[HN Gopher] YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 19...
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YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording
Author : baoyu
Score : 326 points
Date : 2021-09-13 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.improbable.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.improbable.com)
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| This mentions something that has always irked me, YouTube trying
| to be informative about who the music is licensed by. For one,
| it's completely useless on classical piano music because the
| Content ID algo finds similarity in a dozen different recordings.
| But even when there is one canonical recording, such as Rick
| Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, I'm informed that the music is
| licensed by:
|
| (on behalf of Sony BMG Music UK); UMPI, Kobalt Music Publishing,
| LatinAutor, Warner Chappell, BMI - Broadcast Music Inc., UNIAO
| BRASILEIRA DE EDITORAS DE MUSICA - UBEM, LatinAutor - UMPG, SOLAR
| Music Rights Management, AMRA, UMPG Publishing, CMRRA,
| LatinAutorPerf, LatinAutor - Warner Chappell, and 15 Music Rights
| Societies
|
| What is happening here? Does YouTube have legal arrangements with
| all of these bodies to make sure they get their penny per
| kiloview?
| djthorpe wrote:
| In my vague understanding, there are five parties:
|
| 1. The viewer or listener of the music, you might or might not
| get the right to listen to music in your "territory" or
| country, and often the music is monetised which means you get
| ads, or a portion of your subscription revenue is apportioned
| to the "view";
|
| 2. YouTube itself, whom decides on the viewers' right to listen
| to the music based on their complicated set of algorithms or
| "claims" on the music track. They also have a complicated
| database of rights which includes not only rights holder
| relationships, but the much of the music catalogue itself;
|
| 3. A publisher of a piece of music. This copyright is for the
| composition (sheet music), and often YouTube may be able to
| work out the publishing right in a territory based on the
| melody match. So when you say "Content ID algo finds similarity
| in a dozen different recordings" this is in fact by design.
| Their melody matching system is in play as often publishers get
| paid on the composition;
|
| 4. The performance copyright of the music. This copyright is
| for the actual performance - whether it be live, on CD or MP3.
| Usually this is the record company, they will often upload or
| provide the music to YouTube and expect to get paid for
| performances. Content ID will then "claim" any third party
| copies of the performance and monetize them too (or sometimes
| block, depending on the territory of viewer, and what the
| publisher and performance owner wants to do for that
| territory);
|
| 5. Most countries also have music societies who collect on
| behalf of artists. So GEMA in Germany or PRS in the UK will
| collect money per view and by some complicated reporting will
| pay artists directly some small pittance every year if they are
| lucky. Some countries don't have societies which means YouTube
| doesn't need to pay. Where YouTube does not have an agreement
| in a country (less and less now) the music will not be
| monetized or may be blocked.
|
| There are huge data reports which move around to keep this
| system going - and the collecting societies themselves work
| together to ensure that the money for a view of "Never Gonna
| Give Up" is passed to PRS who then occasionally will pay Rick
| Astley. It's a nice earner for a minority of musicians to have
| this income when all the cover versions and MP3 sales have
| dried up.
|
| YouTube does have a lot of agreements with all the other
| parties and it's a constant job to renew and renegotiate these
| contracts constantly. You can see that in the rights notice you
| mention, this includes all the territories in which there are
| rights established: it's mind-boggling. No-one wants to lose
| control of this system and I imagine that makes it brittle and
| very difficult to disrupt...it's lawyers all the way down.
|
| I hope that is not all too misleading!
| hermitdev wrote:
| > What is happening here?
|
| Music (and likely other media) is typically licensed for
| distribution regionally or nationally. What you're seeing here
| is probably the (unexhaustive) laundry list of different rights
| holders for various international markets.
|
| Remember region locking for DVDs? That wasn't (just) due to
| NSTC vs PAL.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's really a pity there's no way for people to sue Youtube for
| abuse of the commons. Many economists like to invoke the
| tragedy of the commons' as a justification for property rights
| (real, maritime, or intellectual) but they tend to sidle around
| the fact that it's almost impossible for anyone to get legal
| standing to advocate on behalf of the commons.
| roughly wrote:
| Incidentally, "tragedy of the commons" is one of those things
| like "inventing money because barter is inefficient" that
| exists in the lore of economists but doesn't seem to exist in
| the real world, and most societies at most times in most
| places in history seem to have done just fine managing "the
| commons" as a shared resource through social compact and peer
| pressure.
| mucholove wrote:
| As you point out--there are also fantastic administrations
| of shared resources.
|
| For example, many fisheries in the USA have recovered
| tremendously through smart limits. The Atlantic cod fishery
| is often cited. I personally have experienced the Pacific
| North West salmon fishery and can confirm that the fishing
| gets better up there every year while the Dominican fishery
| gets worse. The DR fishery has experienced the tragedy of
| the commons.
|
| The DR also experienced fantastic forest preservation in
| the 1970s. This was after all the old growth was destroyed.
| There was a success of the commons following a tremendous
| tragedy. Still, in the last few years these old laws have
| been disrespected and so the forests have been decimated to
| make way for Haas avocado plants. Do not buy Dominican Haas
| avocado.
|
| The tragedy of the commons is very real. Learn more about
| the success and failure of different shared resources
| through Elinor Ostrom's work.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The Atlantic cod fishery is an example of massive
| failure. Any perception of apparent recovery has to limit
| its scope to the very recent past.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > and most societies at most times in most places in
| history seem to have done just fine managing "the commons"
| as a shared resource through social compact and peer
| pressure.
