Copyright Isn't Just Confusing, It Can Result in Us Seeing Less Art

[roseofbattle]

Copyright Isn't Just Confusing, It Can Result in Us Seeing Less Art

Georgia Tech research has determined many artists with original and remixed art prefer not publishing their work to having it stolen or taken down for possible copyright infringement.

content creators not violating copyright law [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/copyright]. Research from Georgia Tech has determined confusing copyright law in online communities creates a chilling effect in creative publishing.

Researchers Casey Fieseler (also known as the Barbie book remixer [http://www.themarysue.com/barbie-remix/]), Jessica L. Feuston, and Amy S. Bruckman examined eight online communities where creative appropriation is common. Using the Alexa search engine, they identified keywords for specific media types and chose online communities with active public posts and user-generated content. They then collected discussions about copyright on the eight sites with keywords relating to copyright.

In general, people posting about copyright were usually expressing problems with copyright policy. Even when people said they had looked into copyright law, they were still confused what was allowed. Especially for remixes, where copyright law is gray and on a case-by-case basis, people were unable to find community policies sufficient for explaining what was allowed. The researchers note this was prevalent on YouTube thanks to the Content ID system, YouTube's automated content matching service for tracking down uses of others' work.

With all of this confusion over copyright and sites' specific policies, content creators expressed fear over their work being removed due to policy violation, their work being copied and distributed without their permission, being shamed by the community for violating a rule or norm, or deciding not to share their work at all.

Fieseler, Feuston, and Bruckman determined this chilling effect was present; in their data, many people had said they chose not to share their work. The intention of copyright law has always been to promote creativity, but it can have the opposite effect of making content creators feel their work is not safe or legal. Congress hasn't made a substantial update to copyright law since the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, though it has some more minor enactments to the law. [http://copyright.gov/title17/92preface.html]

Many fan artists and video creators will cite fair use as their protection for transformative works, yet sites like YouTube and DeviantArt present fair use as a limited, complex situation where content creators should seek a lawyer. YouTube's Copyright School [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InzDjH1-9Ns] says, "You could get in a lot of trouble. That's how the law works."

When artists and creators feel unsupported by a community's policies or are afraid, they decide it's easier not to share their work. The researchers concluded online communities could provide copyright policies in simpler terminology that would not confuse content creators who are not well versed in the legal terms. People representing the site could also answer questions about copyright. In addition, they suggested sites prompt users to acknowledge if the work is their own or found elsewhere upon uploading.

YouTube recently updated its Content ID [http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/08/youtube-now-tells-you-how-copyrighted-music-will-affect-your-video-before-you-upload-it/] so that content creators using copyrighted music will see what will happen to their video as they upload it instead of finding out afterward. While it doesn't solve the false positives Content ID will find, it does give creators a heads-up on how it identified the work.

When copyright law, which is supposed to protect and encourage artists, starts to hinder creative work, it's time for the law to be revisited and reexamined entirely. Fieseler, Feuston, and Bruckman's research, "Understanding Copyright Law in Online Creative Communities" is available to read online [https://cfiesler.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/fiesler_cscw2015.pdf] and will be presented at the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing in March 2015.

Source: "Understanding Copyright Law in Online Creative Communities" [https://cfiesler.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/fiesler_cscw2015.pdf]

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[Daaaah Whoosh]

I feel like copyright law is just one of those things that there's no good solution for. People who create original content are never going to get all the money they deserve, because there are always people trying to leech off of them. On the other hand, trying to protect content creators ends up hindering them just as much. I'm all for finding the best middle ground, but until proven otherwise I will stick by my assumption that everyone who tries to do good things ends up getting screwed over because people who do bad things are able to cheat the system.

 

[Entitled]

Copyright was broken long before the online communities habit of derivative creation revealed how widely it censors creative work.

Originally copyright was supposedly created "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Compared to that principle, the very idea of copyrighting whole "franchises", and thus gaining censorship control over other people's respective writings because they belong to an earlier writers' "IP", would sound absurd and hypocritical, if not for how much we got used to it in the past century.

When a new painting, a video game, or a story, is rendered unpublishable, or even outright censored out of existence, because "it's someone else's property" than it's creator's, we are not talking about protecting artists, we are talking about authorizing CERTAIN artists to completely disenfranchise others, and beyond that, even deprive them of basic self-expression rights.

 

[Entitled]

People who create original content are never going to get all the money they deserve, because there are always people trying to leech off of them.

There are plenty of areas in life, where one's work inevitably ends up benefiting others without compensation. Not all of these are thought of as "leeching", they are called "Positive externalties".

