Hollywood Hypocrites

Big info-graphic here...

I just want y'all to at least check out the beginning. I had no idea that Hollywood was essentially founded upon a mass act of *copyright infringement* and *piracy*!

YouTube Overshooting

If one skims through my older posts they'll find that many, if not most, of the YouTube clips I've artfully embedded into the context of my profundity are *broken*. These music videos, color TV show excerpts, movie trailers, etc. have been mostly been pulled due to *copyright claims* from Hollywood lawyer-thugs.

The censorship has been so bad recently that I'm not even sure I should be highlighting any more YouTube clips at all on my blog because I essentially have to assume they'll only be online for a short time. So, what's the point? I'm not writing for a contemporary audience. No, my posts are intended to be timeless, fodder for at least the next millennia!

Sure if you put up a Dave Matthews song or video and tagged it as such it could easily be caught. So just leave the title of the song out of the video's text description.

But that only worked for a little while. YouTube was soon able to find unannounced songs that enthusiasts had burned into their photo collages and whatnot. I myself had tried to put up clips of all my blog pics set to music some time back. However, eventually YouTube came and removed the *audio* from my uploaded content - yet again due to *copyright claims*.

I've been long wondering if there was an easy work-around - a way to get music on your clips that wouldn't alert Google's copyright-searching algorithms. And I'm sure there are still plenty of such strategies.

But they must keep getting harder and harder to implement. Check out what happened to me last week.

From my daughter's first dance recital, I tried to upload a video my wife took of the grand finale where all the classes, ages 3-17, piled onto the stage and danced to Miley Cyrus' smash hit Party In The USA.

But after tediously uploading the 108 MB file - wirelessly, with my cheap laptop and my parents' even cheaper internet connection(!) - I received instant notification that my uploaded content infringed on some obscure company's copyrights. In disbelief that the violation was accurate I Googled the specific company only to discover that they in fact held the rights to Party In The USA.

You see, my wife recorded the footage on my 6-year old Jurassic digital camera. So Miley Cyrus' song was only coming onto my .MPG file with a TON of noise - meaning...

How in the world has Google designed algorithms that can unearth specific music that's merely playing in the background? How can they find these haystack-needles given the zillions of clips out there?

AND, why would they want to?

Surely no judge would hold them responsible for essentially a song playing on a radio in the background. I wouldn't think anyway.

Since I already have two strikes against me for prior YouTube infractions, upon getting the notification that MY DAUGHTER'S dance recital was essentially copyrighted content....I pulled the clip in a nanosecond rather than risk YouTube cancelling my account altogether.

Can people even safely upload video of their wedding first dances now?

What next? Are they going to pull clips of girls kissing, great-grandmothers doing yoga, and boys farting if ESPN is visible on the color TV in the background?

See also my very first YouTube post, nearly four years old today:

The Future Of Video Media Has Arrived

Steal And Re-Sell...

The other day, in my SideWiki post, I mentioned that some site out there has copied my *entire* blog.

Here it is.

Right now, it appears they only have my *recent entries* up - my last 20 posts or something.

But I am sure the first time I saw it every post I ever wrote was reachable by moving that button on their site. I felt completely violated!

This is how that site self-describes:

Feedmil is a real-time feed search engine featuring spam-free, topic-focused search for a variety of live streams from blogs, microblogs, podcasts, as well as public and social media. Feedmil’s goal is to help people search feeds of their current interest in the most efficient and easiest possible way through the use of innovative technologies.

Feedmil improves the entire real-time feed search process. In the search interface, feedmil allows users to specify not only the query but also the popularity range of feeds, enabling them to serendipitously discover high quality but less popular feeds located in the long tail of feeds. On the search result page, feedmil gives a unique feed search experience that also emphasizes the freshness of content beyond just topical relevance.

Did y'all catch that?

They said *spam-free*.

In other words, if I put up ads on my site (or a *tip jar*) in an effort to get compensated for my labors, my readers could choose to weed them out via their site.

Now I'm a big boy and have been fully aware, since day one, that I could never completely control my content.

But still, I can't believe Google would allow such an egregious hijacking and *de-spamming* of THEIR content. Remember, Google owns Blogger.com.

After all, as THE search engine, Google can probably put a hurting on any upstart by diverting traffic, legal challenges, etc.

At the moment, FeedMil is probably harmless. It appears to be some *VC start-up* that's, well, just hoping to turn over some new leaf, and get bought out by the likes of Yahoo, AOL, or Google!

Copyrighted Morons

Last year Bank of America bought MBNA. At some corporate meeting of the two companies, two middle-aged balding dorks got up and performed U2's One, with rejiggered lyrics. Watch the video.



Now, if you aren't familiar with that song, you might not find this interesting in the least. Sorry. Thousands of people have viewed this clip online thus far. But today I read,

A video of two Bank of America employees singing a version of U2’s “One” to commemorate their company’s acquisition of MBNA recently made the rounds of the blogs, prompting amusement and some ridicule from online viewers.

But the intended comic effect of their performance and the retooled lyrics (“One spirit, we get to share it/Leading us all to higher standards”) seemed lost on lawyers on the lookout for copyright violations.

