1: YouTube. 2: The RIAA. 3: Our Last Best Hope.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

1) Don't post at YouTube:

YouTube Owns YourStuff (So does YouTubeTwo)

Excerpt:

In its Terms & Conditions, the wildly popular video sharing site YouTube emphasizes that "you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions".

There's quite a large "BUT...", however. Not only does YouTube retain the right to create derivative works (emphasis mine), but so do the users, and so too, does YouTube's successor company.

2) Don't post in the open:

In case you haven't been following the news for the past few years, the RIAA will be more than happy to come after you for doing that. While the tv show and movie bigwigs haven't gone after vids much (arguments can be made for fair use re: clips vs. episodes/full-length films), the music industry is BAT-SHIT INSANE about musical artists' tracks being posted anywhere they can be listened to/downloaded for free (and yes, btw, you can download off YouTube if you know how). It doesn't matter how the song is posted; you've shared their material for free and they are completely mental about it. Ask the people who run the AMV, who had to take down hundreds (I believe) of vids after hearing from various recording artists' labels. Ask people who have been sued (not just issued C&D letters, but sued) and had to pay for downloading music.

3) How to host vids as safely as you can:

Set up a subdirectory at your own domain. If you don't own your own domain space, find someone who is willing to share. Password-protect the sub-directory using an .htaccess file. Don't use the name of the song in the filename of your vid (example: if you've vidded Buffy to Bring Me to Life, name the file BringBuf.zip). (Oh, yeah, zip your files to avoid hotlinking menaces.) Put spider-avoiding code in your .htaccess as well. If you don't know how to do these things, ask.

Bottom line - vidders create and host illegal downloads, plain and simple. Don't be stupid about it.

Comments

[of-carabas.livejournal.com]

I've yet to hear anything about the music industry going after vidders. Totally possible that they have and I just haven't heard about it, but if they have, mind enlightening me? (Aside from AMV.org. That only happened because a fan wrote to the record label about it, thinking the vids were made by the bands. If you bring a copyright violation to the attention of a record label they have to take action.) They'd be well within their rights to go after vidders, of course, and this is all good safe advice in general, I'm just wondering if something happened to spawn this concern.

And I don't really get why we as vidders should be concerned about YouTube on this issue. I mean generally they turn a blind eye but if they're properly notified of a copyright violation on their site they have to take it down. So what are we worried about them doing with our copyright-violating vids?

[ladysorka]

The main one I can think of off the top of my head had something to do with Enya and farscapefantasy.org , I think. I may be wrong.

[chasarumba.livejournal.com]

IIRC, the owner of Farscape Fantasy got a C&D letter from someone he believed to be a legal representative of Enya...but it turned out that the letter came from the webmaster of her official site and not from any legal entity. Some vids set to Enya's music were removed from the site while others still remain.

[trythil.livejournal.com]

f you bring a copyright violation to the attention of a record label they have to take action

I believe (at least under) US copyright law, one is not required to take action for the copyright to remain valid. See, for example:

- § 501. Infringement of copyright (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#501), in which the term entitled and not required is used in (b);

- Chapter 3, Duration of Copyright (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap3.html) makes no mention of early termination in the absence of enforcement (and neither does Chapter 1, Subject Matter and Scope of Copyright (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html)).

I'm not a copyright lawyer, but the law seems to suggest that such actions are not required.

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Yeah, requirement is true of Trademarks but not of copyright IIRC.

[of-carabas.livejournal.com]

I could easily be wrong on this, but I was thinking less about the copyright law itself and more about the purpose of a record label. Managing distribution and enforcing copyright protection for bands that sign with them is part of a record label is for. A band can easily choose ignore copyright violations even when someone brings it to their attention directly, but for a record label to do so means they're not doing their job.

[melinafandom.livejournal.com]

If you bring a copyright violation to the attention of a record label they have to take action.)

No. They. Don't.

This is probably the most widely held myth about copyright, and it's not true. No, you don't have to take action against every infringer or risk losing your copyright. By taking no action a copyright holder only risks losing their right to go after *that* particular infringement, not all instances of infringement forever.

The source of this, IMO, is confusion about the difference between trademark and copyright. Trademark holders have to vigilantly police their trademark or risk losing it. They can only license it under limited circumstances and have to be very careful about how it's used by the licensee.

Copyright holders do not. A copyright holder can license their work for 1 cent or $1 million, or allow it to be used freely under certain conditions, all without losing their copyright. They can ignore some infringements and sue on others.

In short -- the RIAA are schmucks about this because they choose to be, not because they have to be.

[of-carabas.livejournal.com]

Since this is the same thing as what trythil and absolut3destiny have already said, I'm pointing you to my response to them. Less legal issue, more job description.

Has the RIAA taken action against vidders? That was the main point of my first comment, asking what sparked this post; I feel like I'm missing something here. AMV.org was a while back and just the one label (http://www.winduprecords.com/).

[cofax7]

One of the problems with the Youtube thing is that if someone uploads your vid to Youtube, and it's got your name/contact info/website on it, and the record label decides to go after vidders, well, Youtube's given them your information right there. And if you're not the one who uploaded the vid to Youtube (which often happens), you've got no way to take the vid down to protect yourself.

Which is not to say the record label/RIAA might not go after the Youtuber, but you're just as likely to get hit.

All of which assumes the RIAA is going to go after vidders, and yeah, I haven't heard of it yet, but I won't be surprised when it starts.

[of-carabas.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry - separate paragraph, separate issue, I should've been clearer on that. Yeah, that YouTube concern I do get, no worries. Heck, there are a ton of reasons for vidders to hate YouTube (vid theft anyone?). I was just talking about that YouTube-Owns-Your-Stuff link there. I don't see as vidders should particularly care about YouTube having the rights to make derivative works of our copyright-infringing derivative vids that they can't legally admit to knowing about, you know?