7 ms·

Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem

234 points by sinak 12y ago

jsmthrowaway 12y ago
Could this be as simple as accidentally using the Tom Hanks recorded audio from the film Apollo 13 instead of Jim Lovell's actual words from the mission? That he misquoted it in the text has my attention, because Lovell actually said "we've had a problem" on the NASA loop. "We have a problem" was the interpretation and misquote in the film. Not that I'm disagreeing with the article, just caught my eye.
- rayiner 12y ago
  That's what I thought too.
- pajop 12y ago
  Jim Lovell via http://apollo13.spacelog.org/page/02:07:55:19/ http://apollo13.spacelog.org/page/02:07:55:19/ - "Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a MAIN B BUS UNDERVOLT." Jim Lovell as played by Tom Hanks via http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/quotes?item=qt0476805 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/quotes?item=qt0476805 - "Houston, we have a problem."
- ganeumann 12y ago
  Why would the work to which the film studio does not own the copyright suddenly become their property because Tom Hanks says it?
- thisisparker 12y ago
  Could have been, but it isn't :) I call it the "Houston, we have a problem" clip just because that's how everybody knows it. (There's a comment on the original article to that effect, but Medium doesn't really show those prominently.)
electronous 12y ago
This comes about because nerds are cowards by default. We're entirely too unwilling to really bother to get the message about this sort of thing out to the layperson, and we're even more unmotivated to actually do something about it. I love to lambast the baby boomers as much as the next neckbeard, but at least some of them actually had the chutzpah to do something.
- themartorana 12y ago
  This OP works on the front lines at the EFF. Most nerds are smart enough to be disillusioned by the plutocracy we live in. If by "do something" you mean sit-ins, marches, protests, and whatnot, you have only to look at the Occupy movement. I don't think people, or "nerds" specifically, are as passive as you think. We just know the fight, who it's against, and the apathy of the general public that constitutes the fight before the fight. I wouldn't call being mass-pepper-sprayed while sitting down at an Occupy movement that much different from being hosed down during the Civil Rights movement. Different cause, different day - same fortitude.
- watwut 12y ago
  Writing articles like this counts as "get the message about this sort of thing out to the layperson". You complain that he is not doing what he just did.
ArchD 12y ago
I seems that some copyright claimants spam website operators with bogus takedown notices. What the DMCA takedown procedure lacks is a provision allowing website operators to just ignore takedown notices from claimants with a spotty track record of bogus claims. The standard for 'bogus' could be something as simple as a hit-rate threshold (fraction of claims in past x days that are not shown to be bogus).
- alloyed 12y ago
  A reputation system would be trivial to circumvent, though, through a shell entity. an easy way I'd imagine to limit bogus claims would be to make it so that a bogus claim has a negative effect, in the small. Normal law has this pretty well figured out: you win, you get reimbursed, you lose, pay up.
- angeNoble 12y ago
  The problem with this is that when EMI or some other record giant is the one being abusive and submitting bogus claims, Youtube/SC/et all will not start ignoring notices because they will be afraid that the label will pull their catalog.
deciplex 12y ago
I wonder if this was actually a DMCA takedown? The article isn't clear. Shouldn't Parker be initiating a counterclaim process and taking to court the assholes who filed this fraudulent claim? If not, is this Soundcloud acting on behalf of the assholes, circumventing DMCA altogether? That's worse, and if that's the case, it's a shame the article doesn't mention it.
- mutagen 12y ago
  I thought it was fairly clear that this was not a DMCA takedown but part of an automated process by Soundcloud, similar to YouTube's Content ID [1], that attempts to identify copyrighted content and preemptively block it rather than wait for DMCA takedown notices from copyright holders. So I was disheartened when I got the takedown, and even more so when I looked through the guidelines for disputing an automatic match and found that I faced a presumption of guilt. The scary part of this system, which you touch on, is that there is no clear procedure for contesting public domain audio and recourse for ensuring that mistakes get corrected. It circumvents the DMCA entirely by choice of Soundcloud, presumably to build a monetization model that generates revenue for copyright holders that opt into their system, similar to YouTube. [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en
  - deciplex 12y ago
    I guess it's clear, and he never mentions DMCA by name. I'm just confused why the author isn't more pointedly calling out Soundcloud for circumventing DMCA on behalf of (alleged) copyright holders. The DMCA, for all its faults, at least has some token protection for end-users. For someone whose job is primary copyright activist for the EFF, this guy is cutting Soundcloud an awful lot of slack for what are anti-creative, anti-cultural, and anti-social policies. I mean look at this: >I’m sure my particular uploading situation will work out fine. SoundCloud is full of smart people, and this automated match will get cleared up in days, if not hours. So, what... nothing to see here, then? Is he trying to get his job at Soundcloud back? What bootlicking horseshit is this? It is not copyright activism.
Hannan 12y ago
