Results tagged “ip”

Have just got off the phone with Ohna and it seems that Google/Youtube's behaviour is even more absurd than I thought...

Ohna's film Son wasn't just posted by her production company. Oh no:

• YouTube vetted a large number of independent film-makers for their "screening room" project and approached Ohna to ask her to participate.
• Not only was Son hand-picked by Google, it was reviewed by an approval board and checked for copyright.
• In an effort to promote the filmmakers, YouTube proposed that each film have a "buy now" button.

So let me get this straight. You go out and find the best films. You have lengthy conversations with the producers of each. You check each for quality and appropriateness of content and verify that each producer owns the right to broadcast the work.

Then, you nail them with a copyright-theft cease-and-desist and take down the film you've just spent months organising the screening of.

Never mind that this is just the worst possible PR job in the world. Isn't this frankly just downright stupid?

Well it used to be Big Oil or Big Business but we really are seeing the emergence of Big Copyright

Ohna's award-winning short film has been pulled by Google because of an automated copyright alert. This smells exactly the same as Google's ongoing mistreatment of the little guy. The same rules apply: justice cannot be applied by formula or filter. Unless each case is handled (note 'hand' as in 'human') individually by a trained adjudicator a never ending stream of injustice ensues.

I suggest Google work out how to pay for this adjudication service soon as sooner or later they're going to need a new business model...

Ohna reports:

Yesterday our short film SON was taken off YouTube's screening room because someone at Paramount Pictures copyright police company decided that maybe we had used some footage from Son Of Rambow. Whoever made this decision had obviously not watched the film as SON is obviously all original footage and in fact the only ressemblance to Paramount's film is the word SON in the title and the fact that there is a young boy in the cast. Despite the obvious blunder Paramount are making no effort to remedy the situation by removing their notice from YouTube and by doing so are damaging our reputation and possibly causing us loss of income.

The woman could use some words of support. Go comment on her post

And if you are aware of similar events, make you register each and every case with the EFF's chilling effects website.

Just saw this item on Slashdot. A classic example of a big corporation not getting the new consumer.

In a nutshell, in the guise of protecting its intellectual property (IP) against illegal merchandisers, Universal is throwing out a lot of babies with the bath-water. The whole Joss Weedon, Firefly etc. type-thing is the foundation for huge amounts of high-quality fan-art and the fans that create, buy and wear it want a stake in the outcome. They promote the TV show and want nothing more than to be a small part of the magic.

Except that nowadays, the fanart IS the magic. Without this degree of customer participation, films like Serenity and shows like Firefly just wouldn't have the same reach, nor the same staying power (the stuff that sells season X DVDs long after the closing titles have rolled).

The core of the problem is simple. Traditional IP owners think of the IP as being the primary source of value for them. In essence, they pay guards to surround the mine and miners to extract the value. The whole idea that the consumer could be adding equivalent value is alien to them and their infrastructure doesn't allow for flexibility or evolution (they are frozen in time by legal agreements and the lawyers that protect them).

The punch-line of this particular piece is that the fans are sending Universal an invoice for their services (more details here). You go girl:-)