When Copyright Goes Wrong

Sometimes the quest to protect intellectual property does more harm than good – particularly when those claiming to be the protectors are not the actual creators of the property in question…

A Striking Argument

As ISPs are being ‘encouraged’ to adopt a three-strikes policy to cut off Internet access to people suspected of illegally downloading or sharing copyrighted content, the obvious issue is how do we actually identify such content, and those who are downloading it. There is a significant difference between an IP address and a person, and cutting off someone’s Internet access without legal due process is a worrying prospect.

In any case, copyright is rarely a black and white issue – as illustrated by Viacom’s rather farcical lawsuit against Google, where about 100 of the music videos in question were actually uploaded to YouTube by Viacom themselves. More recently, we have stories of music blogs being forced to take down media that were actually approved and sent to them by the same company.

OK GO – Stop That

Another example of ‘not getting it’ is the way OK Go’s new corporate management refuses to allow embedding of their videos. OK Go are a band who made their breakthrough on the back of a simple, cheap and clever YouTube video that went viral – and yet now they have ‘made it’, they are no longer allowed to do the things that worked for them in the first place.

The band themselves posted an open letter describing their displeasure with this new policy, and it’s an interesting insight into the current state of (some of) the industry…