I hate to even post this, because I agree with everything else the OP has to say but this part: >> Beyond that, the public domain was once the default in the United States: unless you put a proper notice with a copyright sign and the year, and sent in a registration form and fee, your essay or film or recording or picture would never carry copyright restrictions at all. ...I don't like. And maybe that's just because I've never created anything of interest, or of value, or maybe simply because I don't understand the implications. But it seems to me that it's better, or at least more efficient, to assume everything is copyrighted once it has been created rather than requiring everyone to file a form with an associated fee for everything that a person ever decides to create ("What if somebody decides they would use it in a commercial??). Of course I would like to see the above coupled with extremely short default copyright lengths, and then perhaps an escalating fee for subsequent extensions. And given our current copyright climate, I suppose I would still side with the author. But I think there's a middle ground where content creators aren't spending their time filing forms and paying fees, but rather creating. But maybe if that creative work isn't popular immediately, you move on to other creative endeavors. And the copyright-free diaspora of your previous work serves as advertising or "proof of merit" of your new works, if you're truly creative. And if you're not (like me), but you happened to have one and only one monetizable work that happened to be extremely ahead of its time... well then maybe at that point you should just be happy that humanity eventually discovered what a genius you were. I look forward to hearing about where I'm wrong about this particular aspect, because I feel like I must be overlooking something.
- betterunix 12y ago
  "it seems to me that it's better, or at least more efficient, to assume everything is copyrighted once it has been created rather than requiring everyone to file a form with an associated fee for everything that a person ever decides to create" More efficient for what, exactly? Because it is much more efficient for me to just assume that nothing is copyright when I creating something new that incorporates the work of others. It is overwhelmingly more efficient to just ignore copyright on the Internet -- our computers are the greatest copying machines ever made, and spending our time trying to figure out if some data is copyrighted is nothing but a retarding force.
aikah 12y ago
Sorry but that's the price to pay today when one puts content on third parties. There are enough open source projects outthere to allow anyone a bit tech saavy to host his own stuff. Dont use soundcloud,youtube,or whatever and you wont have to deal with all these automatic take downs. For the record i've been victim of abusive DMCA td requests on music i've produced MYSELF since then I host my own stuff,period.
- cowbell 12y ago
  Why is this being down voted? How SC conducts their business online is entirely up to SC. My server, my rules. Differences in policies are the sort of thing that determines who wins and loses out there. If anything, this should signal a market opportunity to the OP. Wouldn't it be great if there was something like SC, but without the lame copyright take down policies? Wow, yeah! We should start up a business or something...
- adrusi 12y ago
  Self hosting music is one thing, but it's hard to imagine self hosting video being a reasonable alternative to youtube any time soon. The bandwidth involved in delivering video should it become popular is far too expensive to justify the benefits over a hosted solution for the majority of purposes. A 10MB video (small) with 100,000 views (a modest number for a somewhat popular video) is a full terabyte of bandwidth. By AWS s3 pricing, that's 120 USD. It's possible that if you invest quite a bit of time into getting ads set up, their revenue could cover that cost, but on youtube, a video with 100,000 views and a fairly average level of advertising nets about 180 USD to the uploader, and they don't have to pay a cent for hosting it (except of course for a cut of their revenue).
quaunaut 12y ago
The following comment isn't strictly on subject, but it speaks to the cultural mindset toward all of this that seems pervasive even among the fastidiously anti-corporate. The attitude of content creators today scares me a bit. I was in a conversation with two artists the other day, one professional and one amateur. They both firmly agreed, that drawing someone else's characters as a commission was morally wrong and legally grey, and when I asked why, they say, "Because they're taking my money." "But you wouldn't have gotten money there anyway, if they had never produced the art." I argued. They countered by saying, it was stealing. "But what would it cost you?" Nothing, they said, but it wrested control from them, and potentially could lose them the rights to the work. "Wait- howso? You retain ownership, you're simply letting others use your work as inspiration and get paid for their efforts. It in turn, draws more to your story, your world- who loses?" They argued that was the 'exposure' angle, and I didn't really know what to say- I mean, I wouldn't have watched Sherlock if not for the legions of fanart of it on Tumblr, or listened to Jay-Z if not for the works of Girl Talk. They argued, all content should be original- but I can't fathom that. Is art, similarly to science, not an iterative process based on the input of dozens, hundreds, thousands of people that came before us? Are we all not standing on the shoulders of giants, pushing just a few steps forward more, both because we like what came before us but want to see it go someplace new? I wish we'd all stop feeling so threatened, I suppose. EDIT: I should emphasize, I admitted they had the right to request no one use their characters, and if anyone did they clearly were an asshole. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't think doing so was a mistake.