If you keep bees for honey, the nearby fruit plantation can end up benefiting from the increased pollination you provide. If you renovate your house, property values rise everywhere in the street.

As long as both parties are motivated to keep doing what they do, motivated by their own interests, it's all right. It would only be leeching, where the entire system relies on one party taking up too much of the other's burden. (for example if 99% of people vaccinate themselves, also protecting the freeloading 1% from the risk of an outbreak). In that case, there is a risk that the whole thing collapses in a tragedy of commons.

In the case of copyright, someone drawing a piece of fan art, or making a Let's Play video (or even making money from it!), is clearly the virtous type of externality. Yes, it's existence relies on someone's earlier work, but it's not taking money from that other works, they both benefit from each other's existence. Other people making money thanks to your work, doesn't mean that you have been ripped off.

Copyright should only apply to actual copying of wholesale works, as an attempt to divert paying customers from another work with no separate creative merit of your own, not to artists censoring artists.

 

[Duskflamer]

I assume that's supposed to be an "or" not an "are" in the opening blurb?

 

[Shiftygiant]

Personally I get terrified of submitting things I work on, such as stories, under a fear that I will be accused of copying obscure literature or just having someone take my work and claim it their own. I must have half an anthology hidden in my computer because of this.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

And information and education and inspiration This is what I have been saying all along. We need copyright to focus on revenue and not merely distribution by itself.

 

[Travis Fischer]

Violating copyrights on YouTube is a three strikes and you're out offense. I don't see why making false claims shouldn't be the same. If you have a history of making claims on videos you have no legitimate claim to, then you lose the ability to make claims. Or, at the very least, lose the ability to use the Content ID system and instead have to issue every claim by hand.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Oh, youtube finally lets uploaders test whether the whistling of an iconic theme tune, an audio source off in the distance being picked up by the mic or LPing a Star Wars game with the Williams score well get content matched. At least they did something they should have done when they first started this content ID BS.

The article is right. There are probably many talented people who don't bother giving their critical review of things, doing sweet remixes of songs, fair use re-edit of video clips, and many other things because of the vague and and often counter-intuitive terminology in these laws. (Jerks, like Tommy Wiseau with The Room and Sega with (something I can't remember), using and abusing copyright as a form of critical censorship does not help the situation.) I'd bet plenty of artists fear going through the headache of fighting YT's system if the works they own and posted themselves are flagged. Copyright law has been twisted into a weapon that corporations wield, sometimes blindly, when it was supposed to be a shield for writers and other artists.

 

[Entitled]

Violating copyrights on YouTube is a three strikes and you're out offense. I don't see why making false claims shouldn't be the same. If you have a history of making claims on videos you have no legitimate claim to, then you lose the ability to make claims. Or, at the very least, lose the ability to use the Content ID system and instead have to issue every claim by hand.

Entirely illegal claims are the lesser problem, the deeper issue is with legal but harmful copyright claims. It's not just ContentID that is broken, but Fair Use law itself. It works on a case by case basis, so the line betwen a "transformative" and a "derivative" work can depend on a judge's mood, or on a prejudice against stereotypical "fan-art" formats, and renowned genres of "high art" like pastiches or collages.

Even when working as intended, copyright harms creativity, because "working as intended" still means creators controlling what new works other creators are allowed to create, and censor the rest.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

And the people who exploit the copyright system like it this way. They'd much rather control who can issue any sort of entertainment or educational material; it's the dream of all middlemen.

...and Sega with (something I can't remember)

It was Shining Force 3 that happened with. Popular opinion holds that Sega ContentID-matched anyone with remotely similar material so that their trailer would be top on any YouTube search. Sega denies they had anything to do with it.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Violating copyrights on YouTube is a three strikes and you're out offense. I don't see why making false claims shouldn't be the same. If you have a history of making claims on videos you have no legitimate claim to, then you lose the ability to make claims. Or, at the very least, lose the ability to use the Content ID system and instead have to issue every claim by hand.

The problem with that is that it's often huge companies that own tens of thousands of different properties that send out these orders thousands of times a day, and even a tiny fraction of a percent of automated claims made in error would put them over the limit. It would be far easier for them to contract such work out to outside firms which issue a pile of claims, inevitably make a mistake, then fold and re-open under a slightly different name; the megacorp still issues as many claims as they like, just now the people in their "rights protection department" work in a different building.

OT: The plural of anecdote is not evidence. I don't doubt that draconian copyright enforcement and rampant piracy convince some people to not share their work, but there has got to be a better way of gathering stats for that than trawling Youtube comments, counting how many posts hit your keyword filter.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

And the people who exploit the copyright system like it this way. They'd much rather control who can issue any sort of entertainment or educational material; it's the dream of all middlemen.

