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Facebook’s Piracy Problem

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Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#161
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Takedowns suck. Content creators don't want that and people driving traffic to their page don't want that. The crucial thing about YouTube and ContentID is that you can leave the videos alone but choose to monetize (take all ad revenue) from a re-uploaded video instead of just showing a black box and a takedown notice. It works and it is seamless on YouTube but I don't know if Facebook has built anything similar. Mor…

"Takedowns suck." No, stealing (yes, stealing) people's work sucks. Unjustified takedown requests do suck (and what makes them suck so much is platforms' craven response to frivolous requests). But we're talking about real, willful infringement here. "Content creators don't want that" You probably shouldn't try to speak for all of us, because you are wrong.

I can't speak for everyone in a small comment but, here's the nuance I left out in the interest of brevity:

An overwhelming number of creators prefer to set their match policies for ContentID to monetize. Some have tiered track/monetize/block policies that are contextually dependent on match length, % match, and country of viewership. But the great majority of creators prefer to monetize. Your mileage may (and does) vary.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#162
I don't understand what Facebook is supposed to be guilty of...

Is Facebook supposed to somehow know the video was uploaded to YouTube before? That would require Facebook to have an index of all the content on YouTube (an unreasonable proposal).

The next best thing is to allow takedown requests which they do!

The same thing can be done by reposting on Vimeo or any of a million sites. There just is no technologically and legally sound method to detect this sort of behavior.

If you don't want your video to be reposted by someone else, post it yourself. That's not to say it's okay for pirating to happen but this isn't Facebook evil, it's people.

One might blame Facebook for prioritizing it's native videos over embedded YouTube content but their policy on that is very public and the user experience IS better.

Why is Facebook being demonized?

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#163

This is super interesting - it seems like facebook's more likely to get away with it too because the people being ripped off are smaller independent YouTube Channels. It seems like YouTube's main incentive to build out copyright infringement tools was all of the record labels that had songs being uploaded and re-uploaded on the platform. I can see YouTube getting really aggressive in fighting FB on this legally, beca…

I wish Google would start fighting dirty. Want to access Facebook mobile? Hope you have an iPhone, because Google pushed a mandatory update last night which banned Facebook from all Android devices. Want to access Facebook through Chrome? Sorry, it seems that site has been flagged as a malicious piracy hub; however, you might enjoy this 302 redirect to an automatically-generated clone of your Facebook profile hosted…

Are you sure this is the kind of thing you'd want to have happen? Really, really sure?

Because this kind of censorship and manipulation may be acceptable to you when it's Facebook that's targeted at the moment. But what would you do when this kind of action is taken against some other entity that you want to access?

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#164
post #14

Ironically, at the end of the tattoo video that was pirated, Destin Sandlin, the host, is seen wearing [a shirt]( http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Going-Science-T-Shirt-Scientists... ) that is a blatant rip off of an Randall Munroe's (XKCD) [shirt]( http://store-xkcd-com.myshopify.com/products/try-science ).

Names, titles and short phrases are not protected by copyright. http://copyright.gov/circs/circ34.pdf If you'd like to take that phrase and make a better T-shirt, it's perfectly legal for you to do so.

Looks like it may have been eligible for a trademark, though, right? (being eligible for and holding a trademark being different things, of course)

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#165

I don't understand what Facebook is supposed to be guilty of... Is Facebook supposed to somehow know the video was uploaded to YouTube before? That would require Facebook to have an index of all the content on YouTube (an unreasonable proposal). The next best thing is to allow takedown requests which they do! The same thing can be done by reposting on Vimeo or any of a million sites. There just is no technologically…

Because they make their takedown process incredibly longwinded and kafkaesque. Not only did Destin promptly file his claim, but many of his fans repeatedly contacted facebook and Bauer about it.

The fact that it took so long for either to even acknowledge the problem existed is evidence that facebook has little incentive to speed up the takedown process to a reasonable bureaucracy.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because here, in the post-industrial world, it's very hard to make a living from one-off works of craftsmanship. That didn't used to be the case, when that was the only way to get things made. It happens today, but the economics make it an unusual situation. The labor involved forces the per-unit prices to be stratospheric, vastly limiting the market. But we have an alternative: leverage digital technology's nigh-zer…

> If we just drop IP laws, that further enriches these corps at the cost of individual and/or small creators. That makes no sense to me whatsoever. A good question, but I'm not sure. Those large corporations produce a lot of IP; maybe the small guy will benefit more than the big guy. Remember we're all stealing from and building on each other's IP. Imagine if all the proprietary software was open source, from OS X to…

Abolishing copyright would be a good idea in my opinion, but it wouldn't make proprietary software open source.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#167

A radical idea: Maybe our model of intellectual property is wrong, or outdated. When IP was tied to a physical object, it made some sense to restrict and explicitly license each reproducer. Now we have incredible machines that can reproduce intellectual property almost infinitely, distribute it anywhere on Earth, and find it almost anywhere on Earth. Wow! Maybe we should embrace that innovation, and find a model that…

Intellectual property is existed literally to protect intellectual property.

Nobody cares about the IP of a rare gemstone because it's just plain old property.

IP was existed literally to protect the fact that it's very expensive to produce an original idea/work/poem/video/etc. but very cheap to reproduce it.

Reproduction getting cheaper only makes IP even more necessary.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#168

A radical idea: Maybe our model of intellectual property is wrong, or outdated. When IP was tied to a physical object, it made some sense to restrict and explicitly license each reproducer. Now we have incredible machines that can reproduce intellectual property almost infinitely, distribute it anywhere on Earth, and find it almost anywhere on Earth. Wow! Maybe we should embrace that innovation, and find a model that…

Here's another radical thought:

Steal intellectual property for one reason and one reason alone: Make as much money as possible.

That's what happened in this case.

Not very radical, really. "Criminal" seems more apt.

> good artists borrow, great artists steal

In what deranged interpretation of reality could the stealing pointed out in this article be considered art?

Please, do tell.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#169
Youtube became exactly because of pirated videos in its early days. Viacom and others fought for a long time to keep their videos off of youtube but eventually gave in. Now FB is doing the same thing.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wince when I see statements like these. The implication that artists should be unpaid is completely absurd. How about, YOU, quick name a television/book/movie you enjoyed , where every artist went unpaid. There is a reason Netflix PAID people to create content. There is a reason that today YouTube still pays people to make content for YouTube. Quality content comes from smart people who if not paid to make m…

That post is stating that the way out society functions around the concept of data is incorrect. You're right in that some works do require significant budgets to complete. Is there absolutely no other possible way that such works could get funded without an individual person buying only one individual copy of that work to post-hoc fund it in aggregate? "No! Nothing but this system could ever possibly work. It's poin…

>Is there absolutely no other possible way that such works could get funded without an individual person buying only one individual copy of that work to post-hoc fund it in aggregate?

That has very little to do with the matter described in the article - the "system" that exists today that the channel in the OP used doesn't require an individual person buying one copy - users can already watch the content for free on YouTube. The "system" that you are assuming "the mere existence of such systems are assumed impossible" already exists, its called YouTube (at least in one version).

What the poster was advocating is relinquishing IP, which is very different from "an individual person buying only one individual copy of that work". Consider that FOSS ecosystem is held together by licenses. Would it make sense if a movie exec came along and said "we are going to use his software, not give any credit, nor contribute changes because software developer's notion of IP is outdated?"

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