Tag Archive for 'youtube'

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Copyright Proven Homophobic as NOM Gathers a DMCA Takedown Storm

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 3:14 PM on May 14, 2009 in Commentary. 0 Comments Tags: same-sex marriage, stupid copyright tricks, that's gay, youtube. Short URL: http://plankhead.com/nh

Same-sex marriage now violates intellectual property laws too! Who'dve thunk?

Remember that ridiculous anti-gay marriage ad which I made even more ridiculous by replacing the soundtrack with “It’s Raining Men”? Apparently the National Organization for Nomnomnom isn’t too pleased with that sort of behavior. Parody ads left and…well, who am I kidding, they’re all left…have been removed from YouTube because of NOM’s bitching and whining and DMCA takedown notices (Mine hasn’t been touched, probably because the audio confuses the Content ID robots). Included in this crusade against legal and fair use was one for which the creators were recognized as “Homo Heroes” for their brilliance: a group of Reddit readers spliced the word “interracial” in wherever “same-sex” was in the original ad.

NOM has succeeded at infuriating the entire Internet again, but this time it’s personal. If anything spreads faster than a viral YouTube video, it’s a removed YouTube video. Congratulations, National Organization for Marriage, now both gay people and copyright reformers hate you. Now those two groups will converge, and you will face butt pirates.

Sorry, I had to.

UPDATE: YouTube is apparently giving NOM preferential treatment in their own takedown notice predicament with Perez Hilton. It seems highly unlike Google to be supportive of their cause, so I’m gonna chalk this one up to…something else. I don’t know what.

YouTube Blocks Content ID Matches Worldwide Except In Everywhere

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 4:11 PM on May 1, 2009 in Commentary. 4 Comments Tags: digital rights manufacturing, lolwut, stupid copyright tricks, youtube. Short URL: http://plankhead.com/LD

I got a very odd notice from YouTube. Apparently their robots finally detected my fair use of a copyrighted Universal Music Group song in one of my ridiculous convention videos. However, this was not cause to automatically take down the video, nor to automatically mute the audio. Instead…

As a result, your video is blocked everywhere except in these locations:
American Samoa, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cuba, Fiji, France, Germany, Guam, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kiribati, Mexico, Nauru, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Spain, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, United Kingdom, United States, United States Virgin Islands, Vanuatu

So, wait, where is it blocked, then? Most of the countries I’m not seeing on there don’t have their own versions of YouTube. Um…China? Is it blocked in China? Oh, no, that’s all of YouTube, sorry.

I’m very confused. Oh well. I’d imagine that it’s still accessible everywhere regardless, now that I submitted the fair use dispute. This is the third time I’ve had to do that, and it’s kind of annoying. Why can’t I just submit the fair use claim when I upload the video? I know it’s got copyrighted music, I state that in the description, so let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?

Finally, YouTube Will Let You Download Videos Without A Stupid Grabber Tool

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 4:53 AM on January 19, 2009 in Commentary. 0 Comments Tags: digital rights manufacturing, duh, free culture, internet video, the googles, youtube. Short URL: http://plankhead.com/UeZ

I love how Google decides to publicly test new features without issuing a press release. I guess they figured that the blogosphere notices anyway so why bother with the fanfare? But here’s something rather nice: they’re using Already President as far as I’m concerned Barack Obama’s channel to test out their new ability to download YouTube videos from the site.

But Zacqary! There have been lots of tools that let you download YouTube videos for years!

That’s a valid point, Helvetica Bold 10.5 Dark Orchid, but all of those have required you not only to download an extra program or Firefox extension, but they grab the crappy, compressed Flash Video version that you’d see anyway on YouTube. Now, not only do you click a little link below the video, but you also get to download it in H.264 format! That’s the same encoding that they use on Blu-Ray. BLU-RAY! (Though, granted, the YouTube download has a lower resolution and bitrate than a Blu-Ray, but seriously, it’s an improvement)

I grabbed one of the Obama videos to compare, and yes, it’s quite nice:

H.264 is better than standard YouTube FLV

If you view that full size, you can see that the downloaded video has better contrast and is a lot less fuzzy. Keep in mind, though, that it downloads at 480×270; I resized it to 640×360 so it would be the same size as the video on YouTube. But the YouTube video is probably scaled up too.

Sadly, it isn’t the same quality as YouTube HD:

The download is still lower res than it could be.

The download is still lower res than HD, unfortunately.

Again, I scaled the download up. At this level of scaling you start to see where the downloaded copy loses detail. Though the contrast still looks better…maybe that’s Firefox’s fault?

Now, this is still only available for Obama’s channel, but in the coming weeks, Google claims that everyone will have the option to enable their videos to be downloaded. Personally, for the sake of the common Internet user, I’m hoping that it’s an opt-out system. That way the only reason someone would have to stop being lazy and edit their videos is if they want to be an asshole or a corporation.

Speaking of which, when do I get to replace my old videos with HD versions? They’re all ready to upload as soon as you let me, Google.

[Source: Ars Technica]

Warner Music Mutes YouTube, So Blame Them Instead

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 1:47 AM on January 15, 2009 in Commentary. 1 Comment Tags: digital rights manufacturing, free culture, internet video, stupid copyright tricks, the googles, youtube. Short URL: http://plankhead.com/53v

I’ve always had my qualms with YouTube about video quality, comment moderation, ease of use, comment moderation, and comment moderation, but what’s got the blogosphere exploding lately is something that I kind of pity rather than hate YouTube for: videos containing copyrighted music are having their audio muted.

This actually isn’t new, just a new option for users hit by an increasingly rabid crackdown by Google’s Video Identification robots. A video that I posted of footage I took at Anthrocon was taken down automatically just because I happened to synchronize the footage with a song that is copyrighted by a gigantic corporation. I was given the option to replace the audio with a different song, which would have killed all my hard work in Final Cut, or I could dispute the claim, either because it was an incorrect match (which it wasn’t) or because it was Fair Use (which it was).

Dispute Submitted to WMG
I don’t love YouTube’s handling of Fair Use, though legally the burden is upon the Fair User to justify it, so I suppose taking your video down before allowing you to defend the use is appropriate. That’s how I handled my video, explaining to YouTube’s input box that my video was non-commercial and did not prevent the copyright holder from making a profit. Submitting that dispute got my video replaced quite punctually, but when I clicked that Submit button, I saw a single line that told the story of who the true villain is here: “Your claim has been submitted to WMG.” Warner Music Group.