•
Last week, the big news in DMCA takedowns was the sweeping removal of Hitler parody videos . Earlier this year, it was Google suddenly wiping out six separate music blogs . Today, it's the removal of a tweet . While this might not seem like a big deal on the surface, it leads to some much bigger questions about free speech, what content should fall under a proper DMCA take-down and whether or not the DMCA is a legal method of applying censorship by any content owner. Sponsor Here's the story as told by TechDirt: The story involves a music blogger named JP, who runs the appropriately named JP's blog . Not surprisingly, JP also has a Twitter account , where he mostly seems to post links to his blog posts. One such post was about the leak of the new album by The National. That post includes a link to Amazon where people can purchase the new album... and also a link to a download of one song (in MP3 format) from the album. According to JP's blog post on the subject, Twitter sent him a message last Thursday "in response to a DMCA take-down notice". The email, he writes, read as follows: jp917, Apr 22 03:10 pm (PDT): Hello, The following material has been removed from your account in response to a DMCA take-down notice: Tweet: http://twitter.com/jp917/statuses/12499491144 - New Post: Leaked: The National - High Violet http://jpsblog.net/2010/04/20/leaked-the-national-high-violet/ JP denies posting any link to the leaked album in his tweeted blog post, saying that he will not bother filing a counterclaim to the take-down. He also links to an article in Plagiarism Today from a year ago that alleges that Twitter's handling of DMCA take-downs and counterclaims is problematic and that "there is clearly an organization issue here and that's leading to confusion." While last weeks' take-downs of parody videos may have been "overbroad take-downs of legal content" , as the Electronic Frontier Foundation asserted, this sort take-down may go an extra step, beyond constitutionally protected First Amendment speech. With the YouTube take-downs, at least there was copyrighted content present, although it may have been used according to the law in the end. In this case, according to JP, there was neither pirated content nor a link to any DMCA-violating content. While TechDirt argues that "specifically, nothing in the tweet itself is infringing -- which means that the DMCA take-down for the tweet is bogus, and a violation of the DMCA itself", we spoke with David Sohn, senior policy council with the Center for Democracy & Technology , who said that the question might not be so cut and dry. Section 5.12D of the DMCA relates to cases involving "information location tools" and "links". "One possibility here is that Twitter has gotten a take-down notice that might not stand up as a totally valid take-down notice," said Sohn. On Sohn's advice, we asked Wendy Seltzer, founder of ChillingEffects.org , what this all meant and she explained that the burden of proof lies with the person creating the content and not the platform. All the platform, in this case Twitter, needs to know is that the complaint me be valid and that, by removing the offending content, they cover themselves legally in the eyes of the DMCA. Whether or not section 5.12 D of the DMCA actually applies doesn't really matter. The introduction to her recent paper, "Free Speech Unmoored in Copyright's Safe Harbor: Chilling Effects of the DMCA on the First Amendment" (.pdf), speaks clearly to the problem we saw when first reading this story: Each week, more blog posts are redacted, more videos deleted, and more web pages removed from Internet search results based on private claims of copyright infringement. Under the "safe harbors" of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Internet service providers are encouraged to respond to copyright complaints with content takedowns, assuring their immunity from liability while diminishing the rights of their subscribers and users. Paradoxically, the law's shield for service providers becomes a sword against the public who depend upon these providers as platforms for speech. The problem with the current format of the DMCA, especially in the case of something like a communication platform such as Twitter, is that a DMCA take-down notice becomes an extremely effective means of silencing information for a legally mandated period of 10 days. In essence, it provides those who wish to silence a voice a quick and legal means of enacting what is called a " prior restraint ", something clearly prohibited in First Amendment law. "When non-infringing speech is taken down, not only does its poster lose an opportunity to reach an audience, the public loses the benefit of hearing that lawful speech in the marketplace of ideas," writes Seltzer in the paper. Twitter offered this response: "Twitter regularly receives DMCA takedown notices. We strive to balance the interests of our users and copyright holders by reviewing each notice. After determining whether the notice is compliant with the law, we also consider other factors such as whether the notice is abusive to our users, or fails to take fair use into consideration. You can read more about our DMCA process here: http://help.twitter.com/entries/15795-copyright-and-dmca-policy "We are always working to improve our transparency. Users are notified immediately when content has been removed from their account. In this situation, we responded to a request to remove a Tweet containing a link to download content from an unreleased album. After reexamining our decision, we believe this was the correct first step. If the affected user believes we have made a mistake or that the notice is in error, the appropriate thing for the user to do is file a counter-claim. "We believe that the reasoning of the DMCA claim and its origin should be transparent to both the affected user and other interested parties. We are working on further steps to improve access to this information." So, our next logical question here is: Since this post includes the email from Twitter, which includes that original link to a blog post that supposedly linked to infringing content, can it too be removed according to the guidelines of the DMCA? Discuss
The rest is here:
Twitter, DMCA Take-downs & the Prior Restraint of First Amendment Speech
Tags:
amazon,
copyright,
digital,
first-amendment,
internet,
Legal,
news,
notice,
rights,
speech,
tweet,
Twitter,
user,
YouTube
•
