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

YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording

improbable.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 259 posts

Re: YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording

#81

Post by anigbrowl »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #73
anigbrowl wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording

#82

Post by type0 »

tablespoon wrote: post #40

> 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 Pub…

> 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.

Re: YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording

#83

Post by elliekelly »

roughly wrote: post #64
anigbrowl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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.

Re: YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording

#84

Post by mathgorges »

btilly wrote: post #59
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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?

Re: YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording

#85

Post by jimbob45 »

wongarsu wrote: post #66
jimbob45 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem isn't that YouTube uses some automation, it's that they use the absolute minimum support staff they can get away with.

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.

Re: YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording

#86

Post by nomaxx117 »

zuminator wrote: post #77
nomaxx117 wrote: post #51

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.

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.

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.

Re: YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording

#87

Post by sc11 »

jchw wrote: post #71
anigbrowl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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))

Re: YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording

#88

Post by knorker »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #50
torben-friis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Once you record a song, it's trivially copied and distributed. So are books. What do we do with writers?

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 a…

We kinda need an answer to that before we abolish the police... err I mean intellectual property.

Re: YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording

#89

Post by matheusmoreira »

yesenadam wrote: post #45
city41 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic all software should be free too.

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 ba…

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.

Re: YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording

#90

Post by EvanAnderson »

exporectomy wrote: post #75
EvanAnderson wrote: post #20

Presumably this will encourage the creator of the 1914 work to create new works.

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 d…

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.

Post reply on HN