Warner Music Files Copyright Claim on A Silent 'Star Wars' Video On YouTube (wired.com) 73
rgh02 writes:
Earlier this summer, popular YouTube channel Auralnauts received some unfortunate news: Warner/Chappell had filed a monetization claim on their "Star Wars Minus Williams" video through YouTube's Content ID System. More than anything, the Auralnauts were confused -- the video the music company was claiming rights over didn't have any music in it at all.
In fact, the video is almost entirely silent, augmented with a few awkward coughs as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker plod noiselessly toward Princess Leia in a two-minute scene where they're awarded ceremonial medallions. Wired's article describes it as "a tongue-in-cheek tribute" to John Williams' Star Wars score for the film's final scene, also reporting that it had been online for almost three years before Warner/Chappell music publishing claimed rights to all money the video would receive: When I tried to get Warner/Chappell's side of this story, the company offered no comment. But apparently my reporting helped bring the "Star Wars Minus Williams" copyright dispute to an unexpectedly speedy resolution. When Koonce told his YouTube partner manager that a journalist had interviewed him, YouTube stepped in and removed the copyright claim against the video.
YouTube has also created a "Fair Use Protection" program covering legal costs for channels they believe are unfairly targeted with video takedown notices. But the article points out that 95% of the time music companies just chose YouTube's "monetize" option to claim the ad revenue rather than asking that a video be blocked -- and that last year YouTube paid the music industry $1 billion. (Though the music industry insists that amount is still below what they're receiving from streaming music services.)
In fact, the video is almost entirely silent, augmented with a few awkward coughs as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker plod noiselessly toward Princess Leia in a two-minute scene where they're awarded ceremonial medallions. Wired's article describes it as "a tongue-in-cheek tribute" to John Williams' Star Wars score for the film's final scene, also reporting that it had been online for almost three years before Warner/Chappell music publishing claimed rights to all money the video would receive: When I tried to get Warner/Chappell's side of this story, the company offered no comment. But apparently my reporting helped bring the "Star Wars Minus Williams" copyright dispute to an unexpectedly speedy resolution. When Koonce told his YouTube partner manager that a journalist had interviewed him, YouTube stepped in and removed the copyright claim against the video.
YouTube has also created a "Fair Use Protection" program covering legal costs for channels they believe are unfairly targeted with video takedown notices. But the article points out that 95% of the time music companies just chose YouTube's "monetize" option to claim the ad revenue rather than asking that a video be blocked -- and that last year YouTube paid the music industry $1 billion. (Though the music industry insists that amount is still below what they're receiving from streaming music services.)
Why is the video getting money at all? (Score:1, Interesting)
They removed the music but all the video is copyrighted.
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Still, Warner MUSIC does not deserve to be paid for it either.
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fair use applies. also it's only a two minute clip. neither the video (fox, lucasfilms) nor soundtrack (warner bros) should be compensated through royalty payments.
warner bros. and others who make false claims like this should be penalized in some way--either through fines or by losing their right to file claims in the future.. length of such penalty determined by frequency of abuse of the system. the way it is now, they just shoot automated scatterguns at everything. that has to stop.
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warner bros. and others who make false claims like this should be penalized in some way--either through fines or by losing their right to file claims in the future..
Better yet, they should lose their copyright privileges. That would put a swift stop to it.
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If my video is taken down, that implies I broke the law. That's defamation of character. I'm wondering why people haven't filed a court claim like this.
No it doesn't, no it isn't, and because they actually know something about the law, respectively.
The law is not a child's toy, and if you tried the sort of childish antics you're proposing then you would rightly be laughed out of court and possibly left with a significant bill for your legal fees.
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If my video is taken down, that implies I broke the law.
No it does not. It simply is a reflection of someone accusing you of violating their copyright. Furthermore it appears in this case that the person who posted the video likely DID violate copyright - just not Warner Music's copyright.
That's defamation of character.
Insert eyeroll here. No it is almost certainly not defamation of character [alllaw.com]. For it to be defamation there has to be real and quantifiable damage. While possible in certain circumstances the mere act of issuing a DCMA takedown request or asserting a copyright (even when non
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Except that DMCA doesn't agree. It allows just a simple notice to be enough to take down a video, then it's up to you to argue to get it back up. That's why this takedown happened, probably no actual person did this just a bot scanning through videos looking for Star Wars segments that it recognizes.
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"Better yet, they should lose their copyright privileges. That would put a swift stop to it."
Sorry, I have to play Advocatus Diaboli here...
Copyright Law in General, and US Copyright Law in particular, is Broken.
There are three Principles involved, the Copyright itself which is generally assigned at Creation unless assigned otherwise, Due Diligence which means that those involved are aware of the Legal aspects of Copyright, and Fair Use which is so loosely defined that it has no definition at all. Fair Use
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Harrison was found guilty of Infringement, even if not intentional, because he insisted that "My Sweet Lord" was an original work. In this case, Harrison was really guilty of not paying Due Diligence. He was lazy.