- mehwoot 12y ago
  Would they be content with people using their characters in ads to sell things without receiving anything? I think it's more about the content creator losing control over what the thing they made is being used for, than them explicitly losing money.
  - orbitingpluto 12y ago
    My litmus test is, "What Would Bill Watterson do?" If an artist takes a one-time commission to paint a Calvin & Hobbes frame on a nursery wall, great. If it's on a million t-shirts or Hobbes is selling medical insurance, then that is something different. The former comes out of appreciation, the latter, pure exploitation.
nthitz 12y ago
I listen to a lot of mashups. Previously a lot of mashup artists hosted their tunes on SC. Lately. SC has been deleting the entire profile of many of these artists, or just removing all/many of their songs. Some of these people only used SC for hosting so it is an unfortunate loss. Still quite a grey area if mashups are fair use. (Girl Talk has an album for sale on iTunes)
- aikah 12y ago
  Nothing grey here. Since when one choose the license of the product one uses? Not getting caught violating a license=/= grey area. If you write a software and state one must pay 100$ to use it, and you find that software sold on ebay without the seller giving you a cent,or in a torrent , would you call it "grey area"? So why things have to be different with music or movies? If you ask me ,did I ever pirate something,i'd answer yes of course I did like most of us. But I would never try to justify my actions by saying "Oh but you know it's kind of grey".It's not,i'm violating a license by enjoying something i got through illegal means.There is no grey area here. Let's stop the hypccrisy. Mashups are not fair use.Would be like saying sampling is fair us,it makes no sense.If you dont have the explicit authorization from the artist or the label you cant just use something you didnt created that is not public domain.There is no grey area here.
  - nthitz 12y ago
    I appreciate your comments. But I wouldn't compare the distribution of an identical copy of other's copyrighted content with mashups. Mashups are usually transformative, as opposed to merely derivative. The EFF has interesting thoughts on the subject [1]. I wouldn't equate mashups to piracy quite like you, but I can see where you are coming from. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/rip-mca-tribute-pauls-boutique-and-music-sampling https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/rip-mca-tribute-pauls-...
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Transformative is not a binary thing. Most mashups are not that transformative, and indeed many depend upon ease of recognition for their appeal.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I hope he can get Soundcloud to add the option 'this work is in the public domain' to their choices.
- totoroisalive 12y ago
  This is actually what bothers me the most, no option of public domain. https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/829/1*wewubAYhViyr86Xzmp8jdQ.png https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/829/1*wewubAYhViyr...
  - pilif 12y ago
    This could be related to the fact that soundcloud is an european company and none of the legislation in Europe actually provides a means for donating works to the public domain (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain#Dedicating_works_to_the_public_domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain#Dedicating_works_...) I remember the creator of SQLite talking about this on a very old episode of the FLOSSWeekly podcast where he said that this was somewhat hindering adoption because in Europe the legal status of SQLite wasn't clear.
    - skrebbel 12y ago
      He solved that by allowing us to buy an SQLite license for 1000 dollars, though :) I wonder how many of those have been sold!
gdewilde 12y ago
We just have to go back to the peer to peer internet. Then you can be responsible for your own deeds again.
jmarin 12y ago
For anyone interested in more thoughts on copyright and (the killing of) culture, I highly recommend this video on the Amen break: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac Additionally, this comic is informative and fun: http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/ http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
skywhopper 12y ago
DMCA takedown procedures constitute a Denial of Service attack vector that's been embedded into copyright law. Given that it's been 18 years since the DMCA retroactively extended copyright for 20 years, it's time to start gearing up for the fight over the next attempted expansion of copyright law. Copyrights that last longer than a lifetime are a cultural cancer. And we're now well into Stage III.
Mithaldu 12y ago
I'm a bit confused here. He says Soundcloud does not provide a fitting reason, but i see "I have a valid license" listed among the reasons, which seems to fit perfectly in this case, as a PD work is implicitly licensed to everyone. Why would he skip that?
- chalst 12y ago
  If it was "I have a valid license", then I would agree - in fact, I could cite http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml as an explicit assertion of permission from the creator. But the actual wording is "I have a valid license from the copyright holder", and that page is not from the copyright holder, since no one holds the copyright...