|
| What? Clean water, clean air, deforestation, overfishing,
| noise pollution. There are infinite externalities that have
| been shifted onto the commons that social compact and peer
| pressure haven't (and arguably won't) solve.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Because one side clearly isn't a peer. If, say, Microsoft
| decided to go full renewable, then there'd be pressure
| for everyone else to. If it's a bunch of unimportant
| people against a corporation with the money to obtain its
| rights, well!
| nanis wrote:
| > most societies at most times in most places in history
| seem to have done just fine managing "the commons"
|
| You mean through exclusionary rules, investing in
| monitoring and punishment etc all of which divert resources
| from the productive activity solely by the existence of the
| incentive to overuse the "commons" or others' goodwill.
|
| True, while the subgame unique subgame perfect equilibrium
| of most models is full free-riding, most lab experiments
| show less than full free-riding. That does not mean the
| incentives are not there.
|
| Why are dorm bathrooms not as clean as bathrooms in your
| house?
|
| > inventing money because barter is inefficient
|
| That's a silly statement: No one decided to invent money in
| a similar process of invention like the lightbulb. Instead,
| coins, tokens, and other recognized mediums of exchange
| dominated over barter because barter is inconvenient and
| inefficient.
|
| Even animals can learn to use a medium of exchange[1].
|
| [1]:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090608095
| 044.h...
| marcusverus wrote:
| > Incidentally, "tragedy of the commons" is one of those
| things like "inventing money because barter is inefficient"
| that exists in the lore of economists but doesn't seem to
| exist in the real world.
|
| Could you elaborate on how "'inventing money because barter
| is inefficient' doesn't seem to exist in the real world"?
| The idea that barter's inefficiency drives demand for money
| seems to me to be self-evidently true, so I'd be interested
| to hear a different perspective.
| tomcam wrote:
| How about rampant overfishing in the world seas right now?
| megablast wrote:
| Wow. You got your two main point completely wrong.
| jchw wrote:
| The blame for YouTube's copyright system is largely not
| YouTube, lest we forget the parties that actually benefit
| from it.
|
| Sadly, it seems like it's going to be the norm now. I recall
| hearing the EU wants to legally mandate the mechanism of
| Content ID, just another nail in the coffin for the open web
| really.
| sc11 wrote:
| Thankfully said EU law includes a part that it's forbidden
| to block content for copyright reasons if the copyright
| claim is invalid. It includes ways for NGOs and users to go
| after companies that overblock. How this will actually work
| in practice is unclear since it's obviously an impossible
| requirement but some NGOs like the German GFF are already
| collecting cases and are looking to take legal action (see
| e.g. https://freiheitsrechte.org/aufruf-illegale-
| sperrungen/ (in German))
| anigbrowl wrote:
| YouTube isn't a scrappy little startup with no resources
| left over after keeping the servers up and running 24-7.
| They absolutely have the talent, capital, and legal
| resources to innovate in this area and to assess things
| like public domain claims.
|
| The concept of public domain resources is not a difficult
| one, you don't need special legal training or advanced math
| to understand the idea that copyright expires and that
| works whose copyright has expired are free to all. _There
| is no mechanism to even assert public domain status on
| Youtube._
|
| You have to wait and offer it as a defense if subjected to
| a copyright infringement claim, and the copyright
| infringement claim is presumed to be valid and the claimant
| is the first judge of the public domain assertion.
|
| Youtube didn't invent the system, but they are far from
| being helpless victims as you imply.
| jchw wrote:
| I don't think it can be made clearer: YouTube fought the
| battle and lost. This is the compromise. Sure, they
| aren't a scrappy little startup. Can anyone please
| propose what they're supposed to do after losing the
| lawsuit?
| Operyl wrote:
| From what I understand, when multiple parties are claiming a
| video nobody gets the money. I can't remember what popular
| YouTuber discovered this, but he basically "weaponized" it
| because he was tired of them going after his ad revenues even
| when he was within fair use, so he just started putting as much
| conflicting material as possible instead.
| quwert95 wrote:
| You're correct. The Youtuber is James Stephanie Sterling. She
| called it the "Youtube Deadlock" mechanic. Though the trick
| seems to be less successful now.
| Operyl wrote:
| That's them! I could remember the details just not the
| name, they rely primarily on Patreon supporters for their
| revenue.
|
| EDIT: changed pronouns, been a while since I last looked
| into this creator.
| maweki wrote:
| She goes by "her" now.
|
| Edit: Yep, they/them. Should've looked it up.
| astura wrote:
| If you're going to correct someone, at least get it right
| - they prefer they/them pronouns.
|
| https://twitter.com/JimSterling
|
| >They/Them. Pan & Trans Gendertrash in Non-Binary Finery.
| Indie wrestling supervillain. Polyantagonist. Hated by
| Gamers(tm)
| PixelOfDeath wrote:
| I remember somebody who always claims his own videos with a
| secondary account. So if nobody else claims it, he still gets
| the money. And otherwise nobody does.
|
| Well except youtube keeps it in all this cases. Sad sad
| google now has to keep all the money for them self in a
| system they designed. What a unlucky coincident. Nothing they
| could do against that.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Here's what triggered this: The ceremony includes bits of a
| recording (of tenor John McCormack singing "Funiculi, Funicula")
| made in the year 1914. The Corporate Takedown
|
| > YouTube's takedown algorithm claims that the following
| corporations all own the copyright to that audio recording that
| was MADE IN THE YEAR 1914: "SME, INgrooves (on behalf of
| Emerald); Wise Music Group, BMG Rights Management (US), LLC, UMPG
| Publishing, PEDL, Kobalt Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, Sony
| ATV Publishing, and 1 Music Rights Societies"
|
| So what's going on here? Did some record company reissue the song
| later on CD, so YouTube is treating it like it was released at a
| later date than it was?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_St...:
|
| > All works first published or released before January 1, 1926,
| have lost their copyright protection, effective January 1, 2021.
|
| Google probably should compile a list of public domain recordings
| to act as a blacklist for YouTube copyright claims. Maybe that
| should even be legal a requirement for such automatic enforcement
| systems. If they partner with some library or national archive,
| such a project could help with media preservation efforts.
| type0 wrote:
| > Google probably should compile a list of public domain
| recordings to act as a blacklist for YouTube copyright claims.
|
| Should or would. Why would they be interested in that, the
| current situation brings them money and that's all they seem to
| care about.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > All works first published or released before January 1, 1926,
| have lost their copyright protection, effective January 1,
| 2021.
|
| That's not the entire story. Sound recordings are a separate
| category, and pre-1923 sound recordings have a special clause
| that means they don't enter public domain until 2022.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1401
| gundmc wrote:
| So this is WAI per current copyright laws?
