"Few things…in the example video for this post, the British rapper mentions Fair Use and in the post Cory also mentions PRS which is also a UK rights collection agency. There is no such “right” as fair use in the UK…fair use is a US concept of law…a common misconception. "
An interesting example of why this sucks: I did a TV mashup of the “Love Boat” titles. Google’s bot thinks that the Jack Jones theme to the Love Boat is actually a match for some hip-hop music I’ve never heard of. My only options are to dispute the claim by the big record company or allow some third party whose music is clearly NOT in the video to slap ads on it. There is nowhere that I can see to say, “Your bot is totally wrong.” They proceed from the assumption that they are always infallible.
You may be misunderstanding my position, that’s my fault for not being clearer.
There’s a parallell structure being slowly built on the internet which as much as it can, mirrors the old distribuition channels in meatspace.
Yes, you can build your own site, but how do you get people to find you or click on you just to take a risk on an unheard of artist?, Youtube owns such a big part of the pie that musicians actually go to the trouble to create videos so they can compete for views on there.
Now this business model for the most part works, and it is a business model, but it is one in which independent artists have to tithe the big players. And it is one in which Youtube has decided to be neutral in a rigged game.
Because as was pointed out in the beginning of the post “Dan Bull earns a good living from his Youtube videos”. The system works, you just have to put up with the big boys randomly telling Youtube to give the money over to them instead of their creator.
Yes, your suggestion is valid, but it is orthogonal to my point about the (raw but historically precedented) deal Youtube has struck with people who they perceive as valuable to their business model, (Youtube gives money to Dan Bull for views, yes, they consider his videos valuable).
Hey no disagreement there, except that I’ll go further and say that its not just an afterthought but a deliberate part of their business plan, since its been for the most part inconsequential.
After all it seems to me that most big businesses today operate on the assumption that if they can get away with it, then it can be considered a sound business decision.
Wow, nice to have met someone who’s never bought anything through iTunes, never bought a video game console, a computer game, subscribed to netflicks, an ebook, a dvd, or any of the numerous other services that offer no other option. Unless you were trying to pull the “i choose to buy those” bs that has been debunked in so many arguments that i don’t even care to get into something so obvious, in which case may i offer the wooooooosssssshhhhhh sound.
I don’t think youtube considers RandomUploader’s videos valuable so much as they recognize that BigMedia’s property is valuable, and creating a system whereby BigMedia can monetize RandomUploader’s use of BigMedia’s IP is the best way to pretend to respect BigMedia’s IP by turning infringement into revenue. That’s not to say that there aren’t any RandomUploaders whose wholly-original contributions aren’t valuable to youtube, but that they’re the minority (and are unlikely to be flagged if they really are wholly original).
I’m also not sure what the precedent for a youtube-like platform is, as it’s pretty non-traditional to publish uncurated, unedited pieces by someone with whom you have no actual contact, for free. If youtube were a parallel structure to meatspace distribution, they would carefully screen for copyright infringement before publishing, additionally screen for quality, and only publish an infinitessimal percentage of what they currently publish. As a result, videos would likely be restricted to those who were able to make videos on something approaching a full-time basis, as the barriers to entry would be high.
Thanks for your sarcasm, but I really don’t buy most of those. Every book I own is made of paper. I’ve thought about netflix, but I understand that to be a rental, so DRM is to be expected. I do have a few dozen DVDs, so you can still enjoy me being wrong.
Oh, and I did buy Civilization V in a moment of weakness. Instantly regretted it.
I’m always good for sarcasm or humor, i don’t mean it personally, so i apologize if it came across too strongly, sometimes I get carried away in my comments, but am big enough to admit it and apologize. I too share your love of paper books, i’ve even been known to admire the binding and paper stock, lol.
The main point being that even someone who fits your profile of largely avoiding modern DRM laden media consumption has still had a number of purchases with DRM, probably more then you realize, it is virtually inescapable unless you don’t purchase any form of modern media. For anyone who purchases a lot of media it is unavoidable. These measures are not in place to protect the artist nor the consumer, and prevent fair use and endpoint ownership and often have negative unintended consequences. It is my opinion that they are not in our best interests, and that they serve the interests of the media corporations at the expense of the consumer and the artists, neither of which own anything anymore.
