14 ms·
Google 'stole my videos', says film-maker Philip Bloom
- anthonybsd 8y agoWow. Philip Bloom is a pretty well known and revered figure, especially in indie film making scene. He has a huge following. If Google is smart they will settle this quickly.
- sqdbps 8y agoAre you his agent?
- wlesieutre 8y agoIANAL, but "you can use copyrighted stuff in internal videos" is only true in that you're not likely to get caught doing it. If it's really internal, the copyright owner has no way of knowing you did it. (note - parent comment was edited so this reply no longer has any context)
- keithpeter 8y agoI had never heard of the chap until today. Just watched a couple of youtubes, and yes, I'm very impressed (perhaps being on the BBC front page for a bit will boost the ratings).
- coldtea 8y agoNot exactly in the indie film making scene (he's no Cassavetes, or Gus Van Sant or whoever is the indie equivalent today). Bloom was an old British (BBC?) cameraman/video journalist, who came into web prominence with his "DSLR for video" posts and reviews. For a while he/his was one of the few goto persons/websites for this niche. So his audience has indie film-makers, but also ad people, wedding shooters, and generally people interested in DSLRs and digital video for news/ads/wedding/documentary/fiction in general. Himself does various ads/documentary/tv gigs (e.g. he worked on CNN's travel series). That said, content-wise he has jumped the shark the last 1-2 years.
- anthonybsd 8y agoRight you are sir. I haven't actually followed him since I got out of the DSLR filming (rigs, follow focus, all that jazz) nearly a decade (7?8 years?) ago. I just remember that on dvinfo and similar venues he was a force to be reckoned with along with Vincent Laforet. People would follow his travel schedule almost religiously.
- mankash666 8y agoWhat's to settle? Google's INTERNAL use of copyrighted material is within the legal bounds. For instance, you are free to add a copyrighted song to a family vacation slideshow only intended/accessible to your family offline. IF your son leaks the said video,are you to blame?
- sjg007 8y agoNope it's not.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jstanley 8y agoBy that logic, are you free to show copyrighted films you torrented to all your friends and family as long as the event is not open to the general public?
- rjbwork 8y agoLegally? No. In practice? Yes. The MPAA et. al don't seem to be prosecuting simple downloaders anymore.
- trothamel 8y agoNo, but you are allowed to show copyrighted films you bought to your family and friends as long as the event is not open to the general public. Doesn't this hinge around if Google legally acquired the film in the first place? Assuming they did that, wouldn't the only other violation be if it was distributed?
- Kerrick 8y agoThose blu-ray discs come with a license specifically calling out that you're allowed "home use" -- the videographer in the news story did not give Google a "home use" license.
- Kalium 8y ago
- patorjk 8y agoReminds me of a video I watched yesterday by some photographers that successfully sued a company for using one of their images on an iPhone case product. The company wound up having to pay 40k for their use of the photo [1], which seems a little mind boggling. The photographers were willing to settle for less, but the company kept making excuses and tried avoiding them. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUEbi4r8Pg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUEbi4r8Pg0 (video title says 60k because they're estimating what the other side paid for their lawyers)
- zokier 8y agoI think the "internal use" argument is interesting because of its bearing to question what rights do employees have to internal software that is based on copyleft software? Like for example should Google employees have right to redistribute their internal patched Linux (that I'm certain they have) code without repercussions (ie getting fired)? How would one even enforce such thing?
- wlesieutre 8y agoAs I understand it, Linux is GPLv2 and you're allowed to make private modifications without publishing the source code, just as long as you don't release your modified version anywhere public. Once you do that, you have to share the source code modifications. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePos... The "internal use" argument for not needing to license the video is more like "I don't need to buy a license of Windows as long as I only use this computer in the office and nobody tells Microsoft about it."
- nightcracker 8y agoTo clarify this, there is nothing in the GPL that forces you to distribute to anyone. E.g. you can make a highly modified GIMP for internal use in your company and keep it closed source and internal. The only condition is that IF you distribute your program, you must also distribute the source code.
- daemin 8y agoOr you must make the source code available to anyone that you distributed to if/when they ask for it.
- FigBug 8y agoEmployees have no rights to internally modified GPL software. The software has not been 'distributed' to the employee. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#InternalDistribution https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#InternalDistrib...
- LinuxBender 8y agoDoes fair use [0] apply to this at all? [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
- jkFeiwi 8y agono. use of his clips probably isnt transformative enough.
- schrijver 8y agoAnd the “Purpose and character of the use” is strictly commercial (even if internal to the company).
- ajross 8y agoIf it was just some rando on the Internet being accused of clipping someone's youtube for a yoga video or whatever, sure. But this is HN and the perp is Google, so they must burn.
- theyinwhy 8y agoUsing for yoga unlikely falls under fair use
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoPresumably because HN understands the difference between a private citizen and a huge multinational corporation.
