Today’s blogs are all afire writing about the latest twist in the AP’s comical and borderline pathetic attempts to shore up its broken and obsolete business model: charging outrageous fees to anyone looking to quote FIVE WORDS OR MORE from an AP article.
Should you read an AP article and want to quote it in a blog post you are asked to click on a “copyright use” link that leads you to this:
Now, I don’t want to guess what the AP thinks it can charge me for using this image. The fact is, just because they charge doesn’t change the principle of “fair use” and this image is being used so that I can critique it’s absurdity.
The bigger problem, if you are the AP, is that everything about this policy is counter to the way information is consumed and shared in the modern, digital age. The AP can bitch and moan all they want to about the “good old days” but that doesn’t make time move backwards.
As the ability for people to both gather and distribute news around the globe grows, the question is not what will the AP do in some misguided attempt to protect its work from being shared but why do we really need the AP at all. If the AP disappeared tomorrow news would continue to be reported and most people wouldn’t notice anything had happened.
If there is one thing I learned during almost ten years developing feature film scripts, is that there is no such thing as a completely original idea.
Every script I read (well into the thousands) could be seen as being derivative of a pre-existing work. In fact, if one eliminated every script from Hollywood that was derivative of a pre-existing work there wouldn’t be any screenplays left.
The same can be said for the world of novels.
Unfortunately, one Judge Betts disagrees and has indefinitely banned the wholly original novel “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye” which imagines what Holden Caufield would be like at the age of 76. While clearly building from the foundations of “A Catcher in the Rye” there is nothing in the new work that is a direct quote or paraphrase from the original.
Judge Betts has rejected the defenses’ argument that the new novel…
…did not violate copyright laws because it amounted to a critical parody that had the effect of transforming the original work.
This is one of the major elements of the “fair use” defense and one that did not strike me as even a bit far-fetched. Instead, Judge Betts claimed:
“Both narratives are told from the first-person point of view of a sarcastic, often uncouth protagonist who relies heavily on slang, euphemisms and colloquialisms, makes constant digression and asides, refers to readers in the second person, constantly assures the reader that he is being honest and that he is giving them the truth.” LINK
If that’s enough to ban a this book, I’m sure there is an endless stream of young adult fiction that should certainly be given the same treatment.
Seeing judges ban books is never a good thing. Seeing a judge ban a book for such flimsy reasons as this is downright frightening. If her ruling stands, expect to see a long line of similar suits in the near future.
The MPAA is one of the most revolting associations I can think of (yes, RIAA also comes to mind). Not only do they do nothing to increase the artistic or creative value of film but they are anti-consumer and anti-viewer.
The lastest example of the MPAA’s wrongheadedness is their advice to school teachers who would like to use pieces of DVDs in their teaching. Instead of doing the simple, cost-effective and flexible thing – rip the DVD to a usable file format allowing it to be quickly and easily incorporated into the lesson plan – the MPAA is actually telling teachers that they should videotape the monitor showing the DVD and use the resulting tape.
What?!
Not only would that seem to send the message to students that videotaping a copyprotected screening of a movie is ok – something the MPAA goes to nearly criminal lengths to prevent – but it’s incredibly more time-consuming and complicated than simply ripping the file.
We’re not even talking about the rights of a consumer to rip a DVD they have already purchased but the rights of a teacher to create a dynamic lesson plan – a clear example of “fair use.”
The only silver lining is that the more boneheaded the MPAA reveals itself to be the more likely they are to hasten their own extinction.
ImprovEverywhere, the mischevious gang of merrymakers who brought us the Mall Musical, the Grand Central Freeze and the annual NYC silliness that is the No-Pants Subway Day celebrated April Fool’s Day with a really funny spoof of their own work in which they rounded up a large group to join a grave-side funeral for something they called “Best Funeral Ever”:
Of course, there were some people who thought this was an actual prank. Not just regular people, but some newspeople at Tribune-owned CW11 who saw the video on YouTube and went to air with a completely unchecked report claiming the video was a genuine prank.
Charlie Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere, thought this was pretty funny so he posted the video of the newscast onto YouTube. Shortly after, the video was pulled thanks to a takedown notice from Tribune. As Todd says:
It’s OK for them to air content that we shot and own, but it’s not OK for me to upload their footage of the content they took from me? It’s “fair use” for the news to take a video off of YouTube and broadcast it, but it’s not “fair use” for a citizen to expose their poor reporting on his own content?
No, Charlie, it isn’t OK. It is, however, a great demonstration of what is wrong with our current copyright laws and especially with the DMCA.
I have been following the story of Progress Illinois, a group that has posted a number of videos that criticize FoxNews and, under the well-accepted legal concept of fair-use, include clips of the FoxNews programs in question.
The YouTube account had been taken down following multiple DMCA takedown notices from Fox, leading YouTube to institute its usual policy of shutting such accounts down. Progress Illinois sent a counternotice, and after Fox failed to sue the activist group, the account was turned back on. Paul Alan Levy points us to some more troubling details about the discussions between Progress Illinois and Fox. Apparently, Fox sought to have Progress Illinois waive its fair use rights on all future Fox materialand demanded that it be allowed to run ads on the Progress Illinois site in exchange for allowing the content to be placed on YouTube. On top of this, Levy notes that Fox is apparently preparing a deal with another video site (that will include its desired ads), which Fox will apparently demand sites use in reporting on Fox News reports.
In support of Progress Illinois, embedded below is one of their videos including a FoxNews clip. Hey Fox, why don’t you come after me, too? I’m just itching to counter-sue someone…
There is simply no denying that YouTube is still the most important video-sharing site, at least in the United States. It is not likely to see this position change much, at least not in the next year.
As YouTube has grown it has been forced to decide if they want to side with the users who have made the site what it is or the rights-holders to a lot the material that users have posted. More and more, YouTube is siding with rights-holders, even in cases where fair-use can easily be argued.
YouTube is trying to avoid a never-ending string of lawsuits (justified or otherwise) from RIAA, DMCA, et al. with pre-emptive actions against their users. Unfortunately for both YouTube and its users this means that the site is rapidly becoming a very unfriendly destination for the kinds of “mashup” entertainment that independent video creators and viewers so enjoy.
Here are just a few of the things YouTube will take down and eventually ban users completely for doing:
1) Dancing to a pop song not in the public domain
2) Remixing videos to existing songs not in the public domain
3) Using TV news clips to make a political statement
4) Kids singing Hannah Montana songs at a birthday party
5) Video-collages of Hollywood movies. (like every time they say “fuck” in Pulp Fiction)
The really sad part is that the vast majority of these kinds of videos are completely fair-use but there is no way to argue that with YouTube. It is also incredibly short-sighted of rights-holders not to understand the intrinsic value of being used and exposed via these kinds of videos. It is hard to imagine how Warner Music loses money when a teenager lipsyncs to the latest top-ten single.
The end-result will be that people who want to create these types of videos are going to find a new host. And a smart host could make a good amount of cash providing a legal safe-haven.
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August 3, 2009 9:01 am | 
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