Fair Use for YouTube & MySpace Users

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A few years back, documentary filmmakers didn't know what copyrighted clips they could safely include in their films as a 'fair use'. Now there's a well-accepted set of 'best practices' that establishes rational, predictable rules. The same folks who brought rationality to the world of documentary filmmaking are about to work their magic in the user-generated online content space, including user-created videos on YouTube and user-created music on My Space. They said: 'Nonprofessional, online video now accounts for a sizeable portion of all broadband traffic, with much of the work weaving in copyrighted material ... A new culture is emerging — remix culture, an unpredictable mix of the witty, the vulgar, the politically and culturally critical, and the just plain improbable ... What's fair in online-video use of copyrighted material? The healthy growth of this new mode of expression is at risk of becoming a casualty of the efforts of copyright owners to limit wholesale redistribution of their content on sites like YouTube, and of videomakers' own uncertainties about the law.'"

Pissing into the wind....

[iknownuttin]

I go up to YouTube and I see posts of full clips of copyrighted material. I don't see anything about permission and a little credit, if any, for the source. You're not going to win a "fair use" argument against YouTube when that shit is going on. Said copyright holder can just go up there and do a search on any TV show or movie or music video and find thousands of copyrighted material that was uploaded illegally. And a jury will agree with the plaintiff. I know because I do in most of these cases.

There needs to be a thousand examples of "fair use".

Whose Responsibility?

[cerelib]

Google/YouTube hides under the fact that US copyright law puts the responsibility of reporting violation on the copyright holders. The problem is that a copyright holder should not be reasonably expected to scrape all of YouTube and all other similar sites every day/hour to look for violations just to have somebody else repost the video after it is taken down. I believe in fair use, but YouTube just spits in the face of copyright holders by throwing up their hands as if it is completely beyond their control. YouTube doesn't want to invest the time and money to perform their due diligence, but expects copyright holders to do it for them. It is clear that the laws on the books were written when publishing or broadcasting content was out of the reach of normal people. The law does not reflect any of the challenges faced by the current situation.

Perhaps a video takedown should also spur relinquishing all profits generated by the infringing video to the copyright holders. Perhaps then the copyright holders would see hunting violating clips on YouTube a worth-while use of time and YouTube would be more careful about what they allow to be posted. Of course, YouTube would probably give the excuse that it would just be too hard to track earnings in such an isolated way.

the problem IS the law

[circletimessquare]

copyright law was originally intended to reward content creators for their work, to give them incentive to create content. however, copyright law has been hijacked by the economic middlemen, the distributors, such that the reward content creators get doesn't matter anymore (and is significantly reduced)

and we are supposed to respect this. why? why must we respect this?

copyright law has been inculcated and grown according to corporate interests nowadays and has morhped into something completely different form its original purpose. it's a cancer. and now it threatens to kill the public domain, making increasing incursions on what is considered free and fair use

hey, how about most everything is free and fair use, and fuck you to corporate-backed copyright law? is that crazy? who tells you that's crazy? the corporate-backed lawyers?

copyright law itself is the problem, the notion of intellectual property itself is the problem. it has been warped form its original purpose and has been corrupted. it's cancerous corporate growth fueled by the almighty buck, and now it threatens to kill the very creative centers that their money comes form in the first place

here's an idea dear corporate music and corporate video: you can extend the copyright on mickey mouse forever, and pump cash out of that icon forever. and you will get diminishing returns over the years. or you can let it go, and watch your "property" morph into a million stepchildren, one of which will be the next mickey mouse for you to pump money out of

in other words, if you relaxed on the stifling laws and their continued growth, and backed off a bit, you might be surprised to find the emergence of more properties for you to exploit. those properties come from somewhere: creative ferment. but right now your laws stifle and lay waste to that very same garden of creative ferment that your life blood runs from. and you are too oriented to the almighty covetous greedy buck, too shortsighted to see, that the continued cancerous growth of your laws (they certainly aren't the public's laws) is killing your future growth. you'd rather bleed fossil intellectual property assets then relax and let more modern and vital ones be born. because you bleed the creative commons dry with your laws. if you covetously protect your "property" from the public domain to the bitter end, you actually wind up with diminishing returns

the whole idea of intellectual property in the very first place was to provide for a comfortable and ratinoal boundary between private domain and public domain. but under the tutelage of legions of corporate lawyers and the thirst for more money, it has grown into a cancer, that frankly, needs to be broken before it gets fixed. because there is no incentive for corporate lawyers to respect the public domain

and so the public domain must go "illegal". copyright law and intellectual property has ceased to resemble anything moral or even financially sound anymore. all it does is kill our shared free public cultural riches for a set of diminished fossilized corporate private riches

ip law is corrupt and broken. don't respect it. it deserves to be broken. do your best to break it

Last time I checked I was a dual citizen

[WillAffleckUW]

of both Canada and the US.

In fact, I have registered copyrights on file with both the US Library of Congress and the Canadian equivalent - which cost me money to file.

When I or my son make a video, we are Canadians, and we ignore the Soviet-style illegal "laws" of the US.

Fair use is international law - not US only. Not what US courts say.