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| In the case of the Happy Birthday song, falsely claiming rights
| over public domain content was expensive for the putative rights-
| holders.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-warner-music-lawsuit-
| sett...
| crazypyro wrote:
| Doesn't seem that expensive when the article also mentions they
| were making $2 million per year in royalties.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It says they took in over $2 million a year, so the false claim
| still likely made them millions over the decades.
| [deleted]
| hulitu wrote:
| Mivkry Mouse strikes again.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| History is inconvenient.
| verdverm wrote:
| I only learn through hands on experience
| thombat wrote:
| Since the Ig Nobel awards have a flexible set of categories,
| YouTube might now be a shoo-in for the 2022 prize for Legal
| Fiction.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Maybe their own whole category.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The problem isn't that this video was quickly taken down by an
| algorithm, but that it cannot be restored by the same. Susan
| Wojcicki is the CEO of YouTube. We should hear from her why
| YouTube's systemic takedown problem can not be rectified.
| rogers18445 wrote:
| What incentive does she or anyone at youtube have to improve
| the situation? Creators aren't going to go anywhere else. And
| if you are someone who pushes through the changes internally no
| one who is in any position to benefit you will thank you and if
| it causes any legal problems you are going to be blamed.
| randombits0 wrote:
| She let's you use her service as she sees fit. Best you can
| do is embarrass her, which is in the works.
| jandrese wrote:
| The downside of not having an automated system to restore
| takedowns: people being angry on twitter.
|
| Downside of having an automated restoration system that puts
| an actually offending piece of content back up: Multi-billion
| dollar lawsuits from the media cartels.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > We should hear from her why YouTube's systemic takedown
| problem can not be rectified.
|
| We should pass legislation that forces them to rectify it, at
| the expense of hiring actual humans if they have to.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Until copyright length is something more sensible, there's
| really very little YouTube can do to rectify the situation.
|
| When they're looking at policing copyright on basically all
| modern works versus just the last 20 years worth of works,
| there has to be some automation involved. When you involve
| automation, you're inevitably going to see dehumanizing
| situations like this. They can't just decide to not uphold
| the law though.
| t-3 wrote:
| > They can't just decide to not uphold the law though.
|
| Why is that? Google is not, nor should they be, a law
| enforcement agency. There are multiple law enforcement
| agencies and interested individuals/organizations (the
| copyright holders) who should bear the responsibility for
| enforcing copyright. Putting the onus on the "public
| square" to police speech is the worst solution for all
| parties with the possible exception of copyright trolls.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| There's a name for deliberately hosting a service that
| blatantly disregards copyright enforcement. It's called
| "contributory infringement", and the litigation of which
| will have existential amounts of potential damages.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| Source on this? I thought this was the whole point of US
| laws like DMCA. If you comply with all reasonable and
| lawful takedown requests, you are supposed to be safe.
|
| It particularly shouldn't require YOU as web host to try
| to ascertain the legal status of every 100-year old sound
| clip. That's not realistic, as Youtube's experience
| clearly seems to show. It does require you to respond
| when someone sends a signed document claiming it's
| theirs.
|
| I'm not a lawyer etc., would be happy to have this
| explained if I'm wrong.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| A healthy dose of legal realism here: doing something
| that is technically within the scope of the law as
| written does not fully remove the risk and expense of
| getting sued over it. The process is that you can still
| get sued by Viacom for a billion dollars, spend a ton of
| money on lawyers and discovery over many years, and wind
| up making the entirely reasonable call of implementing
| ContentID or the like and settling. You do more than
| you're _legally_ obligated to do on behalf of copyright
| owners, but whatever, the people uploading videos bear
| the brunt of this cost.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The problem isn't that YouTube uses some automation, it's
| that they use the absolute minimum support staff they can
| get away with.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Think about the scale we're dealing with here - not just
| of the number of YT videos being put out per day but also
| the amount of copyrighted work to enforce. There's simply
| no way even an army of staff can accurately enforce
| anything but a small subset of what comes out.
|
| Instead of playing favorites, YT chose to use automation
| to its greatest potential and let the citizenry put
| pressure on lawmakers to reform the system. I think what
| they're doing is smart, although perhaps lawmakers are
| more resistant to reform than YT originally anticipated.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I'm not sure how content id is a system that encourages
| people to put pressure on lawmakers, when YouTube isn't
| legally required to have that system at all. Content ID
| is Youtube's attempt to keep copyright holders happy so
| they don't lobby for legislation.
| RyJones wrote:
| I have a video with a copyright claim by a third party. The
| music on the video is from the YouTube library they provide
| creators. You would think YouTube would recognize a library
| they own?
| type0 wrote:
| > You would think YouTube would recognize a library they own?
|
| Happens all the time, they don't give a shit, in fact I'm
| starting to suspect that some music creators do this on
| purpose.
