Well I was watching a video of a music video of a song from 1982 and a thing I have seen on some descriptions says No Copyright Infringement Intended. For entertainment purposes of only. Does this protect them from a prosecution being brought against them for copyright theft by uploading copyrighted videos to YouTube in fact? And is putting the videos on it in breach of copyright law and is this civil law or criminal law and I was under the assumption that copyright breaches were civil law and not criminal law and it is a British music video put on it if it makes any difference and if the owner of the video was to take them to court or bring legal action if this message would be a situation where nothing could be done even if these were important legal matters in fact?
Does putting message on videos protect people uploading copyrighted videos from legal action using Y
I’m gonna go ahead and guess it doesn’t protect them anymore then putting a statement on your facebook page that says ‘facebook isn’t allowed to use my pictures blah blah blah’.
Just something that people see and repeat.
I always kinda chuckle to myself when I see a statement like you (OP) mentioned. Like I was really confused whether or not this youtuber with a few hundred viewers owns the rights to a Nikki Minaj song.
I’m sure all the people with that text on their videos gets the same copyright notice from youtube that all the people without it get.
My understanding is that it protects only to the same extent that leaving a note saying “No Murder Intended” on the body of the person you just killed does.
Relevant (but long) recent Tom Scott video
It has no effect whatsoever. The disclaimers are based on a very common misconception of copyright law being about claims of authorship or legal ownership, or in other words, about avoiding plagiarism. In fact, the disclaimer might make a hypothetical lawsuit worse if it’s interpreted as an admission of willful infringement, which increases the amount of damages the infringer could be required to pay out.
But, just like it says in the name, copyright is about who has the right to copy a work. There are other common misconceptions that copyrighted works can be freely distributed as long as one doesn’t make some kind of profit while doing it, which is also false. Plus widespread misunderstanding over “fair use” and what it is and isn’t. There is a world of folk law and other beliefs about this. The bottom line is that unless you’ve received explicit permission from the copyright holder in the form of some kind of license, you can’t make copies of a protected work unless it falls into a few fairly narrow “fair use” exceptions, and republishing something on YouTube almost always will not. People believe the disclaimers work because they don’t get sued or have the video immediately taken down, but that’s because there aren’t “copyright police” looking for infringements. The copyright holder has to care enough to initiate an action, and often they don’t care about these one-off YouTube videos or at least don’t find them right away.
It’s utter bullshit with absolutely no legal force.
It’s also popular enough to be a staple on places like YouTube.
The lesson here is that people don’t understand copyright, and expect it to be a law against plagiarism. “Plagiarism” isn’t even a concept under the law, really, and even if it was, copyright law isn’t intended to outlaw it: copying large amounts of another work’s style is plagiarism by any standard, but it’s completely legal under copyright law, and making a song which kinda-sorta-maybe sounds like another isn’t plagiarism but is copyright infringement according to the lawsuits surrounding “Blurred Lines” and a few other songs.
Point being: People understand plagiarism, or think they do, and don’t understand copyright. They, therefore, more-or-less demand that copyright law is about plagiarism, and that giving proper credit insulates them from copyright actions against them. This is, again, utter bullshit with no foundation in the law, but it’s very common, and quite resistant to being rooted out.
No protection at all, but some users also include a note that invites email requests to take down the material, which might save their asses from getting dragged into court. Assuming that the provable injury is negligible, it’s probably easier for copyright holders to just say “Yo! Take it down now” than to file legal paperwork.
If anything, it’d make their case worse, since it’d be evidence that they knew that the work wasn’t public domain.
The original video was for entertainment purposes only. So what?
That quote sounds like a disclaimer they put on video poker machines in bars to suggest that the machine manufacturer is not responsible if someone uses their machine for illegal gambling.
Registered copyrights include statutory damages, so the copyright holder doesn’t have to prove any actual damages.
I agree though that if someone has a contact method and will take things down on request, that’s probably less hassle than suing them and is likely semi-effective protection against getting sued, even though it offers no legal protection.
Years ago (in the 1980’s and perhaps earlier) there was a widely-circulated document on Usenet written by someone who claimed to be a copyright lawyer (and with no obvious reason to doubt that), discussing in lay terms the principles of copyright law for the masses of Usenetters who didn’t understand the law. It described “copyright” as being a bundle of five specific rights that the creator has; the distinctions between registered and unregistered copyrights; the uses and abuses of the © and © notations; and so forth.
I don’t know if that document is still around. I wish I could find it. Does this sound familiar to anyone here? Anyone know if it’s still up somewhere, or have a link to it?
IIRC, it seemed like a very valuable document that everyone who posts other peoples’ stuff on-line ought to know.
This sounds like it except the last date is from 1994. There really wouldn’t have been any such document prior to the 80s. USENET was just getting going then. Note that this doesn’t cover later materials such as the 1998 term extension or the DMCA.
I love this bit in section 3.5: “Today the law is very clear: the United States government and the governments of each state may be sued for copyright infringement, and may not plead immunity as a defense.” The current SCOTUS disagrees, suggesting that Congress should pass a law to remedy this. Which they did. In 1991.
So take what this document says with a huge grain of salt.
Yup. It’s evidence toward willful infringement, showing that they knew damn well that they were infringing, but they didn’t want to get sued for it. Willful infringement is about five times worse than your everyday infringement.
That said, it’s unlikely that it would come to that.
Is it really that much worse? Could someone actually successfully argue that they thought that new Beyonce song was in the public domain?
$30,000 v $150,000.
Not in court, probably not. Unless Beyonce or her producers said something that could be construed as giving permission to post the video. But even then… I mean, you can’t actually steal Steal this Book.
Yes negligent v. willful, but as a juror I would have a difficult time believing any argument that someone simply did not know that a mass produced song or movie was subject to copyright.
I could maybe buy an argument that this clip of an unknown artist from 1937 was thought to be public domain, but not most of the stuff on YouTube.
Yeah. Something like 97% of those sorts of suits never make it to a courtroom, though. You’ve gotta be damned and determined that you’re right in your claim that It’s public domain or It’s fair use and just keep pushing for it to get that far unless there are megabucks at stake.
[QUOTE=Cleophus;22225581…Plus widespread misunderstanding over “fair use” and what it is and isn’t. There is a world of folk law and other beliefs about this…[/QUOTE]
My bolding
Am I the only person left wondering if this is a mistake or a wicked pun?
j
Sigh
I’ll have another go:
My bolding
Am I the only person left wondering if this is a mistake or a wicked pun?
j
So this is why it was so wonderful to see Neil Gailman giving blanket permission to LeVar Burton and any schoolteacher to read his works as they wanted. LeVar was looking for public domain children’s stories to read online and was having trouble finding any.
Are there any creative works that earn more in infringement suits and settlements than they do in royalties, i.e. a work that seems to exist more for suing people than for selling to people?