My Moo Cards Finally Arrive!
My Moo Cards finally arrived in the mail today. Check them out on Flickr
As for my extended blogging absence…well I hope to have some more posts coming shortly. One detailing my lack of blog activity.
Did I infringe someone’s copyright?
Recently I was informed by an automatic email from YouTube, that I was infringing someone’s copyright in one of the many videos I have uploaded to YouTube. Quoted below is the email I received.
From: YouTube
To: XXXXXXXXXX
Date: Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 2:53 AM
Subject: A copyright owner has claimed content in one of your videosDear XXXXXXXX,
Video Disabled
A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video ALA 2007 Book Cart Drill Team World Championship #3. The audio content identified in your video is Sparkling Diamonds by Nicole Kidman & Jim Broadbent & Lara Mulcahy & Caroline O’Connor. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.
Replace Your Audio with AudioSwap
Don’t worry, we have plenty of music available for your use. Please visit our AudioSwap library to learn how you can easily replace the audio in your video with any track from our growing library of fully licensed songs.
Other Options
If you think there’s been a mistake, or you have other questions, please visit the Copyright Notice page in your account.
Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team
The original video can be found here: ALA 2007 Book Cart Drill Team World Championship #3 It of course, has since been removed.
I’ve temporarily uploaded the video to my website. It can be found here (download not stream):
ALA 2007 Book Cart Drill Team World Championship #3
The video in question was a video I captured with my digital camera at the 2007 American Library Association Conference in Washington DC. What I captured were teams of librarians participating in a Book Cart Drill. Basically, for those non-librarians out there, a book cart drill is a type of competition in which a bunch of librarians get together with their book carts and do a little rehearsed choreography to contemporary music usually in the form of a competition for fame and prizes. I know, we librarians are an exciting and crazy crowd.
I was in the crowd at the time of the performance and captured pictures and videos of several of the teams performing. The video that was taken down was roughly two minutes in length and had part of a song playing in the background. The music was of a poor quality, as it was being played over a PA system. In addition to that, my camera doesn’t really do a great job of recording sound at a high quality over a rambunctious crowd.
For reference, here are the other videos I captured from the event:
ALA 2007 Book Cart Drill Team World Championship #1
ALA 2007 Book Cart Drill Team World Championship #2
ALA 2007 Book Cart Drill Team World Championship #4
So why did I receive this email? What exactly happened? Well…
YouTube has an automatic takedown system in place for videos stored on their site. As I understand it, they have a database of music fingerprints, and all videos that are uploaded are checked against this database for infringing audio content. If a fingerprint remotely matches your video (theres a certain percentage), the video is removed and then a “DMCA like” takedown notice is sent to inform you. For those curious, for my video, the song in question was “Sparkling Diamonds by Nicole Kidman & Jim Broadbent & Lara Mulcahy & Caroline O’Connor”.
This automatic takedown process has been in the news lately. Even McCain complained about it, and then, of course, there was the whole issue with the kid dancing to Prince music. The courts have recently discussed these automatic systems. The question is whether they are legal or in the spirit of the copyright law and the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) as they fail to consider the principles of fair use. The courts, among others, have argued that these systems can’t factor in fair use, therefore they should not be used.
So did I infringe on someone’s copyright? Can I claim fair use? Should any of that really matter? Thoughts? I have several other similar videos with different music, should I take them down preemptively or should I wait until the system makes me take them down? Beyond legal, what should I do ethically? Should I send up the EFF bat signal?
Personally, after reviewing the video, I’ve decided to challenge the claim and see what happens, mostly out of sheer curiosity.
To challenge this …
Dispute Claim
If you believe that this claim was made in error, or that you are otherwise authorized to use the content at issue, you can dispute this claim with the alleged copyright owner. You will be guided through a web-based form, and your dispute will be passed to them for review.Please note that if you protest the claim made against your video, we will make your video available to the alleged copyright owner to view. This is necessary for them to review the dispute, and will happen regardless of the privacy settings you placed on your video. If your video is private and you are not willing to allow the them to view it, we unfortunately cannot accept your dispute. However, if your video is private, this will be clearly noted to them at the time of viewing your video and they are required to respect the privacy and confidentiality of your video.
Also, note that if the alleged copyright owner responds to your dispute by asserting their ownership, your video will be permanently removed from YouTube.
For more information on this process, please see the Video ID Disputes section in our Help Center.
Back to the blogging basics
Before I start, I’m going to give a quick disclaimer. Which is that I’ve tried to blog in the past. In fact, I’ve been blogging on and off again for the last seven or more years. Most of my attempts at blogging have been of a personal nature and even when I did try that, the postings were often very infrequent and in a haphazard sort of manner.
Therefore, when I decided that I was going to start blogging again, I made the decision that I would do so only if I made a personal commitment to it. My commitment is to a professional blog, that is topical to my area of study; that I will be focused in my blogging and that I will produce frequent posts that are thoughtful and hopefully insightful.
This means, that this time around, my blog well work in a very different way. It will be focused to the relevant areas of my research, mostly issues and topics related to information policy and e-government. In addition to those main areas, I will also occasionally discuss issues related to the field of library and information science. Beyond that, maybe a occasional post relating to the area of data/information visualization and human computer interaction, which is a tertiary interest of mine.
So, general topics for discussion on the blog will be:
- Information Policy
- Virtual Worlds
- Cloud computing
- Intellectual Property
- Technology Policy
- E-Government
- Library and Information Science
- iSchool Movement
- Data/Info Visualization
- Human Computer Interaction
If anybody knows me, they know me more as a talker rather than a writer. However, over the last few years, I’ve found that this type of blogging is a good outlet for discussion. It allows for the matriculation of ideas, particularly embryonic ones. It exists, somewhere, nebulously between a discussion with colleagues at a conference, and a peer reviewed journal article.
I’ve found that there is often too many exciting dynamic issues happening in my field of study. They all seem to warrant a discussion, which can not always be accomplished through other channels. Therefore, I will use this blog to fill the gap between my occasional rants and my scholarly writing. Hopefully it will be informative and add to the discussion to my existing peers in the online community.
So let me briefly introduce myself. My name is Justin Grimes. I’m currently a second year, PhD student at the College of Information Studies (iSchool) at the University of Maryland. I’m currently employed as a research associate at the Center for Information Policy and E-Government, which is located on campus. My educational background is in both computer science (BS), and library and information science (MLS).
My current research interests can be broadly defined as information policy and e-government. Specifically, I’ve been very interested in the issues of intellectual property, the ownership of information, information policy issues in emergent technology such as virtual worlds and cloud computing, and in ways the government can harness to its advantage new types of information technology to better serve its citizenry.
With that out of the way, welcome to my blog.
