Update: The video in question is now accessible again. As long as a cat purring is still flagged as copyright infringement, there’s plenty of room for improvement. Ultimately, however, YouTube should consider giving its publishers more tools to counter inaccurate requests. His colleague Lawrence Lessig did the same a few years ago, with success, and apparently Google is interested in picking up the legal fees. Perhaps Professor Fisher could make a case out of this. There appears to be very little oversight of YouTube takedowns, if any, and with more copyright holders joining the Content-ID program the problems may get worse. The ‘takedown’ is likely to be an automated one, but that doesn’t make it less of an issue. However, the video in question was flagged and subsequently removed from public view by YouTube’s system. Given the educational nature of the clip, this would be an excellent example of fair use. Instead, Fisher highlights small segments ranging from 15 to roughly 40 seconds. None of the tracks, which include covers by Joe Cocker, Santana and Stevie Ray Vaughan, are played in full.

A more detailed look shows that it does indeed include some music clips, all covers of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing. Ironically, the video in question has the rather fitting title: “The Subject Matter of Copyright: Music.”Īs pointed out by Techdirt, the course is still available on the CopyrightX project website. This sandbox simulation tool is a great way to have fun and relax expressing your creativity no pressure, no defeat screen, just the pure unadulterated fun of creating a unique show of light and music. Most recently, Harvard Law professor William Fisher had one of his courses pulled from YouTube following a takedown request submitted by Sony Music. FWsim is an incredibly intuitive tool, so easy-to-use that within minutes you will be creating a fireworks display that will leave you amazed. However, this has had little impact on the Content-ID system which still flags a lot of legal content. Google recognizes the problems and recently offered to pay the legal bills of several people who argued that their removed videos are protected by ‘fair use’ legislation. We highlighted this issue a few years ago but in recent months opposition has been swelling. Unfortunately this process is far from flawless, resulting in many false and inaccurate takedown requests.įor regular Internet users YouTube’s Content-ID is particularly problematic. Week in and week out automated bots detect and report millions of alleged copyright infringements, which are then processed by the receiving site without a human ever looking at them.

Fwsim youtube copyright