...and Sega with (something I can't remember)

It was Shining Force 3 that happened with. Popular opinion holds that Sega ContentID-matched anyone with remotely similar material so that their trailer would be top on any YouTube search. Sega denies they had anything to do with it.

Oh yeah, that's what is was. It's kinda funny how those videos they flagged were fine months and years before the incident and many didn't even have footage of the game. It totally must have been a glitch in Youtube's ContentID algorithms. /sarcasm

OT: The plural of anecdote is not evidence. I don't doubt that draconian copyright enforcement and rampant piracy convince some people to not share their work, but there has got to be a better way of gathering stats for that than trawling Youtube comments, counting how many posts hit your keyword filter.

I thought, from the wording of the article, they found posts using keywords and actually read the views of the posters. But, if they really did go off keyword hits, that's just lazy (like unreliable, automated copyright enforcement lazy).

I'd sure hate to sift through Youtube's comments, for both the faith-inhumanity-destroying bile and stupidity and the rather inane comment system that is horrible for than a few dozen posts.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Draconian enforcement measures such as automated ID systems do make the situation worse, but the fundamental problem is well over a century of mostly corporate lobbying has completely bastardised the very basic intent of copyright law.

And not only that, but they've been running an ongoing PR/brainwashing thing alongside it to try and convince the general public that these changes are a good thing, when in fact a lot of anecdotal evidence suggests it has the opposite of the primary intended effect copyright laws were supposed to have.

Copyright is supposed to encourage the creation of new content. Not stifle it to protect the interests of large corporations.

Just look at what happened when Disney risked Mickey Mouse going into the public domain. What happened? The law was changed to avoid it...

Think about this for a moment: As originally defined, copyright lasted at the very most 25 years. And it was implicit in it's very definition that this was an agreement between the creator of content, and the general public.
"We agree to give you exclusive control and the ability to make money off your work for 25 years. In return, you relinquish exclusive ownership of it, and after the copyright expires it is public domain for everyone to use."

Yet somehow now we've turned it into some kind of argument that a copyrighted work is 'owned' by it's creator, and that the laws exist as an extension of 'property' laws.

Which is... Ridiculous, and a very harmful position to take on something so abstract.


Just think about how different the world would be if the original concept and intent of copyright laws still held:

Anything older than 25 years would be in the public domain.

You know what's older than 25 years?

The lord of the Rings.
Star Wars.
Mario.
Zelda.
Many Disney characters and films.
Dungeons & Dragons
Jaws
Back to the Future
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Star Trek
Indiana Jones
Super Man
Batman
X-men

... I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Imagine what the world would look like if anyone, anywhere could take the things in this list and do whatever they wanted with them?

Because that's what would be the case with copyright laws as they were originally defined.

We lose SO much when the very concept of 'public domain' is basically being eroded piece by piece.
Already it's been damaged so much by lengthy copyright terms that nothing of any direct cultural relevance to anyone that's still alive exists in the public domain (unless the creator had chosen to do so explicitly)

That is very damaging to our collective culture. And you can see the frayed edges by the sheer volume of works that are created on a daily basis that in effect ignore copyright laws completely, (with the creator just hoping for the best)

The only way to pretend this damage ISN'T being done, is to argue that nothing that can have copyright applied to it has any value beyond the financial benefits it grants it's creator.
Which... Is a rather sad position to take.

 

[Ark of the Covetor]

... I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Imagine what the world would look like if anyone, anywhere could take the things in this list and do whatever they wanted with them?

Because that's what would be the case with copyright laws as they were originally defined.

We lose SO much when the very concept of 'public domain' is basically being eroded piece by piece.
Already it's been damaged so much by lengthy copyright terms that nothing of any direct cultural relevance to anyone that's still alive exists in the public domain (unless the creator had chosen to do so explicitly)

That is very damaging to our collective culture. And you can see the frayed edges by the sheer volume of works that are created on a daily basis that in effect ignore copyright laws completely, (with the creator just hoping for the best)

The only way to pretend this damage ISN'T being done, is to argue that nothing that can have copyright applied to it has any value beyond the financial benefits it grants it's creator.
Which... Is a rather sad position to take.

Whole post is great, but this in particular is worth emphasising. I mean there's a perfect example over the last few years; Sherlock Holmes is public domain(no thanks to the Conan Doyle estate trying to sue it back into copyright, the fucks), and we've got three distinct takes on the character and story across different media each with its own merits. The fact that the BBC Sherlock(reimagined into the modern day), the US TV show Elementary(reimagined into the modern day, in America, with a reframing of Sherlock's drug use into a study of addiction recovery), and the RDJ movies(themselves drawing from a comic book reimagining of the character as a Victorian action-hero) existed contemporaneously didn't harm them or the ability of the groups responsible to make money from their work, indeed it's likely that they fed into each others' success.