I wholeheartedly agree, and I’m not actually Amish. In fact, I’m probably running a legit copy of Windows, and I own (but don’t use) MS Office with DRM. But iTunes and Kindle and the like, I can do without.
In all honesty, how much “fair use” did you engage in before the digital era? And on the other hand, how often did you have to buy duplicate copies as you shifted from VHS to DVD to BluRay or whatever? Vinyl, 8-track, cassette, or CD? I mean, maybe you made mixtapes or copied VHS tapes (neither of which are fair use, I think), or simply time-shifted your TV shows on your VCR like you now do with your DVR (which suffers no degradation of quality).
DRM may make it difficult to fairly use some products, but digital technology is what has that fair use possible in the first place. That may not be a great moral argument, but in practical terms it is actually easier to fairly use things than ever before. It’s not like the pre-DRM era was the time of milk and honey when it came to actually making fair use of things.
Fair use encompasses a lot more then you are realizing.
DRM only benefits the media corporations at the expense of the
consumer and the artists, neither of which own anything anymore.
You are shortsightedly forgetting many many of the other aspects of Fair Use, transfer of ownership, lending, end point ownership. You used to OWN a copy of the music or a book or whatever, now you license the rights to temporarily consume it in a very limited fashion and timeframe and those rights can be revoked at any point. Maybe it would be a good idea to refresh yourself with the reasons Fair Use came about in the first place and the benefits that were commonly agreed upon as rights. Things like libraries can only exist because of Fair Use.
Also DRM is an artificial limitation put on top of digital media, and is not in inherent part of digital media. It hasn’t existed since the inception of digital media. You don’t need DRM to have the Digital Media. We aren’t in the DRM era, DRM is something superimposed on top of a percentage of modern media and probably shouldn’t be.
Who benefits from DRM except the media corporations?
Why you are arguing for DRM and against Fair Use?
Or are you simply arguing that things are easier to fairly use but we shouldn’t be allowed to?
Or are you simply driving trollies?
It is??? Only if you take DRM out of the equation which is what I’m advocating. Otherwise no, no it isn’t. That is the whole point!!!
The Torrent Freak article suggests that the problem is that labels are failing to apply Fair Use when determining infringement. I don’t know if this is the case or not, because I don’t know the original songs the labels are claiming were copied, nor do I know the song by the uploader that youtube pulled. What I do know is that Fair Use is an affirmative defense that is only invoked if there has been actual infringement, which means that someone claiming Fair Use has essentially conceded that their song is not wholly original and that they have copied, sampled, or otherwise used another work. If this isn’t what happened, and the uploaders work was 100% original, then it’s not a question of fair use at all but a question of mis-identifying song elements.
That’s the [First Sale doctrine][1], which is different than Fair Use. Library lending falls under First Sale, and not Fair Use. Perhaps you should freshen up on that?
[1]: First-sale doctrine - Wikipedia
I’m aware of all this. DRM-esque technologies have been used in the analogue era, from Macrovision to satellite scrambling to microdot patterns that appear in photocopies. Copy protection isn’t exclusive to digital, and digital obviously doesn’t need DRM.
What I am saying is that it’s ridiculous to pretend that there was a golden age of Fair Use. Maybe there was a time when you could theoretically make Fair Use without dealing with DRM, but the reality is that it was technologically difficult to do so: the difficulty of actually making and distributing fair use copies obviated the need for DRM-esque copy protection. People weren’t making epic mashups, lip-dubs, and whatever the heck else in 1985, and they certainly weren’t getting millions of views around the world. So basically we’ve had what was only a theoretical right taken away, and now have the ability to make Fair Use with ease after we easily defeat DRM that only dissuades the least dedicated users. Sure, it’s technically illegal to defeat this DRM, but it’s also technically illegal to jaywalk.
I rip DVDs, re-encode and compress, strip kindle DRM, torrent the shit out of things, and consume media much more cheaply than I did 15 years ago (though even then I had a region-free DVD player).* DRM is an extremely low barrier to those who actually want to make Fair Use of things—certainly a lower barrier than the technological hurdles of bygone times. Perhaps DRM makes things more difficult than 1-button copying from your standard commercial/bundled software, and I’m generally OK with that because less copying by your average consumer means prices should be lower and/or stuff will continue to get made.
*Of course I don’t actually do these things, except for media I already own, because that would be wrong. But, I mean, I could if I wanted to, right?