| RyJones wrote:
| You're obviously right; the claim is by Syntax Creative, on
| behalf of Pro Piano Records. The content is 14 Bagatelles,
| Op. 6: Lento by Jerome Lowenthal.
|
| I made the video[0] public so people can see it, but I hate
| the idea that these creeps get to make money off of a scam
| on my part, so I usually mark them private.
|
| 0: https://youtu.be/a__9f4yh4qU
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I wonder too why there is no option to pre-file an assertion of
| fair use or public domain material and have it acknowledged as
| filed by YT. Some people put disclaimers in the opening frames
| of their video or in the description but there's no indication
| that YouTube acknowledges this in any way.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| When rightsholders give notice of alleged infringement,
| YouTube can't simply be like "well, they say it's fair use,
| so we're going to ignore this." If they did, they'd be
| knowingly contributing to copyright infringement and lose out
| on safe harbor provisions.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I didn't propose that, so I'm not sure what point you're
| making.
|
| I just said that YT should receive and acknowledge claims
| of fair use or public domain status. Then, if a copyright
| claim arises, video uploaders know that YT is already aware
| of the asserted status and will evaluate it alongside the
| copyright claim, instead of assuming the latter to be true
| by default.
| fsckboy wrote:
| speaking of take down notices...
|
| I don't know the full details, but as a point of interest, the Ig
| Nobel awards was a project at MIT, and after a dispute between
| the editor, Marc Abrahams, and MIT, he claimed to own the
| intellectual property rights and MIT dropped it and he moved it
| to Harvard where he is an alum.
|
| here from "The Tech"
| http://tech.mit.edu/V115/N48/ignobel.48n.html
|
| "Legal rift takes awards from MIT
|
| For the past four years, the Ig Nobel prizes were awarded at MIT,
| by the Journal of Irreproducible Results and its successor, the
| Annals of Improbable Research. However, a legal dispute that
| arose between the MIT Museum - the publisher of AIR - and its
| editor, Marc Abrahams, caused the ceremony to be moved from MIT
| to Harvard.
|
| Abrahams and the MIT Museum produced AIR for a year without a
| contract between them, but the museum wanted to create another
| organization to publish the magazine because handling the AIR
| required too much effort from the museum staff, said Warren A.
| Seamans, director of the MIT Museum.
|
| Last March, contract negotiations broke down, and Abrahams
| claimed sole control of AIR. To avoid a lawsuit, MIT abandoned
| the magazine and the Ig Nobel prizes."
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| A 1914 work causing copyright problems in 2021. That's over 100
| years. You gotta be kidding me.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| Here's to another hundred years of corporate rent-seeking!
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Perhaps his estate sold it to a cartoon mouse and it is never
| going to be public domain.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| In previous years, we'd look at stodgy bureaucratic systems like
| this and think "Just wait until Google and/or venture capital
| disrupts them!"
|
| But now it is Google and venture capital perpetuating the slow,
| banal, bureaucratic injustice.
|
| The good news is, there's no reason to believe that Google won't
| also be disrupted eventually. It's sort of happening already,
| with people voluntarily deciding to not use music in their
| videos, which makes YouTube less valuable as an asset, something
| Google brought upon themselves.
| pphysch wrote:
| Does Google actually _gain_ anything from enforcing IP, or is
| it they stand to _lose_ lots by getting persecuted by the
| powerful IP lobby (Disney, etc), which is the real driver of
| all this?
| ncmncm wrote:
| They pocket every penny they fail to spend on checking for
| spurious claims.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Presumably this will encourage the creator of the 1914 work to
| create new works.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah. He'll sell his records, make his money. After a while
| he'll have to create more if he wants to earn more.
|
| It totally won't enable over a hundred years of rent seeking
| for him, descendants who could inherit his property after he's
| dead and of course the monopolistic copyright giants.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| That's obviously facile. He's dead, and unable to make
| decisions anymore.
|
| I, on the other hand, am alive and would definitely have
| decided to become a world-renowned operatic singer, if only
| copyright wasn't so short that I couldn't pass on the rights
| to my artistic creations to my children's children's
| children's children's children's children's children. I could
| pass it on to my children's children's children's children's
| children's children, but I worry about their kids. Copyright
| isn't sufficiently long enough for that so I decided to
| produce no art at all instead, and become an engineer to
| produce trade secrets that can last indefinitely.
|
| We definitely need an extension to copyright to incentivize
| long-term planners like me to create more art.
|
| /s
| tankenmate wrote:
| I think the OP's post was made in the form of "100% de-
| hydrated desert dessicated sarcasm".
| [deleted]
| soperj wrote:
| I personally have been waiting for new John McCormack material
| for a long long time.
| [deleted]
| jkonline wrote:
| See, by siding with just McCormick, though, you're absolutely
| missing out on all the great Schmick content. They're Collab
| albums, produced much later and (of course) in John's heyday,
| are amazing. Spicy, even.
| exporectomy wrote:
| This argument that dead people's work shouldn't be protected
| because they can't be encouraged to make more is wrong, even
| where copyright gets extended afterwards. Predicting future
| value allows others to pay for it while they're alive, possibly
| by speculating on future enhanced copyright law.
|
| Corporations can persist beyond the life of any humans within
| them for a good reason. It enables longer term investment and
| decision making to achieve things that can't be done in a
| single lifespan. Why should human lifespan be some essential
| time limit on property rights?
|
| It also has the ethical problem that old or unhealthy people's
| work would be worth less than young healthy people's.
| pphysch wrote:
| > Corporations can persist beyond the life of any humans
| within them for a good reason. It enables longer term
| investment and decision making to achieve things that can't
| be done in a single lifespan.
|
| The median planning term for US corporations is far closer
| (even on a log scale) to one quarter than to one century.
