Facebook’s Piracy Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#211

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 12:05 PM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #200

thegeomaster wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, I uploaded a music video of my relative, with filming, production and post funded completely by her, and with her retaining all the copyright. It was a couple of years before and I was the "guy who knows this computer stuff" so I did it for her. Fast forward to 2014, and I receive a claim that a company which acts on behalf of a certain nationwide TV station here has put a copyright claim on the vide…

Isn't it possible that they automatically send the claims, but manually go over the counter claims? Somebody read your e-mail, looked up the video in question, searched for a contract proving they had the copyright. Finding none, they determined either you were right, or someone else was, but it wasn't them either way, so might just as well leave it with you. And that's why it took a few days?

>Isn't it possible that they automatically send the claims, but manually go over the counter claims? //

That's entirely possible but the company making the claim that they owned copyright is committing a [serious IMO] fraud and should be punished severely for it. If copyright infringement is a such a crime as the corporate world tries to suggest then false claim on copyright is far worse. The company knows that they will get false positives but continues.

One reason it's worse than mere infringement is it's an attempt to deprive either the public domain or the original owner in order to make financial gains whilst mere infringement is usually just for use. It's much closer to theft than plain infringement as it seeks to deprive the owner (or public domain) of the enjoyment (i.e. use or licensing) of the work whilst mere infringement generally does not.

AFAIK such fraudulent claims to ownership are not treated at all harshly in IP law? This is a case where it should be considered criminal [rather than just as a tort] as generally it's the action of a larger organisation against a content creator - the state should protect its citizens particularly when there are such imbalances of power.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#212

Post by lmm » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 12:24 PM UTC

raquo wrote: post #197

hackuser wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Imagine if all the proprietary software was open source, from OS X to Office to SunOS to SAS to Mathematica to Photoshop to AutoCAD to Google's search algorithms Most of this wouldn't even exist if it had to be open-source from the start.

On the contrary, most of these things started as either university research projects or just someone playing around, and were only monetized later.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#213

Post by acomjean » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 12:25 PM UTC

azakai wrote: post #174

acomjean wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this: We let people who do the creating decide if the want to give what they created away for free, or try to make some financial gain from it as permitted by our society's IP protecting statutes?

Well, that's legally where we are right now. But we are living in times where IP laws are facing technological problems. For example, no one can copyright a joke and expect to make a fortune off of it, because anyone can hear a joke and repeat it their friends. The joke might reach millions of people, but no one can profit from it. It's unenforceable to limit a joke's distribution. And no one expects to, nor to make…

IP protection laws were a reaction to the invention of cheap printable works if I remember correctly. The idea is to encourage creation in a world where a copy costs nothing to make.

Youtube clip sharing/embedding is what Youtube is designed to do. You can turn it off on clips you upload. I think the problem here is duplication and passing off someones work as your own for clicks amd/or profit. Corporations do a lot of "clearing" clips that appear in documentaries so owners are compensated and not to be sued.

You are right, Individuals now empowered with their computers have their own duplication and distribution system and love free (who doesn't love free). Thus Napster. DRM makes purchasing less appealing than pirating, gone from music now, maybe someday from video.

Attempts to make individuals responsible for "sharing" was a PR disaster with fines and laws set in the pre-computer days. Even when the media companies won huge settlements from individuals they lost.

This will get more interesting when those 3d printers get better and cheaper and people start trading design files. I'm waiting for a R2D2 design to be shared...

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#214

Post by lmm » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 12:26 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #187

saidajigumi wrote: post #106

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…

> 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 Yes it did; that was always the case. There's no requirement that art be produced by people who need the money.

When the only way to hear a symphony was to hire an orchestra to play it every time, it was easy for a musician to make a living playing symphonies. Now that you can record one playthrough once and reproduce it for free, it's much harder - supply goes up, so the price goes down.

Substitute playing music for your creative endeavour of choice.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#215

Post by lmm » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 12:32 PM UTC

guscost wrote: post #116

hackuser wrote: post #52

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…

OK, I'll bite. As someone who could reasonably be called a creative person, I've happily shared work for free or cheap. This is great as you say, but all indications are that I'd have to work worse hours, live rougher, and probably risk burning out several more times to have any chance of supporting myself full-time doing this. So I work a day job doing, well, rather less exciting enterprise work, and I make a comfor…

So is copyright helping your endeavours more or less than it's hurting them? E.g. is your cover technically copyright infringement? Would it be easier to sell this kind of thing in a world without copyright?

