Media giants make false claims of copyright ownership on YouTube to harass posters
The new game of the media big guys is to claim ownership of your videos on YouTube. YouTube and Google are so worried about being sued the next thing your videos are taken down and you get a black eye. Our video of the LCROSS crash on the moon yesterday was claimed by Associated Press.
AP claims copyright on public domain video on YouTube
The claim by Associated Press is totally bogus and amounts to harassment and abuse of process. The video was recorded by us from the NASA live broadcast of Crash on the Moon. We have two hours of footage recorded early yesterday morning.
Moon crash by LCROSS (video deleted by YouTube now back up on NJN Video)
NASA, as a US government agency, does not copyright its material and tells everyone the material is public domain.
“NASA images generally are not copyrighted. You may use NASA imagery, video and audio material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits and Internet Web pages.”
Once media is in the public domain, no one can later claim it is their copyrighted material. For Associated Press to make a claim that they now have a copyright on public domain broadcasts of NASA is an abuse of the system. They think we won’t complain but we did. We will pursue this to the end because it is an abuse of the law. The threat to a small organization is that YouTube will remove your account if you complain too much. The same thing happened with a video shot in Tehran on someone’s cell phone and given to the BBC. BBC watermarked and complained when we posted it. We wrote them and pointed out their own copy admitted it was not their copyright. The material was in the public domain.
So Fox News, who were nowhere to be found in Iran during May and June, claimed it as theirs. I objected and YouTube took off the copyright infringement notice. Small users have no rights. Most of these short videos would be allowed under Fair Use of news material. For big news corporations to claim them is bogus but the big guys never stopped at lying and deceit before. There are two other tribute videos that Sony has claimed music rights to.
One is a tribute to Neda.
The other Home of my Heart Cape Breton. The video is an slide show sent to me by a cousin. Sony music flagged the soundtrack as their copyright property. It’s back up on YouTube again.
They are amateur videos sent to me that I published. Sony wisely left them up since it might generate some interest in otherwise forgotten songs and performances. That’s how stupid all these copyright claims are. Sony has picked up on it. They now advertise the artist on the videos and more power to them.
By the by, the Bob Dylan video Beyond Here Lies Nothing was “leaked” just before the album came out this spring. It was my most popular video and just clicked 110,000 views on my channel and more than 80,000 on two other channels. Great advertising for Bob’s CD Together Through Life
Just one step away losing freedom of the press, freedom to disseminate public information and a police state.
Update Jan 3, 2010 – complaining to YouTube got our account pulled. The videos are back up now although there may be still some links that are broken. We are working to repair them. If you find a broken link, please report it to us.
Here’s the Bob Dylan video.
Update – June 2010 – we left YouTube. We just couldn’t keep up with the take downs.
Tea Party
hi-ya, awesome post.