After a point, works of fiction, musical compositions etc, they become part of the public consciousness, "pop culture", part of the creative language, and that's a good thing. If copyright law were working as intended, that would be a great thing; it gives creators a broader base to work from, it exposes people to more ideas and themes, and it prevents artists from becoming lazy, misanthropic, litigious twats who make a living suing newer artists for writing a riff that "sounds too similar" to work they did decades before.

 

[SecondPrize]

It's not that confusing. The main problem people seem to have is that "because I want to" isn't justifiable grounds for using other people's work. Say you're a streamer and you want to play a song, don't ask yourself "do I want to play this song," but rather ask if you have permission to play the song. It's the same for games, sure you can play clips for reviews but if you want to broadcast the entirety of a game, you should be asking yourself if you've been given permission to do so.

 

[Entitled]

It's not that confusing. The main problem people seem to have is that "because I want to" isn't justifiable grounds for using other people's work.

Yet apparently, "because I want to" is enough justification to entirely censor other people's work, if you end up on the right side of copyright law, and you can claim that all their work is really just a form of copying.

This kind of black and white acceptance that everything that a copyright covers is "someone else's work", and every infringement is merely "using it", just covers up the harms of copyright under tautological self-justifications.

This is not about piracy. Even if we can all agree that sticking someone else's book in the photocopier, and selling your own copies, or streaming the film your cellphone camera-recorded of a new movie, shouldn't be allowed, the problem is that copyright also ends up restricting the production of creative content, that's existence might depend on earlier works' "usage" too, yes, but at the same time it's also a valuable work not unlike as the original copyright claimant's, yet the law entirely benefits the former while disenfranchising the latter.

When "You could get in a lot of trouble" for painting new pictures, editing new videos, or writing new stories, thanks to a system that's supposed to incentivize artists, something has gone terribly wrong.

 

[Entitled]

... I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Imagine what the world would look like if anyone, anywhere could take the things in this list and do whatever they wanted with them?

Because that's what would be the case with copyright laws as they were originally defined.

If copyright would work as originally defined, you could also do whatever you want with Frozen, Game of Thrones, or Bioshock Infinite, short of redistributing the actual products on your own.

Copyright was written to regulate direct copying of artists "respective writings", up until the late 19th century, it was deemed that even unlicensed translations of books were legal, since they are not "copies" per se.

The term length extension was stupid, but the real harm of the copyright regime lies in the much more subtle way with which it convinced us that it's subjects are not just specific works, but "characters" and "settings" and "universes". They made the term "IP" synonymous with "fictional concept". They made us take it for granted that there needs to be such a thing as "the Star Wars IP" in the first place, and we need to choose between either deciding how long it should last, or completely deprive people of "their property".

The original intent, of just letting creators copyright their respective films without censoring others', has been completely forgotten, and seen as if it were just another plea to abolish all copyright and legalize piracy.

 

[CrystalShadow]

... I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Imagine what the world would look like if anyone, anywhere could take the things in this list and do whatever they wanted with them?

Because that's what would be the case with copyright laws as they were originally defined.

If copyright would work as originally defined, you could also do whatever you want with Frozen, Game of Thrones, or Bioshock Infinite, short of redistributing the actual products on your own.

Copyright was written to regulate direct copying of artists "respective writings", up until the late 19th century, it was deemed that even unlicensed translations of books were legal, since they are not "copies" per se.

The term length extension was stupid, but the real harm of the copyright regime lies in the much more subtle way with which it convinced us that it's subjects are not just specific works, but "characters" and "settings" and "universes". They made the term "IP" synonymous with "fictional concept". They made us take it for granted that there needs to be such a thing as "the Star Wars IP" in the first place, and we need to choose between either deciding how long it should last, or completely deprive people of "their property".

The original intent, of just letting creators copyright their respective films without censoring others', has been completely forgotten, and seen as if it were just another plea to abolish all copyright and legalize piracy.

That is indeed quite insidious... Because it makes the scope of what any particular copyrighted work might cover much, much larger than it would otherwise be...
And it almost brings us to the point where entire concepts or story archetypes are at risk of being copyrighted, which would be disastrous.

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

Unfortunately the law suits the bigger players, and seeing as they're the ones who lobbied to get it like that in the first place I don't see it being likely that they're going to accept any chances.