The music and movie studios have been so quick to push censorship laws lately and they don't even realize those same laws might turn back against them later.
"That's the real question: the copyright act balances the copyright owners' rights and not stifling the creativity of the owners - it would stifle creativity to not be able to make a parody," Mr. Harkins said."
Such a shame you're not allowed to use someone else' songs on Youtube anymore for your own personalized videos. The same thing should apply here, too.
> Such a shame you're not allowed to use someone else' songs on Youtube anymore for your own personalized videos.
If you could freely use anyone's music on your YouTube videos, wouldn't the net effect be that all music would be available for free to anyone? People would just get new songs as they are released, slap then on videos of their cats, and make them available on YouTube, where anyone could easily grab them, strip off the video, and have the song.
Or, for those who don't want to deal with the command line, a Google for "how to download music from youtube" will turn up numerous friendly programs to accomplish the task. Amusingly, there are a ton of YouTube videos explaining the process. :-)
On the producing side, it would also be easy to automate. Ffmpeg can add audio to a video, and it can trim a video. You could easily have a long video of your cat, say 30 minutes, and write a shell script to take a directory of MP3 files, and for each find the length, pick a random section from your long cat video of the appropriate length, extract a section of that length, and add the audio. The script could then upload the video to YouTube, putting the artist and song name in the description, so that on the receiving side naming and basic tagging of the MP3 could be automated.
You seem hungry under that bridge, so I will feed you some billy goats...
If you could freely use anyone's music on your YouTube videos, wouldn't the net effect be that all music would be available for free to anyone? People would just get new songs as they are released (Chicken and egg here, where are they getting them from? They cannot yet get them from You Tube since we are waiting on the initial cat video) , slap then on videos of their cats (take an AVCHD video stream, load it into a video editor, take the chicken-n-egg Lady Gaga mp3, add it to the project, then render the video in h.264 or avi, or whatever) , and make them available on YouTube (upload the rendered video file to your YouTube account linked to your email address), where anyone could easily grab them, strip off the video, and have the song.
Now they have to download some You Tube video grabbing program, probably violating the ToS of You Tube, and risking some sort of malware from the h.264 downloader, then strip the song from the video, then manually name the audio file and add the attributes to the file also.
But probably where you said where anyone could easily caused some disagreement and hence the downvotes.
Why would it matter that the account is linked to your email address? We are discussing the consequences of it being fair use to include arbitrary music in your YouTube videos. If it were fair use, then it would not matter if the copyright holders knew who you were.
I realize you are just trolling, but could you at least try to troll consistently with the discussion?
IANL, but fair use would apply on your You Tube video. The problem is you'd have to have the bankroll to go to court against the music label. And you'd also want to be damn sure that your use of the song falls under parody or one of the other definitions of fair use.
Parody can be fair use. It isn't automatically fair use. There is a lot of misunderstanding of this on the net, largely due to the press doing their usual crappy job of reporting Supreme Court decisions when they covered the Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music case (the "Pretty Woman" case).
There is a lot of misunderstanding of this on the net, largely due to the press doing their usual crappy job of reporting Supreme Court decisions when they covered the Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music case (the "Pretty Woman" case).
And largely because people believe the law is either (a) whatever they think it should be or (b) whatever some other random jerk on the internet told 'em it was.
Yeah, but if the press didn't screw up it would be easier to combat that. There are two main errors the press makes repeatedly when reporting on the Supreme Court:
1. Not distinguishing between the Supreme Court taking a case and making a decision on the merits, and the Supreme Court not taking the case. There are only a few things the Supreme Court is required to hear. Most of their cases fall into categories that they are allowed to decide if they want to take them are not. There are many more cases vying for their attention than they can handle, so they tend to only take cases that raise important issues and that have been sufficiently explored in the lower courts.
When they do not take a case, it (1) does not set any precedent, and (2) does not indicate what they think of the merits.
Yet the press often reports these rejections as if the Supreme Court decided on the merits that the appealing party was wrong.
2. Not understanding the history of the case and what the Supreme Court's decision means in the context of that history. In Campbell, for instance, one the issue of whether the parody of Roy Orbison's song was fair use, the district court said that since it was parody it was automatically fair use and granted summary judgement for the defendant. The appeals court said the fact that it was commercial and copied the whole song meant it could not be fair use.
The Supreme Court basically said they were both wrong. Parody isn't automatically fair use, but being commercial and using all of the song doesn't automatically make it not fair use. The case was sent back down for the lower courts to analyze using the guidelines the Supreme Court set out. However, the parties settled, so we never got to see how the lower courts would apply those guidelines.
The double-edged sword has been helpful in educating judges.
The tactics of the MAFIAAs against P2P 'infringers' is also being used by attorneys of adult pornography content producers.
As the type of content needing protection against infringers changes to pr0n, we are seeing more support on the part of the judicial system in balancing the rights of the accused against the MAFIAAs and pr0n IP defenders.
Now that you mention it, fair-use as parody will probably be a valid defense.
Instead of just ignoring that; be nice about it or even answer his comment you have now polluted HN with a page of stupid discussion.
For the record I don't mind (nor do I think anybody else outside of a tiny but very trigger happy minority) people calling them MAFIAA -- it is shorter than the Recording and Movie Industry Association Of America, is arguably more accurate (RIAA isn't really producing that many vinyl records anymore, but they are suing grandmothers and there are plenty of companies who send out letters threating huge fines if they aren't settled for less than a lawyer cost) and honestly people should be free to express their opinion.
Do you also object to RIAA calling people who infringe copyright pirates? Because if not, you are enforcing a double standard.
The purpose of language is to communicate. Picking your own name is a luxury. If you pick something unpronounceable or unwieldy it's perfectly acceptable for someone else to brand you for the sake of communication.
MAFIAA is pronounceable, memorable, and descriptive. It's a good name.
You realize that it implies that everyone agrees with you? In fact, it's a rhetorical trick used to make everyone in the group aware of your/our feelings towards the RIAA.
I agree with the downvote. HN is a place for real discussion, and even though the RIAA wasn't the topic of discussion right now, as a community, let's not get into the habit of assuming the RIAA are a mafia - it will make it much harder to be objective on the issue.
My comments express my opinions, so why wouldn't that make everyone aware of my feelings toward the entities I discuss?
I was in no way trying to 'trick' anyone. I was expressing a personal observation.
Were you unable to comprehend my opinion of legal enforcement strategies with regard to specific IP content types because of the acronyms I used?
I have always assumed readers of HN are able to form their own opinions, including whether or not the collective behaviors of the MPAA and RIAA resemble that of organized crime, particularly with regard to extortion.
Community standards do not enforce themselves. You're seeing community standards enforced here.
(It should be pointed out that it is actually an attempt to do chopsueyar a favor; as it happens around here that sort of thing is generally likely to make their writing less persuasive, not more.)
"That's the real question: the copyright act balances the copyright owners' rights and not stifling the creativity of the owners - it would stifle creativity to not be able to make a parody," Mr. Harkins said."
Such a shame you're not allowed to use someone else' songs on Youtube anymore for your own personalized videos. The same thing should apply here, too.