234 points by sinak 12y ago

Could this be as simple as accidentally using the Tom Hanks recorded audio from the film Apollo 13 instead of Jim Lovell's actual words from the mission? That he misquoted it in the text has my attention, because Lovell actually said "we've had a problem" on the NASA loop. "We have a problem" was the interpretation and misquote in the film. Not that I'm disagreeing with the article, just caught my eye.

rayiner 12y ago
That's what I thought too.
pajop 12y ago
Jim Lovell via http://apollo13.spacelog.org/page/02:07:55:19/ http://apollo13.spacelog.org/page/02:07:55:19/ - "Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a MAIN B BUS UNDERVOLT." Jim Lovell as played by Tom Hanks via http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/quotes?item=qt0476805 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/quotes?item=qt0476805 - "Houston, we have a problem."
ganeumann 12y ago
Why would the work to which the film studio does not own the copyright suddenly become their property because Tom Hanks says it?
thisisparker 12y ago
Could have been, but it isn't :) I call it the "Houston, we have a problem" clip just because that's how everybody knows it. (There's a comment on the original article to that effect, but Medium doesn't really show those prominently.)

electronous 12y ago

This comes about because nerds are cowards by default. We're entirely too unwilling to really bother to get the message about this sort of thing out to the layperson, and we're even more unmotivated to actually do something about it. I love to lambast the baby boomers as much as the next neckbeard, but at least some of them actually had the chutzpah to do something.

themartorana 12y ago
This OP works on the front lines at the EFF. Most nerds are smart enough to be disillusioned by the plutocracy we live in. If by "do something" you mean sit-ins, marches, protests, and whatnot, you have only to look at the Occupy movement. I don't think people, or "nerds" specifically, are as passive as you think. We just know the fight, who it's against, and the apathy of the general public that constitutes the fight before the fight. I wouldn't call being mass-pepper-sprayed while sitting down at an Occupy movement that much different from being hosed down during the Civil Rights movement. Different cause, different day - same fortitude.
watwut 12y ago
Writing articles like this counts as "get the message about this sort of thing out to the layperson". You complain that he is not doing what he just did.