| It's offensive to even suggest that any major US corporation
| is planning multiple human generations into the future,
| except, ironically, to be able to exploit their current IP
| holdings ad infinitum. Completely detached from reality, like
| most pro-IP arguments.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| There is as much validity to your argument as there is to the
| argument that copyright should terminate upon the death of
| the creator (or after a reasonable time) to enrich the public
| domain and allow others to freely build upon those public
| domain works to create new works of economic and cultural
| value.
|
| Neither scenario is testable. It ends up being a question of
| the kind of world you want to live in-- one where the estates
| of the dead lock up artifacts of culture and don't allow them
| to be used to create new works or one where new works based
| on older works can be more freely created.
|
| Have you seen "Wicked" (or read the novels upon which it is
| based, or listened to the soundtrack, or purchased branded
| merch)? Have you read "The Last Ringbearer"? One of those
| works exists commercially and as a broad cultural phenomenon
| because expiration of copyright allowed it to. The other
| won't see a commercial release until at least 2043 because
| the estate of a dead man says it can't.
|
| The success of Disney in "monetizing" and influencing culture
| with public domain stories makes me think there's significant
| validity in the argument of allowing old works to enter the
| public domain more quickly so they can be freely built-upon.
| It seems like both an economic and cultural good.
|
| "Wicked" has probably done a lot more business than the
| estate of L. Frank Baum was going to in the early 2000s using
| the "The Wizard of Oz" properties.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| It's also galling that this recording was made under a
| copyright regime that granted substantially shorter federal
| copyright terms and required renewal to achieve the maximum
| term. Creators, at that time, knew "the deal" and accepted it.
|
| The intellectual commons has been (and is), literally, subject
| to "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
| scenarios. That shouldn't have ever been acceptable. Since no
| "normie" has ever given a damn about copyright terms only those
| who were financially incented to care (read: holders of
| copyrights) got a say. They used their lobby to make the change
| happen.
| contravariant wrote:
| Presumably we should look at all the good (?) Disney is doing
| with the money they've earned to truly appreciate why long
| dead artists should keep their copyright.
| munk-a wrote:
| I know that music rights is a complicated subject with no really
| easy answers[1] but there's got to be a way to do it better than
| the current system where you need to chase after platforms to
| actually get them to unblock your misclassified videos.
|
| 1. Unless you believe artists should make money solely from
| performances and not from streamed music which I was sorta
| onboard with until streaming-music-as-a-service turned into a
| gigantic industry.
| smoldesu wrote:
| This is my least popular opinion, but NFTs should have been
| applied here. We desperately need a legally binding,
| decentralized and distributed way for us to attest ownership of
| digital products. Sure, sure, "blockchain bad" and "don't apply
| crypto to everything", but this genuinely seems to me like the
| most mutually beneficial way to proceed.
| rvense wrote:
| We could do something like that, probably. Or we could tell
| these bloodsucking copyright lawyers to get fucked and reform
| the whole damn thing so it makes some sort of sense and does
| something good for the world.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| What problem do NFTs really solve here? They just make sure
| that a ledger (in this case, of rights) is immutable but...is
| anyone worried that record companies are mutating the rights
| to begin with?
|
| It seems like what would _really_ help would be to make
| rights public and easily accessible. However, making the
| rights platform into an NFT platform specifically wouldn 't
| really help.
| peab wrote:
| How would it work?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > ownership of digital products
|
| There is no such thing. Data is just bits. Really big
| numbers. Asserting ownership over numbers is simply
| delusional. The second that number is published, it's already
| over.
|
| Non-fungible tokens do absolutely nothing to change those
| facts. They just let people delude themselves into believing
| they actually own stuff. The only thing they own is the
| token.
| knorker wrote:
| You're just talking nonsense. I don't think you thought
| this through at all.
|
| I own a house. In what way? The land registry says that I
| do. If it starts saying something else, then I don't. The
| police and courts will make it real.
|
| My wallet is only mine because that's what we agree.
|
| The brand Coca Cola is just information. But if you start
| selling your own under their brand you'll find out just how
| real intellectual property is.
|
| Everything is society is only real because we make it real.
| "Ownership" isn't any more or less real of tangible or
| intangible things.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| All of your examples are real things. They exist in the
| physical world. Naturally finite, tangible. It makes
| intuitive sense to most people.
|
| Data is the opposite of all that. Society is trying to
| retrofit all of that physical world intuition into the
| virtual world. It doesn't work. It sorta worked up to the
| mid 20th century because data was still tied to the
| physical world. Now that computers exist and are globally
| networked, there are absolutely no physical barriers
| holding us back.
|
| > The police and courts will make it real.
|
| Police, courts, entire industries worth trillions of
| dollars, entire countries have been trying to make it
| real for what, over 50 years? The US will put your
| country in a literal naughty list if it doesn't take
| measures against infringement. Yet it happens every day,
| all the time. People don't even realize they're
| infringing copyright when they download a picture and
| post it somewhere. It's just a natural thing to do.
|
| It's not working. Maybe it's time to understand that the
| world just isn't the same anymore. Times have changed.
| It's time to let go of these illusions of ownership and
| control.
| [deleted]
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| When you start talking about "legally binding" then the
| "decentralized" part doesn't apply anymore. You're relying on
| government enforcement for the "legally binding" part;
| whether the system is centralized or decentralized is a moot
| point.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The issue is that you'd have to figure out who has the right
| to create a NFT. The NFT solves none of the problems, rights
| attribution, and it creates a bunch of places for grifters
| and scam artists to make money doing nothing. It's worse than
| our current solution.
| D13Fd wrote:
| I'm at a loss as to how NFTs would help in this situation in
| any way.