Today at the South By South West festival in Austin, three finalists competed in the Microsoft BizSpark Accellerator finals in the "Innovative Web Technologies" category. The companies, RecycleMatch , Siri and Skimble argued their positions on stage in front of three judges and tonight the winner will be announced at 6pm CST. Sponsor The Accelerator competition is in its second year and started out with a list of 32 finalist companies in three categories. While all three categories have some strong entries, we wanted to check out the innovative technologies to see what was, well, innovative. RecycleMatch First, Chad Farrell, co-founder of RecycleMatch, showed off the web solution that we hope takes off solely so it can help save the world. RecycleMatch, the only of the three that is not an iPhone app, is an online marketplace that helps match up waste materials with recyclers and manufacturers that need those materials. "There's really no place to do this now," said Farrell. "Let's say I've got this piece of polyester fiber waste but I don't know anyone around who can use it. It's the perfect use of the internet - to connect people like that." We can see this not only having a great impact on the world, but certainly stepping into the ever popular "green" genre and sticking around. Siri Up next was Dag Kittlaus with the digital, voice-activated personal assistant software Siri. We think Kittlaus' introduction says it best: "For decades, Hollywood has been paintinh this picture of machine assistants with Hal 9000 - what Siri is doing is taking some steps to make that a reality," Kittlaus said. As our own Frederic Lardinois has written before about the iPhone app, Siri is "one of the most ambitious mobile services we have seen in the last few years." You simply hold the phone up, hit a button, and tell it what you need and it translates your speech into text, uses natural language processing algorithms to determine what you need and then launches the appropriate services. Whether you want to schedule a taxi pick-up, make a dinner reservation or remind yourself of that Monday morning appointment, just ask Siri and it will do it. "What if you could make it easy to ask your phone to do something?" asked Kittlaus. "It's all about simplification." While the app looks to simplify your life, the technology behind it is anything but simple and it makes us feel a little bit like we've finally arrived in the future. Skimble The final contestant to take the stage was Skimble and if there's one thing we can say, it's that co-founder Maria Ly did it with style, back-flipping and dancing to the 'Mission Impossible' theme song before putting both legs behind her head and doing push-ups. Yes, you heard that right - she did push-ups with both legs behind her head. This woman is living what she's preaching, that we can attest to. "We would like to inspire active lifestyles across the board," she started off in her explanation. Skimble is a hybrid social network, physical fitness tracking app, that lets you track your physical activities, whether running, doing yoga, or playing kickball and compete with your friends. As you keep track of your activities, you can compare with your friends on a leaderboard and even compete to win real-world prizes. As with Siri, Skimble is primarily an iPhone app, although it has an accompanying website with additional features. Our Pick We have to say, Siri takes the cake in this category and we're going to have to call it early. If the digital personal assistant doesn't take the prize, then it's only because it's too good and just doesn't need the start-up funding to continue. That almost seemed to be the line of questioning from the judges - why would something as impressive as Siri need to win this competition, with the funding and functionality it's already showing? All Siri needs to do, in reality, is start a bidding war between Google and Apple and it has it made, the judges half-jokingly but half-seriously said during the on-stage interview. For the final word on what company will take the top prize, watch live tonight at 6 pm CST or check out the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator page. Discuss
View post:
BizSpark Accelerator Finalists: Our Pick for 'Most Innovative Web Technology'
Tags:
iphone,
judges,
life,
phone,
picture,
recycle,
speech,
technology,
World
•
YouTube may be one of the biggest success stories of the Web 2.0 era, but if you are hearing impaired, the site is only of limited value. Starting today, however, Google will begin to offer auto-captioning for all English-language videos on YouTube . Until now, only videos from a select number of YouTube's partners were captioned using the Google's automated speech-recognition software. Sponsor As Google notes, there will be over 700 million people who suffer from hearing impairment by 2015. As more and more content on the Web moves towards video , it's commendable to see that Google is working to make more of this content accessible to its users. Thanks to Google's translation technology, these captions can also be translated into over 50 different languages. It will surely take a while before this feature becomes available on all videos. After all, over 20 hours of video are now being uploaded to YouTube every minute. Whenever auto-captioning is available, however, you can simply click on the captions link underneath the video and turn the caption on. Google notes that its speech-recognition algorithms are obviously not perfect. If you spot a mistake in one of your own videos, however, you can easily download the captions and correct the error. Here are the current requirements for enabling auto-captioning on your YouTube videos: While we plan to broaden the feature to include more languages in the months to come, currently, auto-captioning is only for videos where English is spoken. Just like any speech recognition application, auto-captions require a clearly spoken audio track. Videos with background noise or a muffled voice can't be auto-captioned. President Obama's speech on the recent Chilean Earthquake is a good example of the kind of audio that works for auto-captions. Auto-captions aren't perfect and just like any other transcription, the owner of the video needs to check to make sure they're accurate. In other cases, the audio file may not be good enough to generate auto-captions. But please be patient -- our speech recognition technology gets better every day. Auto-captions should be available to everyone who's interested in using them. We're also working to provide auto-captions for all past user uploads that fit the above mentioned requirements. If you're having trouble enabling them for your video, please visit our Help Center: this article is for uploaders and this article is for viewers. Discuss
Excerpt from:
YouTube Turns on Automatic Captioning for All Videos
Tags:
above-mentioned,
article,
audio,
captions,
obama,
President Obama,
speech,
success-stories,
transcription,
video,
YouTube