ArchD 12y ago

I seems that some copyright claimants spam website operators with bogus takedown notices. What the DMCA takedown procedure lacks is a provision allowing website operators to just ignore takedown notices from claimants with a spotty track record of bogus claims. The standard for 'bogus' could be something as simple as a hit-rate threshold (fraction of claims in past x days that are not shown to be bogus).

alloyed 12y ago
A reputation system would be trivial to circumvent, though, through a shell entity. an easy way I'd imagine to limit bogus claims would be to make it so that a bogus claim has a negative effect, in the small. Normal law has this pretty well figured out: you win, you get reimbursed, you lose, pay up.
angeNoble 12y ago
The problem with this is that when EMI or some other record giant is the one being abusive and submitting bogus claims, Youtube/SC/et all will not start ignoring notices because they will be afraid that the label will pull their catalog.

deciplex 12y ago

I wonder if this was actually a DMCA takedown? The article isn't clear. Shouldn't Parker be initiating a counterclaim process and taking to court the assholes who filed this fraudulent claim? If not, is this Soundcloud acting on behalf of the assholes, circumventing DMCA altogether? That's worse, and if that's the case, it's a shame the article doesn't mention it.

mutagen 12y ago
I thought it was fairly clear that this was not a DMCA takedown but part of an automated process by Soundcloud, similar to YouTube's Content ID [1], that attempts to identify copyrighted content and preemptively block it rather than wait for DMCA takedown notices from copyright holders. So I was disheartened when I got the takedown, and even more so when I looked through the guidelines for disputing an automatic match and found that I faced a presumption of guilt. The scary part of this system, which you touch on, is that there is no clear procedure for contesting public domain audio and recourse for ensuring that mistakes get corrected. It circumvents the DMCA entirely by choice of Soundcloud, presumably to build a monetization model that generates revenue for copyright holders that opt into their system, similar to YouTube. [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en
- deciplex 12y ago
  I guess it's clear, and he never mentions DMCA by name. I'm just confused why the author isn't more pointedly calling out Soundcloud for circumventing DMCA on behalf of (alleged) copyright holders. The DMCA, for all its faults, at least has some token protection for end-users. For someone whose job is primary copyright activist for the EFF, this guy is cutting Soundcloud an awful lot of slack for what are anti-creative, anti-cultural, and anti-social policies. I mean look at this: >I’m sure my particular uploading situation will work out fine. SoundCloud is full of smart people, and this automated match will get cleared up in days, if not hours. So, what... nothing to see here, then? Is he trying to get his job at Soundcloud back? What bootlicking horseshit is this? It is not copyright activism.

Hannan 12y ago

I hate to even post this, because I agree with everything else the OP has to say but this part: >> Beyond that, the public domain was once the default in the United States: unless you put a proper notice with a copyright sign and the year, and sent in a registration form and fee, your essay or film or recording or picture would never carry copyright restrictions at all. ...I don't like. And maybe that's just because I've never created anything of interest, or of value, or maybe simply because I don't understand the implications. But it seems to me that it's better, or at least more efficient, to assume everything is copyrighted once it has been created rather than requiring everyone to file a form with an associated fee for everything that a person ever decides to create ("What if somebody decides they would use it in a commercial??). Of course I would like to see the above coupled with extremely short default copyright lengths, and then perhaps an escalating fee for subsequent extensions. And given our current copyright climate, I suppose I would still side with the author. But I think there's a middle ground where content creators aren't spending their time filing forms and paying fees, but rather creating. But maybe if that creative work isn't popular immediately, you move on to other creative endeavors. And the copyright-free diaspora of your previous work serves as advertising or "proof of merit" of your new works, if you're truly creative. And if you're not (like me), but you happened to have one and only one monetizable work that happened to be extremely ahead of its time... well then maybe at that point you should just be happy that humanity eventually discovered what a genius you were. I look forward to hearing about where I'm wrong about this particular aspect, because I feel like I must be overlooking something.