What are sufficient steps to avoid accidental infringements like this?
Re:Why is the video getting money at all? (Score:4, Informative)
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It's 18 seconds right at the beginning. This clearly shows the limits of an automated content ID system.
As I understand it, the content ID would give a link to Warner Chappell saying your music is used here. Do you want to take down, monetize, or ignore? And same with 21st century fox for the video.
Fox either hadn't seen the video or clicked ignore, that's why the video stayed up. Warner took 3 years to notice because they have a long queue, and it may sort by length, or have an option to, or multiple peopl
Re: Why is the video getting money at all? (Score:2)
See the second sentence in the summary.
Re:Why is the video getting money at all? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, it's a short bit, and one of the things covered under fair use is criticism. It's actually quite interesting to see such a well-known scene with the music removed, so it does make a critical statement about the way music alters a scene.
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the system needs improvement (Score:2, Informative)
I continue to receive fake claims on a video where the music is something I made in garage band. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It's sounds so awful that it's really a joke that someone would claim it. Sometimes multiple people/companies have claims of the same passage in the "music".
I once tried to find the music they claimed that I had "copied" and it sounded like someone had made a record of all the loops in Garageband to get as many hits as possible. It didn't even remotely sound like music.
I can unde
The Wonderful World of Disney (Score:2, Interesting)
Disney is extremely sue happy in general, but tyrannical when it comes to YouTube. They're the Micro$oft of the film world.
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Disney is extremely sue happy in general, but tyrannical when it comes to YouTube. They're the Micro$oft of the film world.
Ironic that you are saying this in this article. That Star Wars VIDEO has been on youtube for 3 years and Disney has NOT tried to have it removed. WARNER is the one harassing them..
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this was warner bros. the copyright holder of the star wars (first film) soundtrack; and FOX, btw, owns that first film, lock, stock and light sabre, not disney.
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monetization claim (Score:4, Interesting)
monetization claim: this is the most interesting part for me: prediction of the future.
The future is behind content identification, not behind content blocking. All content will be quickly identified and ISP will be paying content owners a fee from the money they collect from our ISP fees.
Pirate site and owner site - both will exist and compete in technology and convenience of content delivery (for example, a site might to choose to slap ads on the content, the other site might choose not to, the third site might choose that you pay an additional fee for content delivery, guess, who will be winning the users?) but the ISP will pay only content owners for our clicks.
Never mind this particular monetization claim is ridiculous. 2 min excerpt should be covered by Fair Use act, but in general, that's how it will work in the future.
Users will pay a fixed fee and get all the content on the Internet for the price of that fee. ISPs will take care of owners.
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No, in the future, content will be free. Anyone who thinks that paying for content is sustainable despite an absolute glut of existing content is living in a fantasy world.
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All content will be quickly identified and ISP will be paying content owners a fee from the money they collect from our ISP fees.
And the moment an ISP tried that, almost every customer would either switch providers or start using end-to-end encryption for all connections, making the content identification system a useless investment.
Re:Actually Entirely Reasonable (Score:5, Informative)
The amount of time that you have been getting away with illegal behavior is utterly irrelevant.
This is completely untrue.
The amount of time Warner Music has gotten away with their criminal and illegal behavior is completely relevant.
Filing a DMCA takedown for something copyright law does not grant the copyright holder rights over is a federal crime, and the damages Warner is legally responsible for increase the longer their crimes are permitted.
Warner is very clearly guilty of a federal count of perjury (they do not own the copyright over "silence" like Warner has claimed), and a count of fraud and a count of theft of a value that is continually rising with time.
They are also likely going to be guilty of one of two other crimes depending on their near future actions.
Filing a DMCA takedown notice, that has been counter claimed, is a crime if you do not actually follow through with a court case to sue the defendant.
Alternately, if they DO sue, then instead their lawyer is in violation of legal bar ethics laws for proceeding with the case after they are required by law to inform their client there is no basis for the case.
In the first situation above, they can be fined for SLAPP damages. In the second, the legal department is subject to damages for using the courts time and possibly punishments from the bar association.
The simple fact of the matter is that copyright law dictates exactly what a copyright holder can and can not dictate regarding their works, and a 2 minute video with no sound is completely exempt from any assertion of their control.
Also copyright law only allows you to dictate control over works of art you actually have copyright protection over.
You making one song does NOT grant you ownership over every song anyone world wide has made over all time.
Additionally that copyright protection doesn't grant you the right over specific uses of your protected work.
If you don't like that fact, go complain to the government which is forcing you to place any and all works you create under the preview of copyright law that you don't want applying to your works.
