Sony issues fraudulent takedown for Blender's open source movie

It’s available for download in various resolutions at http://www.sintel.org/download

Looks like the source materials it’s rendered from are there too, which could be illuminating if you’re trying to learn Blender.

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Yeah but if you only put something on youtube and they pull this, suddenly you’re totally cut off.  What I don’t get is why Vimeo or another competitor doesn’t contact big groups who get these bogus takedowns and say “Put your video on our site and we will market it as “Too hot for youtube”” or something.

What galls me though is people bitching about Sony, when they should be bitching about youtube.  It’s not even clear to me that this is a DMCA thing.  I think google just lets Sony take anything down, I doubt its even an official DMCA thing.

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Does anyone know if the Blender Foundation are big enough to get any action?

Big applause for Sony. I wouldn’t have seen this film if it hadn’t been for their fraudulent take-down notice.

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If YOU infringe on the Big Boys it’s a criminal act that strikes at the foundations of Civilization.
If they rat-fark you it’s “an honest mistake”

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You don’t understand who writes the laws or whose benefit they’re written for

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I wouldn’t say that this Sony’s fault per se, but rather that of Youtube’s overzealous content ID matching system. Unfortunately, the caustic nature of discourse on the web these days means that erroneous takedowns like this can really hurt the reputation of a company like this.

Speaking of open source movies, one recent Blender project that’s been chronically underexposed recently is Project Gooseberry. It is an ambitious project to get a movie made by studios all over the world, and it looks like the kind of odd film that you fine gentlemen here would be interested in. It would be nice if Boing Boing could do a write up on this; maybe then it would have enough exposure to get funded.

There is a website about this and a crowdfunding page. There’s also a trailer and an interview, but I don’t have the privileges to post more than two links at the moment.

Sorry to hijack the conversation like this, but I couldn’t think of a better way to inform you guys. You can go back to talking about Sintel and Sony if you want.

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Slander of title only applies to real property, as in land and things attached to the land.

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Incorrect, it also applies to copyright.

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You are correct, I was mistaken. Although it is an intentional tort, which would require intent on YouTube’s part. I am also seeing that they’re going to have a hard time proving damages.

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Because by and large, big groups don’t get these takedowns, and probably don’t care about the occasional takedown on one of their hundreds if not thousands of videos. And the small people… So they go over to Vimeo. So what?

And Vimeo isn’t going to actively pursue their business because it’s an either/or situation: Either you prioritize your big clients over the smaller ones – and get the occasional mis-identified takedown on the small people – or you prioritize your small clients over the big ones – and go broke due to the human resources required to manage ten thousand people with one video each rather than dealing with one client with ten thousand videos.

There’s a reason the takedown process is automated over at youtube. There are literally not enough lawyers alive to review each and every video being uploaded.

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If YouTube’s handling of “resolved” issues is as messed up as their handling of this, they may have damages because it makes future loss of access to YouTube more likely. If repeated spurious complaints can get your account yanked as I believe is the case, that’s a problem that may justify legal remedies.

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I think the Blender Foundation is a big group.

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No court awards for hypothetical damages. Proving damages would be a real sticking point since it’s hard to make a case that they lost anything substantive.

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When we’re talking about Sony Corp., whose entertainment arm alone grossed USD7.2Bn in 2010, the exact meaning of “big” must be adjusted.

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Oh that’s just perfect. Sony thought it was their content because they are using it in a demo, availing themselves of the benefits of completely open content. Just brain meltingly perfect.

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OK. Got another online video site that accepts as much content as YouTube [Vimeo doesn’t accept anything video-game related, for example] and delivers such broad exposure?

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I approve the message. Do you have a favorite alternative?

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Should have sued Sony for lost of revenue, and harassment.

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I’ve been desperately looking for an alternative but haven’t found one yet. I know plenty of people who would love to jump ship, so please, if you have a way out of this madhouse for people who want to make and share videos - let me know!

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