On Tuesday, a lawyer for the Universal Music Publishing Group, a catalog owner and administrator, posted the text of a cease-and-desist letter in the comments section of Stereogum.com, a Web site carrying the video. It contended that Bank of America had violated Universal’s copyright of the U2 song.

Universal said on Stereogum that it had sent the letter by fax and registered mail to Bank of America last Monday. On Friday, a bank spokeswoman, Betsy Weinberger, said the legal department had not yet received it.

The letter was signed by Raul R. Gonzalez, a lawyer for Universal Music. Reached at his office, Mr. Gonzalez said, “No comment” and hung up.

Online commentators accustomed to viral marketing said they suspected that the video was the latest corporate attempt to co-opt Internet video for promotional purposes. But Ms. Weinberger said it was “absolutely not” leaked by Bank of America as a marketing ploy.


These copyright lawyers are complete idiots. That type of parody is nothing that can't be found on every radio station in the country. I think on this issue, Universal got a little overzealous. Nonetheless, these intellectual property types simply don't get it.

Take for instance this video below which I posted on YouTube and linked to before.



I had some loser from Z100, an executive producer or something, email me threatening to sick his lawyers on me for posting "copyrighted material". Below is my response,

Let me get this straight. You want me to take down free, viral, international advertising for your show?

But I gain nothing from this clip, so I'd lose nothing by its removal.

I got the clip in an email originally. It's all over the net and will be FOREVER. You'll never be able to take it down everywhere. Sure you guys can put it up on YouTube and Revver and strike some sort or revenue sharing agreement but it will amount to pennies.

You guys should put your next phonetap up immediately and preempt the favor I did for you

Do you really want it down?



This was the response I got back,

What we don’t need is you trying to teach us about viral videos, promotion and the Internet. If we thought you were doing us a favor, we wouldn’t have written you the email. If we wanted it posted, we would have done so with proper detailed descriptions. There are legal issues here involving the people on our calls. It is no different that a recording artist not wanting their videos or their songs posted all over the web. Posting a Phone Tap does not promote our show as you think. We are in the business of having people listen to our show to hear our Phone Taps. Listening on You Tube does not help that and is for us to decide. Please enjoy the mp3 on your computer but respect our wishes and please take it down.

Thank you,
Z100

Note the guy didn't appreciate my patronizing attempt at Luddite edification.

Never one to concede the last word to anyone, I quickly wrote a response that I decided not to send.

"Legal issues"?

Once they air the original show, they have legal liability. It never goes away and the mere 6,000 views of my YouTube clip don't in any way increase their liability. So Z100, please shut up.

I have noticed that this "legal liability" excuse is a chronic Moron tactic. Often times, when a Moron does or says something stupid, they lurch for this lame ruse. For example, banning tag and dodgeball at government schools had to be done for "legal reasons". Give me a break.

Consider for a second the irony of a radio program getting mad at someone else for using their clips. All day long they steal audio clips and soundbites from other media sources. Everything they do is theoretically protected by the parody law.

But God forbid someone reproduces a clip from their show....

As I said in my email, Z100 will never be able to take that clip down from everywhere. I have already found a few more clips of it on YouTube. All were posted after mine so those posters may have just stolen my clip and rebranded it. There is an easy way to capture files straight from YouTube.

In the mother of all copyright ironies, YouTube is actually trying to silence a few websites that instruct on how exactly to do this.

If one googles any permutation of "youtube", "copyright infringement", "intellectual property", and "sued" you'll be absoluteley astounded at how many news stories and blog posts come up. Everyone is getting sued or at least being threatened with it: Google Video, MySpace, YouTube, etc.

In ten years young Captious bloggers will look back at present day and wonder how so many idiotic content producers thought that in the age of the internet, they could control their broadcasted and publicized products.

In an oblique way, this issue reminds me of the multiple listing wars of option exchanges.

Up until the late 1990s, stock options for public companies would only trade on one of the erstwhile four exchanges. The Amex floor had Intel. The Philly exchange had Dell. The P-Coast had Microsoft and Chicago had its proprietary listings. Slowly the monopoly broke. New issues like WorldCom and Netscape would debut on all four exchanges. Eventually all the exchanges declared war on each other and equity options for almost every stock could be found on all of the exchanges.

It was a grand time to be an options broker. They'd come in the pit and bid or offer mid-market, threatening to send the order "away". Specialists and traders were making tight, deep markets, "1000 up" in Moronically vain attempts to protect their business. All they did was piss away lots of money. Without edge, not only is there no reason to trade, it's quite hazardous to your wallet.

It was impossible to protect subsequent orders from ever seeking a better fill on another exchange. The gig was up.

Like the option pit traders of yore, today's copyright warriors are fighting a battle that's long since been over.

Defending "intellectual property" rights is as feckless as launching up fireworks in your backyard and trying to prevent your neighbors from enjoying them.



All you need to know about the intellectual bankruptcy of intellectual property is that Greg Mankiw supports it.

If someone wants to cut and paste my entire blog into a book and sell it, so be it and more power to them. I have been fully aware of that reality since the get-go.

But if I find knock-off C-Nut Bobbleheads for sale in Chinatown, color me a hypocrite, but I may have to call my lawyer.