Archive for the 'Copyright' Category

Filed under: Tech Stuff, Distribution, Exhibition, Newsstand, Movie Marketing

If you’ve been following some of my posts recently — and you should be — I’ve been bringing you some of the latest bits of news regarding the trials and tribulations of would-be Internet content king YouTube. For the last couple years, the site has had huge numbers of users and generated millions of dollars of free publicity for Hollywood studios and their products. And even though the site has also had its share of troubles as well, it had still mostly managed to avoid anything really unpleasant — that is, until now.

According to CNN, Viacom, parent company of MTV and Comedy Central, filed suit against YouTube and its parent company Google Tuesday. The suit alleges that YouTube has “almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom’s programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.” If that’s true, what does Viacom want from Google and YouTube in the way of damages? How about a cool billion dollars. Yes, I said billion. In addition to money, Viacom also wants an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement and to take down any and all Viacom-owned content from the site.

In a statement also released on Tuesday, Viacom said about Google and YouTube: “Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.” Harsh words. At the moment, this doesn’t look like something that’ll be settled quickly but I think it will be settled eventually. Although, by the time it is, I’m sure the copyrighted content Viacom is so interested in protecting will have shown up on countless other sites all over the Internet. So, in the end, Viacom ’s lawsuit will probably accomplish very little and the only people that will really benefit are the lawyers.

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Pelosi began a blog, The Gavel, which features a great deal of YouTube clips of chamber proceedings.

Crazy Republicans, hating the fact that more people can use these clips to get a look at what's happening in Congress, are crying foul. This press release was blasted to the media a short while ago:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   CONTACT: Brad Dayspring (202) 225-3484

February 15, 2007                                                                                        

Speaker Pelosi's New Blog Violates C-SPAN Copyright/Trademark of House Proceedings
Will the Speaker bring the gavel down on "the Gavel Blog?"

As you may have heard, Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched a new blog entitled "The Gavel."  Though we applaud the Speaker's effort to adapt to new technology, the blog violated copyright and trademark law on the very first day.

Not once, not twice, but 16 times?

As of noon today, the Speaker had posted at least 16 videos that are copyrighted
C-SPAN material from the House floor. The RSC spoke with C-SPAN today, who confirmed that these videos violate C-SPAN copyright/trademark of the House proceedings.  

Using C-Span for partisan purposes?

In addition to using pirated material, Speaker Pelosi also has used the pirated C-SPAN footage for partisan purposes. The collection of C-SPAN footage used in her "first official blog" is an example and the other pirated C-SPAN trademarked material shows Democrat after Democrat offering their views of the non-binding Democrat resolution on the reinforcement and realignment of American troops in Iraq.  

So, what does Speaker Pelosi believe the role of C-SPAN is?

"One of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's first decisions was to deny a request by C-SPAN to be permitted to cover the House floor proceedings with its own cameras. Last month, Pelosi sent a letter to C-SPAN Chairman and CEO Brian Lamb saying she believed "the dignity and decorum" of the House "are best preserved by maintaining the current system of televised proceedings."

(CQ Weekly, January 15, 2007, Page 169)

Is the dignity and decorum of the House preserved by pirating copyrighted C-SPAN material for political purposes?

If not, will the Speaker bring the gavel down on "the Gavel Blog?"

###

Brad Dayspring
Communications Director
Republican Study Committee
(202) 225-3484
AIM: BDDACE2
www.house.gov/hensarling/rsc

This is idiotic on so many levels, though we shouldn't expect anything less from the morons at the Republican Study Committee (the far right wing of the party). First of all, the clips are clearly Fair Use. Second of all, why is the RSC so afraid of further dissemination of chamber proceedings? They shouldn't just be applauding Pelosi's use of new technologies like YouTube to deliver governmental proceedings to more people, but they should be adopting the tactics themselves (Fox News can't cover all their crazy rants). Third of all, if opposing the surge in Iraq is "partisan", it looks like 60 percent or so of the country is now Democratic. They may want to rethink that framing.

But aside from the wingnut idiocy, it does highlight something that Pelosi can fix -- the ridiculous notion that our government's proceedings can't be spread far and wide without running afoul of copyright laws.

That's got to end, and she can do so.

Either force chamber proceedings taped by C-SPAN to be public domain, or kick them out of the chamber and install government-owned cameras to cover the proceedings. By being public domain, C-SPAN could still air them on their channels without holding an undemocratic stranglehold on the information.

Update: The morons at the RSC have retracted their press release. It was too frackin stupid even for them.

Also, Stoller has more. Turns out that floor proceedings are public domain, but committee hearings are not. Thus, C-SPAN claims ownership of the Alito hearings for the next 100 years. That's unconscionable and must end.

(I had been planning to try to compile exactly this sort of list on Saturday.  Nonpartisan beat me to it and did a great job.  Please note all the caveats about Creative Commons licensing and sites that include some copyrighted images marked as such among others that you're allowed to use -- MissLaura)

[Courtesy of ProgressiveHistorians, my community site.]

Now that Kos has cracked down on the use of copyrighted images, I think it might be useful to examine what public-domain image resources are available for our diarists.

I don't usually write short diaries, but I started writing this one and realized all the work had already been done for me.