| Igelau wrote:
| Throw buzzwords! See if they stick!
| Accujack wrote:
| You're trying to apply a technical solution to a legal and
| social problem.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > which I was sorta onboard with until streaming-music-as-a-
| service turned into a gigantic industry
|
| How did it becoming a huge money maker for people who already
| have way too much change your views?
| munk-a wrote:
| Assuming copyright was dissolved it wouldn't be a huge money
| maker for the recording industry (questionably legitimate
| money receivers) or the artists (definitely legit) it'd be a
| huge money maker for apple and spotify that'd harness all
| that uncopyrighted stuff to make money on.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| In this case BMG _might_ have a claim to ownership over the
| recording in question for the next 3 months... in the US.
|
| In the US, sound recordings used to be handled under state
| copyright law. That's a phrase which should give any lawyer
| younger than 60 an aneurysm, as there is no such thing today -
| sound recording rights were brought into federal law in the
| 1970s, and preemption[0][1] means that states can't extend
| copyright law at all anymore. However, the actual recordings
| weren't properly grandfathered into federal law until 2018 with
| the passage of the MMA[2], which includes concepts from the
| CLASSICS Act[3].
|
| Under the MMA, pre-federal sound recordings get a new copyright
| term on a sliding scale, with the lowest term length being 3
| years for recordings made before 1923. Since the MMA was passed
| in 2018, those new terms expire... this January.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_preemption
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/301
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Modernization_Act
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLASSICS_Act
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| So did this act assign copyrights for recordings that had
| already fallen into the public domain? That doesn't seem
| right. Or is this only for recordings that had existing
| copyrights?
| btilly wrote:
| It may not seem right, but it wouldn't be the first time.
|
| For example _It 's a Wonderful Life_ went into the public
| domain in 1974 when copyright registration was not renewed.
| After which it became popular on TV. But it went back under
| copyright when the USA signed the Berne Convention in 1989.
| And starting in 1993 Republic Pictures began collecting
| royalties from TV networks that showed it.
| mathgorges wrote:
| Oh wow. This is the first time I've heard of this being
| possible. Fascinating.
|
| I'm curious, how did re-copyrighting impact the legal
| status of (possibly hypothetical) works derived from
| _It's a Wonderful Life_ during its in the public domain?
| fortran77 wrote:
| What most likely happened is this old recording appeared
| within a more modern copyrighted recording--on a compilation
| CD, or even in the background of a movie soundtrack.
|
| Assuming there is no current legal rights holder for this
| recording, I firmly believe that companies that falsely
| assert their rights should be held criminally liable for
| theft.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| And here, we run into the other side of the problem with
| the automated takedown system as YouTube has it implemented
| currently: there's no human-in-the-loop confirmation step.
|
| So at present: owner tags some content as owned by them,
| content is fingerprinted, YouTube does similarity-matching,
| content that is similar gets flagged for takedown until the
| uploader intervenes. It's certainly not fair to hold the
| content owner accountable for false-positives any more than
| it's fair to hold the uploader.
|
| (Now, in cases where the uploader pushes the "This content
| is legit" button and the content owner responds with the
| "no it isn't" button, I'd be very much in favor of
| incentives changing so an error at that point on the part
| of the content owner gets them raked over the coals. But
| there's no real legal mechanism for that to happen right
| now. Remember, this entire process exists as an alternative
| to the content owner's legal option: to sue YouTube or to
| sue individual YouTube users. YouTube doesn't want that).
| Accujack wrote:
| The current system has as its main purpose the justification of
| Youtube the corporation showing rights holders that it is
| "doing something" about copyright violations. In that, it
| serves its purpose very well.
|
| The system is meant to flag the vast majority of uses of other
| people's videos but glosses over any questions about whether
| such use is considered "fair use" per local law or whether the
| presumed owner of the video actually cares or has granted
| permission for the use.
|
| It assumes anyone using a video that's not theirs is doing so
| in violation of copyright, and refuses to allow that video to
| be posted. It's automatic and often wrong, but Youtube don't
| care because it's keeping the parties that can have a
| significant effect on Youtube's business (and bottom line)
| happy - the large conglomerates, corporations, and industries
| that profit off of media world wide.
|
| They want any valuable media to be producing income for them
| forever, with Youtube and other online providers strong armed
| into policing their unfair system.
|
| Thus, the imbalances in the present copyright system
| (infinitely extending copyrights providing rent to
| corporations) is extended into Youtube's de facto monopoly on
| sharing user videos.
|
| Youtube's automated takedown system steps on ordinary content
| creators daily, but Youtube (Google) doesn't care, because
| individual content creators can't cause them as much trouble as
| corporations.
|
| So, it's working just fine if you keep that in mind.
|
| Youtube and Google are monopolies that need to be broken up.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Unless you believe artists should make money solely from
| performances
|
| That's the only business model that makes sense. Once you
| record a song, it's trivially copied and distributed. The
| musicians remain scarce: there's only one of them.
| kevincox wrote:
| So if I record a song in a studio I shouldn't be paid because
| it is easy to copy that recording?
|
| This is like saying I shouldn't be able to sell widgets at a
| profit to cover the cost of construction my production line
| or for the effort spent to create the design.