- ajross 8y agoThere is no such distinction in Fair Use.
- Doctor_Fegg 8y agoFWIW, Philip Bloom appears to be British and we don’t have “fair use” per se. We have “fair dealing”, which is more limited.
- Crash0v3rid3 8y agoQuestion for the HN community. What if you take some copyrighted picture and make it a meme and put it on /r/AdviceAnimals, should the person submitting that post or Reddit be liable? Even if the intended purpose of posting that content was a joke/satire of some kind? I don't know what the right path forward here is. I do feel that if the intended purpose of using the copyright material was to make money then I do feel that legal action is required. I don't see that is the case here though.
- Kalium 8y agoUsing copyrighted material for commentary or satire, even to make money, even if the original was commercial, should be heavily protected.
- delta1 8y agoIsn't Weird Al Yankovic a great example of this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Weird_Al%22_Yankovic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Weird_Al%22_Yankovic
- dfxm12 8y agoNot exactly, because he always gets explicit permission from the original artists to parody a song. A great example would be someone who doesn't get such permission.
- Kalium 8y agoWeird Al always gets explicit permission from artists whose songs he releases parodies of on his albums. He's got an additional repertoire of songs he only performs but never records, some of which I believe he was denied permission for. It's still legal.
- dahart 8y ago> I do feel that if the intended purpose of using the copyright material was to make money then I do feel that legal action is required. I don't see that is the case here though. Keep in mind that not intending to make money doesn't make it any better or more legal. By using someone else's material you're preventing them from making money.
- cwkoss 8y agoIf Phillip Bloom uploaded these videos to Youtube, didn't he consent to a broad TOS on the usage of these videos for internal company purposes? I'd be surprised if he had a case, which may be why he's taking his grievance to the media instead.
- falcon620 8y agoBingo. https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms&gl=US https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms&gl=US From section 6c: "For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels."
- vvanders 8y agoHeh, Facebook has(had?) a similar clause which pretty much drove the photography community away to Flickr and the like.
- ChrisRR 8y agoI thought the photography community was driven to flickr because they were offering higher resolution and better quality.
- ppbutt 8y agoInstagram has the same clause too
- coroxout 8y agoSo does the free photo backup hosting which comes with Amazon Prime, iirc. A friend who's a (mostly) retired semi-pro photographer has all his photos automatically uploaded there, so that clause worried me a bit.
- btrettel 8y agoAre there any good examples of copyright hypocrites? That is, companies which have spent great effort pursuing copyright infringement while infringing on copyright themselves. I don't consider Google to be largely this sort of company, as they've fought to expand access (when it's in their interest, at least). Companies like Disney come to mind, but they're not exactly the same. They often adapt works where the copyright has expired, while lobbying to prevent their own works from having their copyright expire. That is definitely unfair, but not quite the same.
- will_brown 8y ago>I don't consider Google to be largely this sort of company, as they've fought to expand access They have fought to expand access to other people’s protected property but make sure theirs is locked behind paywall. Think of all the copywrite violations on YouTube, from movies, tv shows, copywrite broadcasts of sporting events. Now try to watch episode 3 or beyond of YouTube Red (Premium) series Cobra Kai without signing up for the service and giving them your credit card. Do as I say, not as I do.
- tmpz22 8y agoThere's also the scraping of third party sites to use as in-search cards within Google search, whilst having extensive scraping defenses for their own searches and charging for programmatic access to Google search...
- icebraining 8y agoThird party sites only get scraped if they want, Google Search obeys robots.txt. There's nothing hypocritical about it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- maxxxxx 8y agoWhat I hear from photographers is that movie and music companies/bands often take photos from the internet and use them without permission.
- GuiA 8y ago"My footage is represented online by two major stock-footage companies. And I license it for all sorts of projects and uses, from commercials to broadcast to corporate films," said Mr Bloom. "A fair amount of my footage has been licensed for internal use only, so to hear Google not state that they will compensate me for its use is very surprising. The footage was licensed for internal use, and Google has presumably paid for that. The contention arises because the video was leaked; in the film maker’s view, he should be compensated because it is not internal anymore and thus breaks the usage agreement. If Google has purposefully published the video, that’d be a very easy ruling to make in favor of the videographer; but the fact that it was leaked will make this an interesting case to follow.
- bigiain 8y ago> The footage was licensed for internal use, and Google has presumably paid for that. That's a pretty far fetched interpretation in my opinion. I'm 99.99% sure the article says/means "other people/companies have licensed footage for internal use from the appropriate online stock-footage agents, but Google has not".
- stevespang 8y agoGoogle lawyers will BURY him alive, dragging any legal proceedings out to the absolute maximum to make it as expensive as possible for him - - - then, when they eventually do loose, it's just be a tiny line item write off the Google balance sheet. Big corporations have an interest in setting examples of what will happen to you if you F__K with us.
- z3t4 8y agoThe Google video: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish...