Company Makes Copyright Claims Against YouTube Videos Containing Sounds of Birds Chirping
February 27th, 2012Welcome to the future of the Internet.
Via: TheNextWeb:
You can barely hear the birds chirping in this YouTube video of a man picking some fresh ingredients for a wild salad, and yet that very sound has been identified as copyrighted material, belonging to music company, Rumblefish.
YouTube user eeplox posted this to Google’s YouTube help forum a couple of days ago:
I posted a video which is basically just me walking and talking, outdoors, away from any possible source of music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPBlfeuZuWg
And apparently youtube identified my video as containing copyrighted music from a company called rumblefish. I filed a dispute, and now I’m waiting for said company to respond to it. Is this a freak occurrence? I feel pretty violated by this, a mysterious entity claiming to own my content and apparently profiting from it with ads.
There are birds singing in the background in the video, could they own the rights to birdsong?
It sounds almost too bizarre to be true, but comments on the post would indicate that this isn’t the first time this has happened, with YouTube’s automated system laying claim to nature’s sounds. In fact, according to eeplox, the system mistakenly identified the bird sounds, not only as copyrighted, but also as a musical composition.
The very problem is that YouTube uses an entirely automated system to scan for copyright claims, and while YouTube users can dispute the claims, any company that says the content belongs to them, can dispute right back. Independent YouTube users, like eeplox, are left in the middle.
EVERYONE!!!!! Please follow the steps outlined below:
Open up your e-mail client.
Start a new message.
In the To: Field type licensing@rumblefish.com, developers@rumblefish.com, and info@rumblefish.com
Now comes the fun part…type your message, showing how much you dislike bullshit like this. They can ignore my 1 message….they cannot ignore a million messages!!!
Also, this is nothing new:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091028/0306106704.shtml
Sorry for so many posts, I thought I would mention that Paul Anthony, CEO of Rumblefish took the time to respond to me directly…here is a transcript, starting with the last message i sent to him (read from the bottom up):
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This is from 2009:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091028/0306106704.shtml
Same game, different tactics. Say what you wish, my opinion of you and your company is soiled.
— On Mon, 2/27/12, Paul Anthony wrote:
From: Paul Anthony
Subject: Re: YOU SUCK
Date: Monday, February 27, 2012, 3:48 PM
Not sure what copyrighted material you’re referencing so it’s hard to comment on that. We’re not using a big PR firm either….we’re a small team and can’t afford a big PR firm, it’s just us.
The team here is simply representing artists for the use of their music on YouTube. The content ID tech and process is a work in progress. We’re doing our best to improve it and do right by content creators.
PA
————————————————————————————————————————-
More so than the fact that I despise what you have done in terms of copyrighted material, you have done nothing to change the situation. You still have copyrighted material that is not even yours to copyright. You are just doing damage control, using big PR firms to help you mitigate negative public opinion, yet continuing down the same path of bullshittery and asshattery. So in other words, go fuck yourself! I hate and despise people like you, you are a egotist and you are a sociopath.
>
> — On Mon, 2/27/12, Paul Anthony wrote:
>
>
> From: Paul Anthony
> Subject: Re: YOU SUCK
> Date: Monday, February 27, 2012, 3:28 PM
>
> Chris,
>
> You’re clearly angry. I understand and can hear your concern thought your anger. You likely wouldn’t have reached out to us unless you were genuinely concerned about this topic.
>
> I read your email and I share your concern. I was up much of the evening responding to others concerns as well, and hosting an AMA on reddit here: http://redd.it/q7via It’s our goal to do right by all content creators, the ones we represent and the ones we do not but we are human and do make mistakes. Ones that we work hard to rectify when that happens.
>
> The YouTube content ID system mis-ID’d birds singing as one of our artists songs. We reviewed the video yesterday when it came to our attention and released the claim that YT assigned to us. One of our content id representatives made a mistake in the identification process and we’ve worked diligently to correct the error once we were made aware of it Sunday evening.
>
> Thank you for voicing your concern. Very much appreciated. We’re doing our best to improve the process as it’s very challenging for our team to keep up with the massive amount of claims coming through which grow every day.
>
> All the best,
>
> Paul Anthony | Founder and CEO | Rumblefish