betterunix 12y ago
"it seems to me that it's better, or at least more efficient, to assume everything is copyrighted once it has been created rather than requiring everyone to file a form with an associated fee for everything that a person ever decides to create" More efficient for what, exactly? Because it is much more efficient for me to just assume that nothing is copyright when I creating something new that incorporates the work of others. It is overwhelmingly more efficient to just ignore copyright on the Internet -- our computers are the greatest copying machines ever made, and spending our time trying to figure out if some data is copyrighted is nothing but a retarding force.

aikah 12y ago

Sorry but that's the price to pay today when one puts content on third parties. There are enough open source projects outthere to allow anyone a bit tech saavy to host his own stuff. Dont use soundcloud,youtube,or whatever and you wont have to deal with all these automatic take downs. For the record i've been victim of abusive DMCA td requests on music i've produced MYSELF since then I host my own stuff,period.

cowbell 12y ago
Why is this being down voted? How SC conducts their business online is entirely up to SC. My server, my rules. Differences in policies are the sort of thing that determines who wins and loses out there. If anything, this should signal a market opportunity to the OP. Wouldn't it be great if there was something like SC, but without the lame copyright take down policies? Wow, yeah! We should start up a business or something...
adrusi 12y ago
Self hosting music is one thing, but it's hard to imagine self hosting video being a reasonable alternative to youtube any time soon. The bandwidth involved in delivering video should it become popular is far too expensive to justify the benefits over a hosted solution for the majority of purposes. A 10MB video (small) with 100,000 views (a modest number for a somewhat popular video) is a full terabyte of bandwidth. By AWS s3 pricing, that's 120 USD. It's possible that if you invest quite a bit of time into getting ads set up, their revenue could cover that cost, but on youtube, a video with 100,000 views and a fairly average level of advertising nets about 180 USD to the uploader, and they don't have to pay a cent for hosting it (except of course for a cut of their revenue).

quaunaut 12y ago

The following comment isn't strictly on subject, but it speaks to the cultural mindset toward all of this that seems pervasive even among the fastidiously anti-corporate. The attitude of content creators today scares me a bit. I was in a conversation with two artists the other day, one professional and one amateur. They both firmly agreed, that drawing someone else's characters as a commission was morally wrong and legally grey, and when I asked why, they say, "Because they're taking my money." "But you wouldn't have gotten money there anyway, if they had never produced the art." I argued. They countered by saying, it was stealing. "But what would it cost you?" Nothing, they said, but it wrested control from them, and potentially could lose them the rights to the work. "Wait- howso? You retain ownership, you're simply letting others use your work as inspiration and get paid for their efforts. It in turn, draws more to your story, your world- who loses?" They argued that was the 'exposure' angle, and I didn't really know what to say- I mean, I wouldn't have watched Sherlock if not for the legions of fanart of it on Tumblr, or listened to Jay-Z if not for the works of Girl Talk. They argued, all content should be original- but I can't fathom that. Is art, similarly to science, not an iterative process based on the input of dozens, hundreds, thousands of people that came before us? Are we all not standing on the shoulders of giants, pushing just a few steps forward more, both because we like what came before us but want to see it go someplace new? I wish we'd all stop feeling so threatened, I suppose. EDIT: I should emphasize, I admitted they had the right to request no one use their characters, and if anyone did they clearly were an asshole. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't think doing so was a mistake.

mehwoot 12y ago
Would they be content with people using their characters in ads to sell things without receiving anything? I think it's more about the content creator losing control over what the thing they made is being used for, than them explicitly losing money.
- orbitingpluto 12y ago
  My litmus test is, "What Would Bill Watterson do?" If an artist takes a one-time commission to paint a Calvin & Hobbes frame on a nursery wall, great. If it's on a million t-shirts or Hobbes is selling medical insurance, then that is something different. The former comes out of appreciation, the latter, pure exploitation.

