Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,
Cory Doctorow wrote in the Guardian about our copyright problems on YouTube with FedFlix, a channel of U.S. government videos.
On January 4, we protested one of the ContentID matches on a 1974 film called Pathfinder, which was paid for and produced by the Fish and Wildlife Service. A Hollywood shop called Paul Brownstein Productions had been monetizing the video by forcing ads in front of each viewing. After we protested, Paul Browstein Productions got nasty and forced removal of the video and gave us a so called Copyright Strike on our account. If we get 3 strikes, our account is cancelled.
It seems wrong for some individual to monetize and then remove a video produced by the U.S. government. Even worse, it seems really wrong for that individual to try me and convict me in abstentia with no due process or indeed without even an explanation.
If SOPA passes, this is exactly the kind of arbitrary enforcement we're going to see. I think this is wrong and I hate seeing these poachers claiming the public domain, so I uploaded the video twice more.
Under the ContentID system, Paul Brownstein now has the option of declaring our two new uploads to be violations and the FedFlix account will be terminated on YouTube. Judge Paul holds his fate on our hands.
We've had 10 million views on that account and another 10 million on the Internet Archive. Is it right for some individual to make that choice for all of us? Stop SOPA or we're going to live in that kind of world.
Judge Paul Called Me a Thief: I Was Tried In Abstentia, Convicted and Sent to Copyright School
(Thanks, Carl!)