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > So if I record a song in a studio I shouldn't be paid
| because it is easy to copy that recording?
|
| Your work is valuable and you should be compensated for it.
| I just think that should somehow happen _before_ you create
| the valuable data, not after.
|
| Trying to sell copies of that data in a world where data is
| trivially copied and distributed worldwide just doesn't
| sound like a good idea to me. It was a good idea before
| computers and networks existed.
| city41 wrote:
| By that logic all software should be free too.
| yesenadam wrote:
| According to another comment on this page by the GP,
|
| >> ownership of digital products
|
| >There is no such thing. Data is just bits. Really big
| numbers. Asserting ownership over numbers is simply
| delusional.
|
| I'm a musician working on an album at home at the moment.
| It's a bit odd to hear I'm delusional, or worse, "simply
| delusional", for thinking that the music I'm making will be
| in some sense mine! Maybe I should go back to painting,
| where I'm making an object at least, and maybe not so
| delusional in the eyes of the GP, not just numbers? Not
| sure.
|
| p.s. I want to put "my" music on Bandcamp. Jazz and latin
| stuff mostly. The Australian music licensing org APRA/AMCOS
| informs me for 3 or more songs, I should pay them a flat
| fee of $300 per year to cover the licence fees, then more
| if I sell more than a few hundred. Seems like a lot, to put
| songs I performed online, but maybe I can just tell them
| no, that asserting ownership over numbers is simply
| delusional, there's this guy on Hacker News..
|
| Hmm come to think of it, money in a bank is just numbers..
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Most creators of "intellectual property", or their
| mentors, grew up in a world where physical scarcity in
| distribution created artificial scarcity of information.
| Earning a living under that system makes people ascribe
| morality and self-evident "correctness" to those business
| models.
|
| Scarcity of information is gone because information isn't
| tied to physical distribution anymore. Tomorrow's bits
| will be easier to copy than today's. Short of legislating
| away general purpose computers bits aren't ever going to
| get harder to copy. Staking your livelihood on a business
| model where bits get harder to copy is probably a bad
| business decision.
|
| Will this mean the end of some types of for-profit
| artistic expressions? Yeah-- probably. If those types of
| expression are valuable to humanity creators will figure
| out how to get people to pay for them.
|
| Will this be the end of all for-profit artistic
| expression? Not likely.
|
| As per-copy-based business models dry up "intellectual
| property" creators will be forced to move to new business
| models or find other jobs. After awhile (maybe a
| generation or two) the new business models will seem as
| self-evidently "right" as those that came before.
|
| The morality ascribed to old business models probably
| won't disappear until the people who grew up in earlier
| times die. (I am reminded of John Philip Sousa railing
| against sound recordings in a 1906 Congressional
| hearing). Hopefully the legal copyright regime will
| evolve as people coming of age under in a world of easy-
| to-copy bits take the reigns of power.
|
| Alternatively I suppose we could end up in a dystopian
| "Right to Read"[0] world, with general purpose computers
| heavily regulated and old business models enforced by
| jack-booted thugs.
|
| [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Why not reply to me directly?
|
| All intellectual digital work boils down to discovering a
| number. A file in a computer. The path to this discovery
| is valuable labor. The number itself is not.
|
| The only way you can own a number is to keep it to
| yourself. Like a private key in cryptography. Nobody can
| guess it. Nobody can discover it.
|
| As soon as you publish it, there's nothing you can do
| anymore. It can be copied, transferred, modified, stored,
| used... You're not in control anymore. This will happen
| regardless of any rights you're entitled to.
|
| It's the 21st century. People look up songs on YouTube.
| They upload it there if it's missing. There's no way to
| go back to the old record selling world.
|
| > Maybe I should go back to painting, where I'm making an
| object at least, and maybe not so delusional in the eyes
| of the GP, not just numbers?
|
| You're correct. Physical objects are naturally scarce and
| paintings in particular have properties that make them
| valuable beyond just the image projected. It's possible
| to make digital reproductions but those are generally
| worthless compared to the original work. As they should
| be.
| yesenadam wrote:
| I wasn't replying to you. You seem to think you have
| everything worked out. It's (just) your opinion; other
| people have other opinions, points of view. Claiming that
| people who don't share your opinion--which you are
| aggressively promoting here like it's objective truth--
| are simply deluded, doesn't come across as very nice! You
| are here to teach the Truth on this subject, not to
| listen or learn - to lecture, not discuss, it seems. Why
| would you, when you have it all worked out and others are
| just deluded.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I apologize. That reply was to a person who mentioned
| non-fungible tokens, a cryptocurrency thing I really
| don't like. It got me into an emotional state and I said
| something that in retrospect was excessive. For that I am
| sorry.
| Levitz wrote:
| What does "making sense" mean in this scenario? Many lines of
| work follow that pattern.
|
| Composers, designers, programmers, writers... What would be
| the equivalent for any of these? Working in real time?
| kace91 wrote:
| >Once you record a song, it's trivially copied and
| distributed.
|
| So are books. What do we do with writers?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Who knows? I don't have an answer for you. Maybe
| crowdfunding, patronage, selling physical copies which
| _are_ scarce.
|
| What I know is this copyright business is fundamentally
| incompatible with the digital age we're living in. It's
| trivial to copy. Selling copies makes no sense.
|
| To actually enforce copyright in the 21st century, there
| must be no software freedom. Only well-behaving software
| that refuses to copy will be allowed to run. I don't think
| anyone here on HN wants that.
| knorker wrote:
| > Without technology, copyright is unenforceable. It
| might as well not even exist. Piracy has proven that.
|
| Like I said, you're making no sense at all.
|
| With or without technology (you meant with, right? no
| that makes no sense either) copyright is clearly
| enforceable.
|
| We have over 300 years of enforcement on copyright, even
| when it's trivial to copy.
|
| Technology, or copying, wasn't invented this century, you
| know. "Piracy has proven that"... we have hundreds of
| years of easy reproduction pre-copyright too.
|
| > either we abolish copyright, or all computers will
| eventually be turned into consumer appliances and we'll
| need programming licenses to write code.
|
| "Either we make murder legal, or nobody may own a knife
| or other sharp object ever again".