It's hardly OUR fault the government is forcing these laws on you and us just the same, but you don't get to choose to ignore the laws and claim rights you don't have simply because you happen to hold copyright protection over something.
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Filing a DMCA takedown for something copyright law does not grant the copyright holder rights over is a federal crime, and the damages Warner is legally responsible for increase the longer their crimes are permitted.
Unfortunately you're completely wrong. Filing a DMCA notice for something you don't have rights to isn't a crime. The crime (perjury) is in falsely claiming to represent a given rights-holder (e.g. a person falsely claiming to represent Warner Music, filing a DMCA takedown in Warner's name.)
The filing agent would be committing perjury if they filed a DMCA notice on the Star Wars Soundtrack if they weren't the rights-holder for the Star Wars Soundtrack. They're not committing perjury if they file a DMCA noti
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And one billion dollars revenue. What is that, like 0.01% of their expected income. Yep, they should be grovelling at their knees...
Are you saying they have a projected yearly income of 10 trillion dollars?
Maybe if they cashed in on ALL the lost sales of ALL pirated music ever.
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Those numbers are even funnier when you realize the global GDP has been hovering around $75 trillion. Apparently the AC you responded to thinks that Warner Music is responsible for ~13% of the entire world's economic output.
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You're using an old shilling formula - you should not get paid your piecework rate for this post due to an overall lack of effort.
Cost of fraud should be reclaimed (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone making fraudulent and criminal claims should have to pay the cost of their illegal claim, and should have to pay damages. For example, suspension of all payments for 1 year for each offence, and resumption of payments should be subject to the dismissal+prosecution of whoever was responsible for engaging in this type of fraud.
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Interesting idea, but would you care to point out which criminal laws are violated by agreeing to take ad revenue from a video when YouTube's Conten tD system flags it as being something you own?
At best, they've violated YouTube's Terms Of Service, which is not illegal or criminal. The only penalties for violating TOS are the ones spelled out in the OTS.
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The only penalties for violating TOS are the ones spelled out in the OTS.
Its not the only possible penalty. Breach of Contract, the court doesnt necessarily care about the penalties spelled out in the contract that you breached. You breached it. The court cares about making the harmed party "whole" again.
("whole" is a legal term here)
More than just a TOS violation (Score:1)
If you agree with ContentID when it flags something as yours and either have it blocked or monetized, you are asserting copyright of the flagged content (Youtube also notifies whoever uploaded the content that someone else asserted copyright over it). If you do not actually hold such a copyright, then it is a fraudulent claim. If you do not even bother reviewing the content to ensure your claim is accurate and are just going by what Google's algorithm says (which is well-known for giving false positives),
"it's just good business" (Score:5, Interesting)
If it costs them less to file the claim than the claim than they will get back on the average, they'll do it. There are only two ways to stop them - [1] make it illegal (and then they will only stop some of the time) or [2] make it unprofitable.
Right now the way the system is set up, for very little effort they can file a claim and siphon off the ad revenue. It's a "click here for free money" button. Who in their right mind wouldn't press the button? Right now the ONLY negative side-effect is bad press. And just look what happened here. "You discussed our abuse of the system with a journalist?!" *DING* ((claim dropped)) Imagine that!
It's not that they don't know what they're doing is wrong - it's that they simply don't care. It's just free money until it attracts bad press. I don't blame them, I blame the rules. If I were in their position, I'd probably be doing the same thing. The problem is the "click here for free money" button. The only way to fix the problem is to fix the rules.
Public's interest is more important than business (Score:3)
Reminds me of the "Happy Birthday" song scam Warner/Chappell Music pulled on so many artists who included that song in their work, collecting royalties from them based on a fraudulent copyright ownership claim that was later deemed invalid in court [wikipedia.org] (the music and lyrics of "Good Morning and Happy Birthday" were published without a copyright notice which was required at the time so the song was alread
That cough at 1:00...https://news.slashdot.org/sto (Score:1)
"the video ... didn't have any music in it at all" (Score:1)
What's this if not Williams, then?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Fair use, probably, but why is anybody with three brains cells to rub together surprised an algorithm matched on this?
Seriously? (Score:2)
and that last year YouTube paid the music industry $1 billion. (Though the music industry insists that amount is still below what they're receiving from streaming music services.)
Holy... you could give these people the contents of Fort Knox and they'd complain they'd rather have greenbacks. Just wow.
Reciprocity (Score:2)
So just make it so that if your video is determined to have been unfairly monetized by someone else, that their monetization money for that same period of time is given to you as retribution. e.g. Warner Music monetizes Auralnauts' video for 48 hours before YouTube decides their claim is wrong, then all the money Warner Music gets from Y
uhh.. (Score:2)
Why is the video not removed, and why do they get money, it's not even their work. You can bitch at the big companies, but these channels are getting money by showing other people's work with only a few alterations they made themselves.