So let's give a huge round of applause for Wikipedia, whose editors have compiled a fantastic list of sources for public-domain images.  The full list appears at the link I just cited above.  below, I'll summarize a few of the named sources that I think may be particularly relevant for Daily Kos users.

• Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Collection -- There are over 100,000 historical images on this site.  USE CAUTION; not all of them are copyrighted, but when you click on an image link it will take you first to an imformation page that clearly states the copyright status of the image.  Occasionally you'll run up against one that says "status not determined," but those are usually the really old images, and images created before 1923 are out of copyright no matter what their original status was.  LOC has many of the old standbys but also some really obscure stuff, so if you want a historical image you're probably in luck.
• Art Renewal Center -- Lots and lots and lots of old art, all okay 'cuz it's before 1923.  I did a search for Monet and found 128 images, which is more than enough to encompass all the famous pieces and then some.
• Fromoldbooks.org -- Just what it sounds like -- high-quality scans from old books, all out of copyright.  Use it just like Google Images, with keyword searches and the whole shebang.  Check out their photo collection of ruined castles.
• Yotofoto -- Maybe the best site out there for just stuff, absent a specific context.  Like Google Image Search, but it's all free. :) I did a search for "war" and came up with over 1500 images, many of which would look great here at Kos.  [Update]  Here's the fine print: "While some of the images are in the Public Domain, most are released under Creative Commons, GNU FDL or similar licenses. These licenses typically have some minor conditions of use (such as requiring that credit be given to the photographer)."  So USE WITH CAUTION -- you may have to provide attribution to anything you use from this site.
• National Atlas Congressional District Maps -- If you ever want to put up a picture of a CD map, they're all right here, free of charge.
• FirstGov -- Not an image repository, but a link to all government image repositories.  Despite the disclaimer at the top, the general rule is this: if the photo belongs to the U.S. Government, then it belongs to YOU and you can use it as you wish.  ALWAYS CHECK, but you're pretty safe here.
• UTOPIA -- Public-domain portraits of historical figures, in alphabetical order.  Some weird ones here too, which is great.
• TeachPol -- Hundreds of images of political history.  There are some really important events in here -- I guarantee you'll find the collection extremely interesting.  You can't find these in Google Image Search either.
• New York Public Library Digital Image Gallery -- There are over 500,000 images in this online collection, which makes it five times as big as the Library of Congress's.  Having been to NYPL, I can say that they ALWAYS do everything better than everyone else. :)  I searched for "Kurdistan," which I thought would be pretty hard to find anything about (given that it never actually existed as a separate country), and turned up five fantastic images, all relevant.  Noodle around with this and see what you think.

[Update]  Sites suggested after this come from folks in the comments, not from me.  I will continue to update this list as the suggestions come in (though in fits and starts):

• GIMP-Savvy -- Indexes photos from NASA, NOAA (National Weather Service), and the Fish and Wildlife Service in one convenient search engine.  The NASA photos are particularly nice -- I searched for "war" and found some really pretty photos.
• Web Gallery of Art -- another good resource for old art, completely kosher because they don't put up pieces from after 1850.  The images are high-res and gorgeous.
• EveryStockPhoto -- This one is REALLY nice, and NOT listed on Wikipedia.  The site boasts over 380,000 free stock photos, with no usage restrictions (unlike Yotofoto; see above).  I strongly recommend this site.
• Openphoto -- CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSED, which means you need to cite the photographer when you use it.  Also, beware the search engine -- I did a simple search for "war" and got a photo of a WWI-era soldier, but also images of plants, circuit boards, and soda cans.
• Flickr Creative Commons Pool -- USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION; these photos are under different kinds of Creative Commons licenses, which are clearly marked but can be really confusing if you don't understand Creative Commons.  Only use if you think you know what they're talking about.  On the flip side, there are literally tens of millions of images here -- by far the biggest archive identified so far.
• Archive.org -- Not really for images, but great historic video and audio collections, whose copyright status is clearly marked.  An excellent resource.

Keep in mind this is NOT an exhaustive list of public-domain image sites; the exhaustive list is here, courtesy of our friends at Wikipedia.  I've cherry-picked as I saw fit, and can vouch for the fact that every site I've mentioned turns up at least some really cool and relevant images.

But I'm interested to hear from you: what are YOUR favorite public-domain image sites?

Also, if someone feels like adding any of this information to DKosopedia, go right ahead; I don't know how to use the thing, so I can't help you out there.

Despite movie download services popping up left and right, most of them haven't reached any kind of mass appeal thanks to limitations on burning to DVD. Some, like CinemaNow, do allow burns, but have some difficulty with certain DVD players. Thanks to Sonic Solutions, there's a new licensing program called Qflix that lets consumers burn downloaded movies onto special discs.

Movielink, Warner Bros., Verbatim, and Roxio are all on board to support this end-to-end Qflix system. To burn at home, you'll have to buy Qflix-enabled burners (or update your current firmware), Qflix-enabled blank discs, and use Qflix-enabled software.

One good outcome of this is that you can potentially head to store kiosks and burn old or obscure movies that aren't widely distributed because of their limited appeal. – Jason Chen

Studios okay users burning CSS-encrypted movies, but special media is required [Ars Technica]