|
| See how it's nonsense?
|
| (I can't reply deeper because HN limitations)
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| So copyright is enforceable because you can theoretically
| sue everyone? There aren't enough courts.
|
| > See how it's nonsense?
|
| It's not. Computers are increasingly non-free and DRM is
| a big reason. The copyright holders want guarantees that
| I can't run unathorized software against their data even
| though it's my machine.
|
| Combine this with worldwide governamental desire to
| regulate or ban encryption. It's an existential threat to
| the computing freedom we all enjoy today.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > ... we have hundreds of years of easy reproduction pre-
| copyright too.
|
| I'd argue the world is different now. We've only had
| general purpose computers and ubiquitous ultra-cheap
| networking for the last few decades. Infringing copying
| on any scale required significant financial investment in
| the past. I think it's also safe to say there was
| typically financial incentive behind most mass
| infringement in the past (i.e. "bootlegging").
|
| I'm not sure that's the case today. I'm guessing most
| infringement is today is casual-- created by the ease of
| copying brought on by everybody carrying around mobile
| computers with those ultra-cheap network connections.
|
| > > either we abolish copyright, or all computers will
| eventually be turned into consumer appliances and we'll
| need programming licenses to write code.
|
| > "Either we make murder legal, or nobody may own a knife
| or other sharp object ever again".
|
| I'm not aware of the "legalize murder to preserve
| freedom" lobby (though, admittedly, the gun lobby in the
| United States does kinda fit that bill-- but that's a
| separate issue). There most certainly is a "regulate
| general purpose computers" lobby (e.g. "circumvention
| devices" and the DMCA).
|
| > See how it's nonsense?
|
| Equating copyright law and murder is equally nonsense.
| knorker wrote:
| We kinda need an answer to that _before_ we abolish the
| police... err I mean intellectual property.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Do we? To me the choice is simple: either we abolish
| copyright, or all computers will eventually be turned
| into consumer appliances and we'll need programming
| licenses to write code.
|
| It's an easy choice for me. As it should be for anyone
| who browses _Hacker_ News. In a copyright world we won 't
| be able to hack anymore.
|
| So let the creators sort their business out. They'll find
| a way or go bankrupt. We must not keep inching ever
| closer to the dystopia where the government and
| monopolist corporations own our computers.
| knorker wrote:
| > So let the creators sort their business out. They'll
| find a way or go bankrup
|
| Absolutely no need to make it technically impossible, or
| even hard. They'll do just fine suing people who
| infringe, and/or get criminal conviction.
|
| As they have been doing.
|
| They'll be just fine, don't worry about copyright
| holders.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > They'll be just fine, don't worry about copyright
| holders.
|
| I'm not. I'm worried about the freedom to program general
| purpose computers and the freedom to create derivative
| works. It seems like copyright holders have been
| consistently using their lobby to make both harder.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Absolutely no need to make it technically impossible,
| or even hard.
|
| Then why do they keep doing it? Get them to stop, please.
| Make them stop adding DRM to everything. Make them get
| rid of DMCA anticircumvention laws. Just stop interfering
| with our computers.
| knorker wrote:
| > To actually enforce copyright in the 21st century,
| there must be no software freedom.
|
| It's also trivial to stab someone. Not all crimes can or
| should be prevented by technical means.
|
| In fact most cannot even in principle be prevented. Most
| of law depends on detection, not prevention.
| type0 wrote:
| > Most of law depends on detection, not prevention.
|
| That's where the "there must be no software freedom" is
| exactly what might be mandated. It's trivial to re-
| purpose Apple CSAM mechanism to do this "detection" and
| something that might actually happen in the future.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Without technology, copyright is unenforceable. It might
| as well not even exist. Piracy has proven that.
| knorker wrote:
| You should read up on the history of copyright.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I have. To infringe copyright at scale in the old world,
| you needed industrial hardware like printing presses.
| Centralized operations of significant size. Easy target
| for litigation.
|
| Now nearly everyone on this planet has a pocket computer
| capable of creating and transmitting unlimited numbers of
| any piece of data at practically zero cost. People don't
| even realize they're doing it, it's so natural. They
| create truckloads of derivative works of copyrighted
| material every single day in the form of memes.
| nomaxx117 wrote:
| Ingroove is known to be a fraudulent troll. They have been doing
| this to massive amount of creators, in many cases asserting
| rights to music they do not own the rights to.
| zuminator wrote:
| If we can call copyright infringement theft, then improperly
| asserting rights to media one has no rights to ought to be
| considered theft against the Commons or the valid rightsholder,
| and a flagrant repeat violator should be subject to punitive
| damages. Charges of fraud and identity theft should also be on
| the table.
| nomaxx117 wrote:
| I would agree completely. There are documented instances of
| this entity being called out by the parties who actually own
| the rights to the music. I described them as fraudulent for a
| reason: what they are doing is fraud.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Google's automatic algorithm is very random. From this video we
| can see that not all of Decca has been flagged.. (but it's owned
| by UMG, so probably only a matter of time):
|
| https://youtu.be/mPqMsSgLCJ4?t=4169
| NKosmatos wrote:
| This phrase right here is what's wrong with all major
| sites/networks/apps/services >>> "We have so far been unable to
| find a human at YouTube who can fix that." Replace YouTube with
| Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google and it pretty much sums up the
| problem of moderation or human decision. This can be solved very
| easily by these big corporations, by using some of the millions
| they have as profit, by hiring more people who will take the
| results of the algorithms and have a second look at all appeals
| by using common sense :-)
| amelius wrote:
| > by hiring more people who will take the results of the
| algorithms and have a second look at all appeals by using
| common sense
|
| Who wants to work for these companies anymore?
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