will it lead to political sanctions, such as the threats between the WTO and Russia for allofmp3.com? If the countries are defiant, again this will not work.
So is the real potential in all of this to actually go to war over intellectual property theft? Or will the laws simply change?
Perhaps the copyright holders will save the day by changing their approach to licensing.
Perhaps… but I recommend you stock up on canned goods. You know, just in case.
The Constable on January 19th, 2009
