TechCrunch is reporting that YouTube's content filters have stopped allowing uploads of new iterations of the Hitler meme - you know, the hundreds of videos where Hitler rants about...Windows Vista, or Sarah Palin, or how much the Phantom Menace sucked. (Those videos.) The article, Hitler Is Very Upset That Constantin Film Is Taking Down Hitler Parodies reports that newer version of the meme have been replaced with, "This video contains content from Constantin Film, who has blocked it on copyright grounds," despite the obvious claims to fair use (transformation! parody! politics! speech! endless back-and-forth creativity and engagement); they also think it is likely that the filtering system will slowly crawl its way through and delete all the others.

YouTube's filter won't even allow its users to make the obvious response: Hitler Reacts to YouTube Blocking "Hitler Reacts" Video Parodies. There's something satisfyingly, if depressingly, ironic here, just the way there was when amazon deleted purchased copies of Orwell's 1984 off the Kindle.

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.

Summary of a couple of panels on Day 2:

Automated DMCA Takedowns and Web Video: Scott Smitelli, a professional sound designer and editor, is the fellow who wrote Fun with YouTube's Audio Content ID System, in which he tried to test out the limits of YouTube's fingerprinting system for audio. Conclusions: the software is mainly interested in the first 30 seconds of a song, and can be thwarted by pitch or time alterations of over 6% (which may be unhelpful to the musically sensitive among us, but there you go.) Kevin Driscoll and others from YouTomb discussed the January Massacre: the massive increase of takedowns in December, 2008 and January, 2009. On a graph, it looks like takedowns have dropped off since then, but that may be deceptive: in fact, it seems like things are being detected so fast (within ten minutes) that YouTomb can't keep track of them, or to put it another way: takedowns are low because stuff's never getting UP in the first place. A suggestion: that it would be great if every takedown left a webpage with a card saying, "This has been taken down," because in many cases, people are not aware of what they can't have. Oliver Day, also from YouTomb, told a chilling story: the original filmmaker who shot the clouds that were used in the Anonymous anti-Scientology ads had his original footage taken down--not in deference to those ads, but in deference to a Huffington Post anti-Giuliani parody of those ads. As Day put it, "The power is with the powerful": even though the original filmmaker's footage was there first, it was assumed that he was infringing the Huffington Post, and not the other way around.

Who Owns Popular Culture? Remix and Fair Use in the Age of Corporate Mass Media: This was the panel hosted by Jonathan McIntosh and featuring animator Nina Paley (of Sita Sings The Blues, Neil Sieling from the Center for Social Media, political remixer Elisa Kreisigner, Karl Fogel from questioncopyright.org, and OTW Board Member Francesca Coppa. The panel largely discussed what the policing of online video and the over-enforcement of copyright means for artists, remixers, and those interested in free speech. Nina Paley answered the question literally, by providing a list of who owns popular culture--or in her case, literally, the songs, mostly from 1927-28, that she used in Sita Sings The Blues, while Elisa Kreisinger evoked many the important visual artists, from Duchamp to Koons to Kruger to Lichtenstein to Warhol, for whom remixing and recontextualizing pop culture was a key artistic move. (She also showed her remixes of the Queer Housewives of New York City.)

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!