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Just for Whimgrinder (and others really)

I know you are always chasing down folks using your imagery to sell plants, just like I'm chasing down people bootlegging my label's releaes releases or giving away downloads or using my art on their commercial products without paying me.

I received this today from ASCAP Daily Breifing (The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) which discusses a ruling on issuing DCMA take down notices. We could end up owing the copyright infringers money by unfairly taking down their infringing content... It doesn't just relate to music, it includes audio, video, artwork, photographs, etc.


Here's a plain language discussion of the Lenz Ruling:

Burns Auto Parts Super Premium blog » Blog Archive » The Danger of the Lenz Ruling

What a wonderful modern world! Maybe artists were starving before, but now you can be openly robbed of your work and then owe the robbers money. :awesome:
 
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This is like the burglars suing the homeowner when the dog bites them. So wrong.
 
Are you kidding me????? Well shoot, let's all stop producing anything that's unique! I hate to imagine the kind of society this can lead to.
 
What? How can anyone be THAT stupid? I know there are a lot of dumb people in the world, but whoever came up with this must have a negative IQ. :crazy:
 
What? How can anyone be THAT stupid? I know there are a lot of dumb people in the world, but whoever came up with this must have a negative IQ. :crazy:

Lol you actually expect the law/other people will do the right thing
or actually use a couple brain cells?

Society disgusts me more and more by each passing day
 
Now hold on a minute. The Lenz ruling isn't suggesting that people don't have a right to protect their work from misappropriation! It's simply stating that if - as a copyright holder - you are not willing to carefully consider whether or not the perceived infringement falls under the Fair Usage heading and act without due consideration, you could be responsible for damages. That does not seem unreasonable to me. Nobody is suggesting that as a copyright holder you can no longer file an appropriate DMCA take-down request! That's absurd.

Please do some reading: https://www.dmca.com/FAQ/Fair-Use
 
On fair use, nabbed from wikipedia. Emphasis mine.

17 U.S.C. § 107

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.[3]

For the example of unauthorized use of photos in an ebay listing: If you feel your copyright is being infringed upon, with your DMCA takedown notice a simple note "unauthorized use of work for commercial gain" shows due consideration of fair use, no? Or paste in the above and suggest whatever reason why it fails to fall into a protected category. I haven't read the entire ruling but it sounds like basically you need to show a "subjective belief" that the material does not fall under fair use.

Any time there's a ruling there'll be a party that abuses it, but this seems like a correction in the right direction. For too long have content creators had their content removed/blocked/deleted by large groups more-or-less arbitrarily submitting DMCA takedown requests with no options but to accept it.
 
Further, I don't see how the article got to their hypothetical about the youtube user suing the copyright holder and winning even if the item was not in Fair Use. The cited statute as described in the ruling

See P. 16 of the ruling here -- copy and paste doesn't work because of the formatting. Basically states that there needs to be a knowing, willful misrepresentation about the DMCA takedown request on the part of the copyright holder in order for any sort of countersuit to be valid. The copyright holder can even act "unreasonably in making the mistake" and not be liable. It seems like a really high bar if you look at some of the cases brought to the court by DMCA recipients that have been thrown out.
 
This case definitely is meant to help the little man, and content producers in general, not hurt them. This is meant, and wil lhopefully be used almsot solely for, ensuring that take down notices, a vast majority of which come form large holders of copyrights, are in good faith. It is so that if I fill a short video of my carnivorous plants on Yotube with a short clip of soothing music, they can't immediately demand a takedown without putting thought into it.
 
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