A few days after the Super Bowl, a Brooklyn Law School professor posted a YouTube clip containing the standard NFL copyright notice that was broadcast during the game.
This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of the pictures, descriptions or accounts of this game without the express written consent of the National Football League is prohibitedFive days later, she received a notice from YouTube that the clip had been removed at the request of the NFL, who claimed that reposting their copyright notice was a violation of their copyright. Knowing her fair use rights, she then filed a counter-notification with YouTube, saying that the clip was "an educational excerpt showing the NFL's overreaching copyright warning aired during the Super Bowl" and fell under fair use.
The NFL's DMCA-compliant response to this counter-claim would be to take the professor to court to remove the clip. Instead, they ignored the counter-claim and sent a second takedown request with YouTube, which violated the DMCA, the very same law they were invoking to protect the descriptions and accounts of their copyright notice.
1 comment:
It's curious: you'd think that, in order for a copyright notice to be truly effective, it would have to be as broadly disseminated as possible. You can't very well have a copyright notice asserting your rights which you then hide in the bottom drawer of your dresser.
The other thing this reminds me of is, in the infamous Negativland/SST/Island Records law-gangbang, when SST sued Negativland for reproducing, on Negativland's website, SST's own press releases - i.e., documents distributed for the express purpose of being republished and re-represented in the media. That was a truly bizarre moment.
It's curious: corporations seem to be heading toward a position that wants them to be able to control absolutely every use and re-use of its content...but of course, any published item becomes popular specifically through its re-use, even if in the most narrow sense: playing a record for your friends, absentmindedly singing it as you walk through a mall (the owners of which had better be sure they're paid up with ASCAP and BMI, lest your "public" singing be construed as an unlicensed public performance...), and so on. When even publicity materials get handled as copyrighted, no one should be surprised if (as would likely have happened had SST actually won on that one) reviewers and such are unwilling to even touch product, in case they accidentally overstep the bounds of fair use by, say, mentioning the title of a CD.
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