It seems progress is being made on the youtube copyright front.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/service-providers-remix-artists-filmmakers-and-public-interest-groups-support-effn Lenz v. Universal Music Group – aka the dancing baby case – EFF and co-counsel Keker & Van Nest, LLP have waged a long battle on behalf of homemaker Stephanie Lenz to ensure that Internet users have protection from unfounded claims of copyright infringement. Today, a broad array of third parties joined the fray, and we couldn’t be more pleased to have their support.
In case you haven’t been following the latest, the case is now on appeal at the Ninth Circuit. A variety of issues have been raised, but the key questions are whether a content owner has to form a good faith belief that a use is not a fair use before sending a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); whether that belief as to the law has to be reasonable; and the kinds of damages that are available if the sender fails to do so. We filed our opening brief on these issues last week.
Several companies and organization have now submitted amicus, or “friend of the court,” briefs weighing on these questions. One comes from a collection of online service providers (OSPs) that host user-generated content: Automattic (Wordpress), Google, Twitter, and Tumblr. The second comes from the Organization for Transformative Works, Public Knowledge, and the International Documentary Association,
Fair use is a pretty broad term and quite likely to be curtailed if the judgement in ths case goes to the copyright extremist organisations. The root cause of this problem is the way copyright holders have 100% control over where their item is allowed to be seen or heard and this is the part that offends most folks as its quite fair they be compensated (if you believe in the copyright tax concept as it is today) but its another to monopolise the ensuing cultural work and censor it at whim, its basically against our human way of life to censor ideas concepts and sounds, the artistic world already accepts this with paintings by many of the same subject causing no offence to anyone but when it comes to money making organisations that have spent tens of decades securing overbroad legislation to control the rights of creators and pontificate that such creativity only comes about because they can monopolise it, rings hollow to many.