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#216

Post by Flimm » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 12:32 PM UTC

stephen_g wrote: post #153

Buge wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had someone steal one of my videos on youtube. I reported it for infringement and it was taken down in 30 minutes. I found that pretty impressive. A month ago one of my videos about a reported and fixed XSS vulnerability was taken down for violating some rules (it didn't say what rules exactly). I submitted an appeal and it was reinstated a few days later. Several years ago one of my videos that used some public do…

I don't understand the point of your comment - it's obvious and well known that YouTube's copyright protection procedures work in some cases. Describing a few of those situations doesn't really add anything to this thread of the conversation or do anything to invalidate the fact that in some specific ways it's incredibly stupidly broken..

Anecdotes invite more anecdotes, and contrasting ones are the most informative because they remind us of how little anecdotes are actually worth.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#217

Post by rjaco31 » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 12:55 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #214

thaumasiotes wrote: post #187

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 Yes it did; that was always the case. There's no requirement that art be produced by people who need the money.

When the only way to hear a symphony was to hire an orchestra to play it every time, it was easy for a musician to make a living playing symphonies. Now that you can record one playthrough once and reproduce it for free, it's much harder - supply goes up, so the price goes down. Substitute playing music for your creative endeavour of choice.

That's bullshit. Most of the greatest music compositors through History were broke as shit, even when being famous while being alive.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#218

Post by jokoon » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 1:39 PM UTC

Every company having its success is paid by having shitty practices. It is a standard. I even wonder if this is correlated with social darwinism, that, for some cultural reason, you must be bad so be successful.

Maybe the technologies of internet will improve up to the point there will be no multinational group able to reap the benefit (a more decentralized internet with bitcoin-like architectures), but I don't see it happening very soon. I can guess consumers could understand the complexity of technology only so much, I wonder if improving those technologies and making them also as much accessible is really possible.

Facebook is really the low hanging fruit of the web. They might have open sourced stuff, but they're really evil in the google sense of the word. I can already remember 2 examples: the click farms and internet.org, and I'm sure there are so many other examples.

All of this makes me really sad, because the internet is the #1 tech tool that is improving the lives of so many people, and there is already so much greed involved.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#219

Post by misnome » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 1:54 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #211

nothrabannosir wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it possible that they automatically send the claims, but manually go over the counter claims? Somebody read your e-mail, looked up the video in question, searched for a contract proving they had the copyright. Finding none, they determined either you were right, or someone else was, but it wasn't them either way, so might just as well leave it with you. And that's why it took a few days?

>Isn't it possible that they automatically send the claims, but manually go over the counter claims? // That's entirely possible but the company making the claim that they owned copyright is committing a [serious IMO] fraud and should be punished severely for it. If copyright infringement is a such a crime as the corporate world tries to suggest then false claim on copyright is far worse. The company knows that they…

The problem is that these youtube claims do not approach the law; the companies have private contracts with youtube that effectively let them have free reign; so it at no point goes anywhere near the DMCA system (not that it is any better at handling fraudulent claims)

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#220

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:09 PM UTC

misnome wrote: post #219

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't it possible that they automatically send the claims, but manually go over the counter claims? // That's entirely possible but the company making the claim that they owned copyright is committing a [serious IMO] fraud and should be punished severely for it. If copyright infringement is a such a crime as the corporate world tries to suggest then false claim on copyright is far worse. The company knows that they…

The problem is that these youtube claims do not approach the law; the companies have private contracts with youtube that effectively let them have free reign; so it at no point goes anywhere near the DMCA system (not that it is any better at handling fraudulent claims)

Indeed but if a company says to YouTube "this is our IP" and it's not and they don't have proof that it is then they have likely knowingly committed a fraud. The fact that the fraud is in a private arena is neither here-nor-there - it's still fraud and still impacts the public and/or actual IP rights holders.

If YouTube send you a DMCA takedown notification and those calling for the takedown can be easily confirmed to have acted falsely - eg you created the IP then the law _should_ enable you to successfully get punitive damages awarded. That would balance the current law and go someway to ensuring companies/people would only claim ownership of IPR they were sure they owned.

At the moment a company can just take a splatter-gun approach, claim everything is theirs, get paid. When you prove they made false claim all they get is less money paid to them - without punitive damages [and criminal proceedings] there is nothing to stop this sort of abuse.