Discussion

From the business section of the Guardian this week: Google seeks to turn a profit from YouTube copyright clashes. The article's subtitle gives you the gist: "Group is working to persuade music and video companies to cash in rather than clamp down when their content is uploaded." In short, Google wants to use their content fingerprinting system to report uses--even transformed uses--to copyright holders and then to offer them the chance to put ads on user-generated content. There's lots wrong with that, but perhaps the wrongest is the idea that the companies have the right to take things down because "because the use does not fit the original's values." C'mon, Google! Don't be evil!

In brighter news, UK Will Urge EC To Legalise Mashups, Format-Shifting, Content Sharing. This "could include legalising more outright copying, the creation of sound/image mashups, format-shifting and sharing material with family and friends."

Relatedly, folks seem to be figuring out that the DVR isn't actually the death of commercial television and that so-called "music pirates" actually buy more music. While we've heard this song before, optimistically copyright holders will eventually figure out that they shouldn't be afraid of new technologies.

A few legal stories that might be of interest to followers of the OTW:

You might think fighting robots only happens in video games, in which case: read the The Slow Road to Fair Use: Why it Takes Three Weeks to Post Your Youtube Video, a guest post by video remixer IKAT381 at politicalremixvideo.com. IKAT381 chronicles the three week--but ultimately successful--slog to get a vid up on YouTube, a process that included fighting the upload bot, which did an automatic takedown, lodging a dispute through YouTube's built-in online tool, and then lodging a DMCA counternotice when the dispute was denied (by another bot?) in favor of UMG, the record company that owned the Weezer song.

Persistence paid off, but as IKAT381 points out, "imagine if I was a career artist who wanted to dedicate more time to creating than to looking up copyright law and counter-notice procedures. Or imagine I had kids, or school, or any number of things that might be more important to me than being a copyright geek."

IKAT381 concludes: In the year 2009, copyright disputes have been taken over by robots. In the year 2010, copyright disputes should be handled by people.

(You might also enjoy the vid. Super Pork and Beans All-Stars (Weezer Remix) is a tribute to IKAT381's favorite internet celebrities, of which you're sure to recognize more than a few!)

We're not taking any more votes. Thank you for participating!

As part of the process of building the Archive, we're not only busy adding shiny new features, we're also working on polishing up existing ones! One of the areas we're reviewing at the moment is Bookmarks. The core functionality is already in place, but we're in the process of designing the next version, and there's one issue on which we'd particularly like your feedback.

At the moment, bookmarks fall into two categories: private bookmarks and public bookmarks.

• Private bookmarks are visible only to the user who created them.
• Public bookmarks are visible to all and can be viewed on the bookmarks page (currently named "recs", but soon to be renamed in response to user feedback).

We're now considering whether it should also be possible to mark a bookmark specifically as a rec, creating a third category: recs.

• Recs could be either public or private (although we're assuming that users would mostly want them to be visible to other users!) and when public would show up on the bookmarks page. We would probably add an option to filter this page so that users could choose to view only recs.

We would probably add some kind of visual indication that a bookmark was a rec - see the image below for an example of a specific user's bookmarks and how the different types might be distinguished (click on the image to go to a larger version). Please note, this is a very rough impression. Our current redesign of bookmarks will make them look much fuller and prettier than this, and this is very much a potential concept design, not a finished thing. The red text is for labelling purposes, not a part of the proposed design.

There would be some advantages to this:

• People who feel strongly that there's a distinction between bookmarks and recs could mark theirs accordingly.
• People who are looking for recs would be able to easily identify them, and filter out those bookmarks not specifically marked as recs - for example those which are 'to read'.

On the other hand, every feature comes at a cost, and we can see some disadvantages:

• It will add another field to the bookmarks form, making another thing for people to fill in.
• Users can already tag their bookmarks as recs (or whatever else they wish), so readers can already find things which have been specifically recced.

We know from feedback that some people feel strongly about bookmarks/recs (as mentioned above, we're changing our terminology so that bookmarks aren't identified as recs unless the bookmarker wants them to be). However, we don't want to unnecessarily complicate things; if most people's needs are met by public and private bookmarks (which is, after all, how delicious.com works), there's no point in confusing the matter.

This is where you come in! We'd like to know what you think. We should note that we're not promising to follow the results of the poll - ultimately we have to go with what is technically feasible - but we will certainly take it into consideration. Please select the option you'd prefer, and feel free to say why in the comments, or suggest another option entirely!

When you visit the poll, if the page indicates a vote has already been made, then someone else at your IP address has visited the page before you. In order to cast your vote, create an account or log in.

The OTW's Content Policy is pleased to put the following updates to the Archive's Terms of Service forward for two weeks of public discussion. The full Terms of Service can be found linked on the archive page, but for clarity, all emendations and new policy items are listed below the cut.

Fanfiction writers and other makers of transformative works might be interested in the lawsuit brought by the famously reclusive J.D. Salinger and his lawyers against writer J.D. California, who has written a sequel to "Catcher in the Rye" called "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye," which tells the story of Holden Caufield as an old man. Unlike fanfiction, "Coming Through The Rye" is a commercial work, but it'll still be an interesting case to keep an eye on. Read more about the case at CNN, with a more thorough legal overview courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.

The OTW belatedly joins in celebrating the restoration of Glockgal's Avatar site on Zazzle. As you may remember, Glockgal's store was TOSed ostensibly for violating Viacom's intellectual property rights, even though Glockgal's items were mostly textual expressions of her critique of the all-white casting of the new live-action Avatar film. Viacom was quick to assert that they support fair use and only take things down when they aren't creative or political; they also invited Glockgal to submit a DMCA counternotice. The OTW was happy to help Glockgal formulate and direct that counternotice, and we have been so delighted to see people from all around the internet banding together to take a stand against unfair takedowns. This (relatively speedy!) victory is a victory for all of us and proof that banding together and defending our rights works.

The takeaway? If someone is infringing YOUR free speech or fair use rights, SAY SOMETHING. TELL SOMEONE!

Greetings and Salutations! Calling all challenge mods, archivists, and people with vivid fannish imaginations! If you've run a fannish challenge or exchange, moderated a challenge community, edited a zine, or put together a themed rec list, we want to talk to you. If you've participated in a fannish challenge and/or have ever thought in detail about how to run a challenge, please also help us out! We're in the process of developing the design for two essential pieces of functionality on the Archive of Our Own Roadmap, Version 0.7: Collections and Challenges.

Earlier this week, fan artist Glockgal discovered that all but one of the designs at her Zazzle store had been removed "because they "contained content in violation of Viacom's intellectual property rights." But the shirts contained not only original graphic designs, but political speech, protesting the casting of Asian or Inuit characters in the film of Avatar: The Last Airbender by white actors.

Apparently, you need permission from Viacom to say: "Aang can stay Asian and still save the world" or "The Last Airbender: Putting the Cauc back in Asian" or "The Last Airbender: Brown/Asian/Colored Actors NEED NOT APPLY". These design were entirely textual, and obviously political: Glockgal called her store Racebending.com and contextualized its products as a form of political activism: "Stop Hollywood White-Washing of the upcoming movie The Last Airbender!" Glockgal is now selling some of the designs with "CENSORED BY VIACOM" plastered across them--but since when does Viacom own political speech about its products?

We've heard from a number of people that YouTube has recently blocked a number of fanvids due to alleged music rights violations. But YouTube also provides a mechanism for vidders to assert their right to fair use: a quick and easy dispute process.