(via Esther Hoorn) This is such a jewel that I felt like sharing. Click on this link with a video presentation from Larry Lessig entitled “What CC Was For?” When you try to go to the presentation, you are introduced to this screen:
No need to add anything really, sometimes copyright industries do all of the sarcastic commentary themselves.
ETA: Some interesting details about this blocking have emerged. It seems like the blocking is only taking place in Europe due to the lack of fair use.
While we’re in the middle of a Golden Age for the discussion of copyright and artificial intelligence, one topic that may not have received as much attention as it warrants is the interaction between open Read more…
Fables is a popular comic book series written by Bill Willingham that follows characters from fairy tales who have formed a clandestine community in New York. Willingham is the sole writer of the entire series, Read more…
People familiar with Creative Commons have been worried recently about a litigation in the United States regarding the non-commercial element in the licences, which had the potential to negatively affect the integrity of the licensing Read more…
4 Comments
Brett Glass · November 26, 2010 at 10:44 am
If YouTube took it down, it means that Lessig, who has received lots of money from Google to attempt to weaken copyright protections for artists, actually did violate someone's rights. Yet another example of a large corporation – Google – seeking to harm individuals for its own benefit. Not ironic at all, but par for the course.
Andres · November 26, 2010 at 10:55 am
I hope you are aware that the above statement is defamatory. Under normal circumstances I would remove it on those grounds, but it is such a preposterous statement that I will let it stay here as testament of the ad hominem arguments of some of the people who favour the large copyright industries.
Claude Almansi · July 11, 2011 at 12:06 am
The European lack of fair use explanation is interesting. However, why then is the version of the same “What CC Was For?” video not blocked in Europe? Maybe vimeo does not have geoblocking?
Moreover, the description of this vimeo version says: "An earlier version of what became the WIPO talk." And the version of Lessig's WIPO address is viewable in Europe, though it uses all the materials used in the “What CC Was For?” video. So why did not NBC also geoblock Lessig's WIPO address?
And then, though it is true that many European countries do not have a blanket copyright exception like the US fair use, most have a specific exception for parodies and imitations, which would cover the copyrighted material quoted by Lessig. In Switzerland, where I live, it is in art. 11 par. 3 of the CH copyright law : "3 L’utilisation d’oeuvres existantes pour la création de parodies ou d’imitations analogues est licite." ("3 The use of existing works for creating parodies or analogous imitations is legal". So why did NBC geoblock the Youtube version of “What CC Was For?” in Switzerland and other European countries that have a similar disposition in their copyright laws?
Could the geoblock be due to a slip of the mouse by the NBC person in charge of YouTube copyright affairs, who might have clicked the wrong radio button when replying to the YouTube automatic alert of "identical content"?
Anyway, this proves Lessig's argument for the need to fundamentally reword copyright legislation in our digital era. As he said in his comment of the YouTube copyright school in his "The Architecture of Access to Knowledge" at CERN last April: "OK. "Consult a qualified copyright attorney"? These are 15-year olds. You're trying to teach 15-year olds how to obey the law, and what you do is you give them this thing called fair use, and you read it so fast nobody can understand it.
You believe you've actually explained something sensible? This is crazy talk. Of course we train lawyers to understand it, and not think it's crazy talk, but non lawyers should recognize it's crazy talk. It's an absurd system here. And of course, a sensible system would say: "Then it should be plainly legal for Russell to make a remix, a non commercial consumer making a remix of content that he sees out there, even if it's not legal for YouTube to distribute it without paying some sort of royalty to copyright owners whose work has been remixed"."
(from the subtitled and transcribed version that streams the original – 37:38 – 38:26 )
Links 27/11/2010: GNU/Linux HPC at University of Warwick, Unigine Targets GNU/Linux, Wine 1.3.8 Released | Techrights · November 27, 2010 at 11:31 am
[…] Is this the most ironic YouTube blocking ever? This is such a jewel that I felt like sharing. Click on this link with a video presentation from Larry Lessig entitled “What CC Was For?” When you try to go to the presentation, you are introduced to this screen… […]