nthitz 12y ago

I listen to a lot of mashups. Previously a lot of mashup artists hosted their tunes on SC. Lately. SC has been deleting the entire profile of many of these artists, or just removing all/many of their songs. Some of these people only used SC for hosting so it is an unfortunate loss. Still quite a grey area if mashups are fair use. (Girl Talk has an album for sale on iTunes)

aikah 12y ago
Nothing grey here. Since when one choose the license of the product one uses? Not getting caught violating a license=/= grey area. If you write a software and state one must pay 100$ to use it, and you find that software sold on ebay without the seller giving you a cent,or in a torrent , would you call it "grey area"? So why things have to be different with music or movies? If you ask me ,did I ever pirate something,i'd answer yes of course I did like most of us. But I would never try to justify my actions by saying "Oh but you know it's kind of grey".It's not,i'm violating a license by enjoying something i got through illegal means.There is no grey area here. Let's stop the hypccrisy. Mashups are not fair use.Would be like saying sampling is fair us,it makes no sense.If you dont have the explicit authorization from the artist or the label you cant just use something you didnt created that is not public domain.There is no grey area here.
- nthitz 12y ago
  I appreciate your comments. But I wouldn't compare the distribution of an identical copy of other's copyrighted content with mashups. Mashups are usually transformative, as opposed to merely derivative. The EFF has interesting thoughts on the subject [1]. I wouldn't equate mashups to piracy quite like you, but I can see where you are coming from. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/rip-mca-tribute-pauls-boutique-and-music-sampling https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/rip-mca-tribute-pauls-...
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Transformative is not a binary thing. Most mashups are not that transformative, and indeed many depend upon ease of recognition for their appeal.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I hope he can get Soundcloud to add the option 'this work is in the public domain' to their choices.

totoroisalive 12y ago
This is actually what bothers me the most, no option of public domain. https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/829/1*wewubAYhViyr86Xzmp8jdQ.png https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/829/1*wewubAYhViyr...
- pilif 12y ago
  This could be related to the fact that soundcloud is an european company and none of the legislation in Europe actually provides a means for donating works to the public domain (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain#Dedicating_works_to_the_public_domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain#Dedicating_works_...) I remember the creator of SQLite talking about this on a very old episode of the FLOSSWeekly podcast where he said that this was somewhat hindering adoption because in Europe the legal status of SQLite wasn't clear.
  - skrebbel 12y ago
    He solved that by allowing us to buy an SQLite license for 1000 dollars, though :) I wonder how many of those have been sold!

gdewilde 12y ago

We just have to go back to the peer to peer internet. Then you can be responsible for your own deeds again.

jmarin 12y ago

For anyone interested in more thoughts on copyright and (the killing of) culture, I highly recommend this video on the Amen break: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac Additionally, this comic is informative and fun: http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/ http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

skywhopper 12y ago

DMCA takedown procedures constitute a Denial of Service attack vector that's been embedded into copyright law. Given that it's been 18 years since the DMCA retroactively extended copyright for 20 years, it's time to start gearing up for the fight over the next attempted expansion of copyright law. Copyrights that last longer than a lifetime are a cultural cancer. And we're now well into Stage III.

Mithaldu 12y ago

I'm a bit confused here. He says Soundcloud does not provide a fitting reason, but i see "I have a valid license" listed among the reasons, which seems to fit perfectly in this case, as a PD work is implicitly licensed to everyone. Why would he skip that?

chalst 12y ago
If it was "I have a valid license", then I would agree - in fact, I could cite http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml as an explicit assertion of permission from the creator. But the actual wording is "I have a valid license from the copyright holder", and that page is not from the copyright holder, since no one holds the copyright...