9 years ago
5
Anti-Piracy Group Hits Indie Creators For Using the Word 'Pixels'
An anti-piracy firm working for Columbia Pictures has hit Vimeo with a wave of bogus copyright takedowns just because people used the word 'Pixels' in their video titles. Several indie productions are affected, including an art-focused NGO, an award-winning short movie and a royalty free stock footage company.
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This seems to be Intellectual Property laws working as intended. Company A submitted 10 takedown requests for infringement. Pages were taken down. The recipients objected, and as of right now all but one of the pages are back up.
I honestly can't tell if you're being serious or not. If that's them working as intended, the laws need an overhaul. Maybe it didn't have too much of an effect in this instance because it was old content, but taking down a creator's work can cost them big in income if it's taken down right away. If it's a false take down, there are unfair damages to the creator that the creator just has to suck up now because the company that made the claim isn't in any way held responsible for their false claims.
I was serious about that. If it needs an overhaul, how? If the people hurt by these claims want to hold Entura responsible, they are able to. There are several examples of the EFF helping people do exactly that.
The idea behind the DMCA is that the host for content does not need to be a copyright lawyer to host something. Almost any proposed change would require the host to determine the line for what is an is not Fair Use, which is at least a somewhat blurry line in a lot of cases. The situation with these videos, as I see it, is that Vimeo received a complaint from Entura, a company it had worked with before, that videos were infringing on their copyright. It seems like a safe assumption that next time the result will require a review, given the publicity this event has gotten. All in all, that seems like its working like intended.
How unbearably stupid. How broken is our intellectual property protection system when a giant corporation can shut down pre-existing material just because it shares a word with the title of a movie?
What's next? Any game featuring the word "Star" receives a takedown notice from George Lucas for infringing upon "Star Wars"? Can we not use the word "father" because it "infringes" upon trademarks of "The Godfather"?
How to we stop this petty nonsense and still give content creators the ability to protect their IP?
This is what's fucked up with American copyright laws. A large company can simply take a common word from English, turn it into a brand and go bonkers ruining smaller companies ang NGOs with their extortionist tactics. What is this ? Midle age Feudal Europe ?