Machinima for Dummies: Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help.

Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help.

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:55:57 +0000

Yes! The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the US advocacy and defence group for digital rights, is on the case of the recent YouTube takedowns.

If you’ve had your Machinima video taken off YouTube in part of the Big Sweep, they’d like to help you - they’re experts in this stuff, and are looking to get these decisions reversed. Do call them!

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by My IT blog

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:08:03 +0100

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Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:00:28 +0000

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"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by Calling Cards

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:34:30 +0000

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"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by seo uk

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:19:21 +0000

I’m a bit confused as to what copyrights were violated, etc. I’m not knowledgeable on youtube’s terms of use, or what copyright issues are prevalent here, so I can’t really make an opinion at this point. Permanently disabling his account though? Seems a little harsh…

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Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:37:37 +0000

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"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by download precious

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:37:17 +0000

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"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by get pregnant fast

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 04:37:06 +0000

I didn’t use youtube for a long time, there are too many copyright problem.

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by Electronics Dubai

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:35:46 +0000

Thank you for giving the link of electronic frontier foundation. We should know what our rights are.

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Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:24:08 +0000

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Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:48:16 +0000

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"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by ed

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:02:30 +0100

I made a short piece of machinima with Machinimation and used some (highly appropriate) music by Frank Zappa for the soundtrack. Because it was one of my better pieces, I was miffed to find it had been disabled in Youtube and had been flagged for copyright violation. I decided to take the bull by the horns and challenged the decision using the form thoughtfully provided by Youtube for that very purpose (although they do use some fairly intimidating language, which is clearly designed to discourage any such challenge).

UK Law makes provision for students and teachers with a number of clauses in the Copyright Design and Patent Act (1988). I cited a clause and included a link to the relevant section of the Act. Here’s the clause that I believe covers my usage:

“Copyright in a sound recording, film, broadcast or cable programme is not infringed by its being copied by making a film or film sound-track in the course of instruction, or of preparation for instruction, in the making of films or film sound-tracks, provided the copying is done by a person giving or receiving instruction.”

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/ukpga19880048en_3#pt1-ch3-pb3-l1g32

The video was re-enabled within hours.

Clearly, there is scope here for bona fide UK students and academic staff to use this legislation to protect their work from over-zealous rights enforcers. Note, however, that the ruling only applies to those “giving or receiving instruction”.

While it might appear that the rest of the world will need to lobby the appropriate local legislators in order to make similar provision, I wonder if this bit of UK law could be waved around on the internets with an abandon similar to that enjoyed by North American legislation? (just what is the Digital Milleneum Act anyway?) Perhaps that’s something someone at the EFF might want to consider.

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:19:15 +0000

Good point, well made. Machinima has been caught in this net, but it’s not a net specifically designed for us.

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by ILL Robinson

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:02:51 +0000

Let’s be clear - this has nothing to do with Machinima as a practice.

YouTube (and their filtering system) are flagging videos that contain IP owned by others - usually a song underneath a Machinima work, or your vid of family & friends playing SingStar, etc. Once it is tagged as such, it is either removed or silenced.

The day YouTube targets Machinima in a wide net, will most likely be at the game developers request - and that’s not likely to happen.

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by Dxvid

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:23:59 +0000

It’s a good point about the views of the artists themselves although to be honest I can’t recall seeing a case taken by individuals - though that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. Mostly it seems these cases are taken by corporations as part of their overall strategy of controlling and monopolising the market.

My own view is that I put my stuff for free on the internet and people are welcome to use it if they want to - do to others as you would like them to do to you. But of course I don’t expect everyone to take that point of view and if I got a complaint from an individual I would probably take it down. But it hasn’t happened yet in over 4 years.

You could say my point of view is presumptuous - it presumes the good-will of the musician/game company. But I would say it’s fair use of material I already own. The musicians and game company’s had their rewards when I bought their products. So I suppose what I am advocating is unrestricted use of copyrighted material when it is not for commercial rewards. That of course doesn’t resolve YouTube’s dilemma, but it does leave non-profit organisations such as the Internet Archive in the clear.

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by Dr. Nemesis

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:35:22 +0000

I see Hugh, it’s an issue of popularity rather than availability. Now we’re getting somewhere.

I would say trying to maximise your views is somewhat different to being able to show your stuff at all.

Wether or not this action is fair (theres the side of the artist whose music is used, thats not much talked about in machinima circles), it’s obvious that as Youtube makes more money they have to atleast appear to deal with copyright ‘offences’ more. That means more scapegoatage, I imagine. Can’t have lots of stuff be ultra popular AND get away with breaking their rules. The times when Machinima was too small to show up on radar are obviously in the past. I think we just need to be more aware of that so we can adjust as needed. It’s not just a disadvantage.

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by Dxvid

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:54:42 +0000

I agree, there are better alternatives and people would be wise to make use of them considering the way YouTube are behaving. What annoys me is the way some people have been scape-goated as a gesture to Warners, Fox etc when everyone knows that YouTube is full of copyrighted content. It’s certainly not fair on the scape-goats!

Fan videos don’t harm anyone’s interests, in fact the best of them greatly enhance them - for free! YouTube should be defending it’s members interests (it’s making enough money out of them!) not destroying them.

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by Hugh

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:41:55 +0000

If your audience is on YouTube, it doesn’t help much to upload to Vimeo. Various people have commented that films uploaded to Vimeo get much less traffic.

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by Dr. Nemesis

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 04:25:31 +0000

If this is an issue of availability, it makes even less sense to me. Youtube is far from the only place in the world to post videos. Not to mention Machinima was around and being distributed on the net long before all this Web 2.0 doolally.

Or is it that people just want to fight so they don’t have to upload at one of the numerous other places? Doesn’t make much sense to me, but when uploading somewhere else is so simple, its all I can think of.

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by Dxvid

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:06:16 +0000

“Please refrain from uploading someone else’s copyrighted content to YouTube without authorisation.” Bye bye most machinima movies!

“Fair Use” is only a US defence and probably a red-herring here. What is really at issue are archaic and draconian copyright laws that are incapable of dealing sensibly with the digital age. That is something the EFF, and many others, are trying to change.

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by Hugh

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:02:26 +0000

I’d like these videos to be available. I don’t believe their takedown helps Machinima or the film world as a whole. The EFF is offering to help with that. Hence, posting this.

I don’t know what approach the EFF will be taking - but I’m not a legal expert, and they, erm, are.

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by Dr. Nemesis

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 09:16:46 +0000

I don’t see what EFF has to do with any of this. Youtube are within their rights, as is any other site, to restrict what they will accept on their servers. Even Machinima.com has certain requirements that have to be met for videos to qualify for hosting.

Fair use is a legal issue on it’s own, and one that Youtube has to think seriously about.

It’s our right to upload your videos to youtube specifically now? Youtube has some kind of legal obligation to accept videos that might qualify as fair use?

"Had your Machinima piece taken off YouTube? The Electronic Frontier Foundation want to help. " by moo Money

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:37:41 +0000

It’s a shame this came about a week too late for me. That YouTube letter about Viacom was way too threatening for me to want to risk my entire account, so I wiped everything. I believe it was all non-commercial. I wish everyone the best of luck in preventing what happened to me.