Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

wikimediafoundation.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 321 posts

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#211

Post by oh_sigh »

Jerry2 wrote: post #37

I used to have a Youtube channel where I posted videos of me playing the piano. I played mostly Mozart, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff compositions. I had around 40 videos in total. Sometime around 2014, I started getting DMCA takedown notices from various companies claiming copyright. I was getting one or two per week and I contested them and things were ruled into my favor. But then it started getting harder and harder…

I wonder if you could do something like file a restraining order against the company to prevent them from communicating with you in the future.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#212

Post by mLuby »

beshrkayali wrote: post #144

> lawful free expression online What's the point of using the word "lawful" here? Free expression is free expression, conforming to a law or not is subject to the country and time. I think it somehow dilutes the absolute nature in the meaning of: free expression.

You're technically correct but in a meaningless way.

One is "free" to do basically anything they have the power to do, but nobody acts that way (they'd be jailed or dead) so when we say "free" we mean within reasonable bounds, which usually includes the law.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#213

Post by jandrese »

userbinator wrote: post #193
jandrese wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These guys send out hundreds of thousands or millions of takedown requests each year. This is why everything is automated, because it would take an army to vet all of the claims. Legally this make perfect sense to Google, as there are two options: 1. Take down everything requested. Creators get mad but they are a dime a dozen. 2. Don't take down everything because some of it isn't technically a violation. Get sued co…

One party in the dispute is rich and politically powerful, the other is not. ...and ironically, a lot of us are quite worried about the other party also becoming "rich and politically powerful" too (although they do seem to be getting there...)

Youtube artists? I have not seen PewDiePie for President bumper stickers quite yet.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#214

Post by ocharles »

Jerry2 wrote: post #37

I used to have a Youtube channel where I posted videos of me playing the piano. I played mostly Mozart, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff compositions. I had around 40 videos in total. Sometime around 2014, I started getting DMCA takedown notices from various companies claiming copyright. I was getting one or two per week and I contested them and things were ruled into my favor. But then it started getting harder and harder…

Wait what the hell - getting blocked on YouTube would stop you reading your GMail? Did I really read that correctly?

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#215

Post by cwkoss »

briandear wrote: post #168
YokoZar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you going to tell them they have no right to their own work anymore 20 years after they had one of their most successful releases? Are you claiming they wouldn't have made the music otherwise? It's hard to imagine such megastars deciding that the marginal effort of another hit album just wasn't worth making unless they could collect hypothetical revenue for more than 2 decades. Copyright law is to incentivize c…

It doesn’t matter if they created the work 20 years ago or not, it’s theirs. Can people go into your house 20 years after you build it and just say it’s their because they like the way it looks? Intellectual property is still property.

Intellectual property is not property in that way because you are not deprived of it when it is shared.

If you charged people $5 for a lifetime pass to hang out in and inspect your house, should they not be able to try to build their own version of your house 20 years later?

When you enter something into the culture, part of it leaves your control, and thats a good thing.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#216

Post by ConceptJunkie »

MereInterest wrote: post #190
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a human right to be a storyteller, to reimagine characters and themes, to expand settings and genres. To sit around the campfire and make new stories of King Arthur and Lancelot, new stories about Sherlock and Watson, new stories about Harry and Hermione. Although I disagree that this should be considered a human right, isn't this generally covered by fair use in the US anyways?

No, from my understand of current US copyright law (not a lawyer), this would be considered either a performance or a derivative work, depending on whether it is exactly reproduced. Neither of those are under fair use.

I thought there was nothing stopping you from creating derivatives of copyrighted works as long as you don't try to exploit them commercially.

Of course, there are plenty of companies that take down stuff that is not being done for profit. Good examples include Nintendo taking down the tools used to create Pokemon games, or Paramount killing the Star Trek fan shows (because they were better and more popular than anything Paramount could do).

The problem is that there's the letter of the law, the spirit of the law, and how rich and powerful entities can get the courts to interpret the law, and its possible, even common, for all three of those to be different things.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#217

Post by gorbachev »

lozenge wrote: post #80
dotancohen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who was sending these notices? Sounds like perjury to me.

It isn't perjury. In the DMCA, It is illegal for me to send copyright notices about you infringing a work I don't own, but it is not illegal for me to send a copyright notice about a work I do own - say a film - even if the page doesn't actually contain any of that film. Apart from classical music, bird noises and ambient noises are common cases of inaccurate YouTube takedowns.

These are not DMCA notices, but YouTube's/Google's own copyright cop they implemented to pacify the big media companies.

It's notorious for false positives and how impossible those false positives are to resolve.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#218

Post by ConceptJunkie »

thatcat wrote: post #89
graeme wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about business. Any business writing is copyright protected too. I've been on business for eight years, and it would be very weird it the stuff I wrote and still use on my site expires in 12 years. It potentially will still be just as valid in that time. I know the tech world changes fast but there are some niches where something written or recorded in 1998 is still valid today.

That's the point of copyright, so that the public eventually benefits from giving you protection for the term of the copyright. It's suppose to still be valid.

It's not a point of whether or not it's supposed to be valid, but whether or not the creator can maintain _exclusive_ ownership of the copyrighted material.

If someone wrote a math book 100 years ago, that math book will still be correct today, even if it's in the public domain.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#219

Post by ConceptJunkie »

hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #100
jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright should only have a term of life (with a minimum duration of 50 years in case the artist dies at 20-30) and that's all. Boy you are generous, if it was up to me copyrights would have a life of 10 years, no extensions/renewals. Ten years ought to be enough to squeeze a healthy chuck of profits out of your material. If after 10 years you can't/haven't come up with anything new, then you better find a new job…

I don't understand why HN seems to want everyone to be a wage slave. If I create original work, I want to profit off it for my life. Anything else is just punishing people who are creators rather than property owners.

I'm guessing you don't contribute to open source software then.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#220

Post by dweekly »

DuskStar wrote: post #182
cninja wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Takedown notices on Youtube are not handled under DCMA. DCMA has protections against false accusations.

More like "DMCA theoretically has protections against false accusations, but instances of people being held accountable are extremely rare." Knowingly making a false DMCA claim is perjury, and IMO it should be treated as such. Instead companies send out automated claims in the thousands and then come back with "but we didn't know it was wrong, it was the bot!" and get away with it.

Hi there. Plaintiff here from OPG v Diebold, the first successful case enforcing 512f against knowingly false DMCA takedowns where the defendant was found guilty and owed several hundred thousand dollars in damages. It can and does happen and there is court precedent. Contact EFF if you're on the receiving end of an obviously bad DMCA takedown.
Post reply on HN