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Facebook has quickly ramped up to a YouTube-size video platform. Now, what is it going to do about copyright?

Tales of the early days of YouTube invariably invoke cats on skateboards and shaky home videos, but that’s not the only way it got so big. The site, even in the beginning, was crammed with professional content – Seinfeld episodes, soccer highlights, Viacom cartoons – that typically turned up without the permission of the copyright owner.

The copyrighted clips led to tension with content owners, but YouTube GOOG 16.05% avoided serious trouble thanks to a legal shield known as a “safe harbor” that protects technology platforms. Eventually, the site quieted most of its critics by introducing a revenue-sharing scheme.

Now, Facebook has arrived as the next mega video platform. As it moves to compete or even surpass YouTube on the video front, look for it to run the very same playbook as its rival when it comes to copyright concerns.

4 billion views a day and “freebooters”

Facebook’s video offerings grew very big, very quickly. As my colleague Erin Griffith’s recent profile explained, a change in tactics and some crackerjack engineers led Facebook videos to evolve from a sideshow into a YouTube rival almost overnight; as of February, Facebook FB 4.48% was neck-and-neck with YouTube at 4 billion views a day.

The rapid growth came about in part because the social network’s algorithm gave a special boost to posts that contained a video link, which in turn has prompted businesses and brands on Facebook to post even more videos. This raises an obvious question: where is all this video coming from?

As it turns out, some of it is being mined from YouTube. As Slate reports, content creators have been dismayed to discover that co-called “freebooters” are using software to copy their original videos from YouTube, strip out the original credits and then post it to Facebook. One example cited by Slate is a part-time video maker who shot a slow-motion tattoo film for his YouTube channel, only to discover an unauthorized and uncredited version had been shared millions of times on Facebook by a U.K. media company.

The U.K. company who ripped the tattoo video could, of course, have simply posted the YouTube link on its Facebook page. But doing so would have led Facebook to display a ho-hum link and thumbnail pic, rather than the sort of gorgeous, instant-playing experience that appears when a video is uploaded natively to the site.

As for Facebook, the presence of freebooters’ video brings some undeniable advantages. The videos induce some users to spend more time on its site, and not on YouTube, which is owned by rival Google. (Facebook also can’t be displeased that YouTube misses out on a revenue opportunity whenever someone watches a video on Facebook instead.)

The only snag here, of course, is that content creators lose out on revenue as well. On YouTube, the tattoo guy earns 55% of ad revenue associated with the video while on Facebook he earns nothing.

Facebook sits in a safe harbor, for now

“We take intellectual property rights very seriously. This is not new to Facebook,” said a company spokesperson by email, adding that the company has tools in place to report copyright violation, remove offending material, and suspend the accounts of repeat offenders.

These measures sound imposing, but won’t surprise anyone familiar with copyright and the internet. That’s because they are the table stakes required for any website that publishes user-generated content, and wishes to benefit from a legal bargain that grants immunity in return for a copyright-takedown system. This immunity is known as “safe harbor.” In plain English: as long as Facebook continues to follow certain copyright procedures, you can’t sue it when someone uploads your video without permission.

“Facebook has a takedown and account termination system that should provide it protection under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act,” says Venkat Balasubramani, a tech lawyer based in Seattle. He adds that there’s no simple legal option to stop the freebooters.

“One question here is who may sue. YouTube obviously can’t and won’t, since it would undermine their own efficacy as a platform, and they probably don’t own the underlying content anyway. This leaves the video uploaders … however, it’s not an easy endeavor to undertake this type of a lawsuit.”

The challenge of chasing down copyright infringers has led content owners, in general, to claim the safe harbor rules are too lax, and that platforms like YouTube should do more to take down unauthorized videos. Studios have filed a spate of lawsuits to argue that more websites should be liable under a “red flag” provision in the copyright law, which can strip a site’s legal immunity in the event they obviously should have known about the infringement, or if they are directly making money from it.

But so far those lawsuits, including a long-running one against YouTube, have not really changed websites’ responsibilities when it comes to copyright, according to Lothar Determann, a copyright lawyer with Baker & McKenzie in San Francisco. He added more broadly that the law’s larger goal of protecting tech platforms still applies, and courts will not order websites to conduct copyright investigations.

The freebooter issue for Facebook, then, appears to be less of a legal problem than a moral one. Video owners may come to blame Facebook – safe harbors notwithstanding – for using their content to get rich while flouting their copyright concerns. Such claims, whether fair or not, have dogged Google and YouTube for years, and led to legal and political headaches.

How long till Facebook cuts a deal?

In rolling out its video tools, it feels like Facebook has reverted to its old “move fast and break things” philosophy. The company must surely have anticipated that it would have a copyright kerfuffle on its hands but, snug in its safe harbor, it pushed forward all the same – just like YouTube did before.

Now, the question is how loud the complaints will get, and long it will take for Facebook to implement the solution that ultimately quelled most of YouTube’s critics. That solution is a technological tool called ContentID that spots infringing content, and then gives copyright owner a choice of removing it or else overlaying ads in a bid to make money from it.

According to Facebook, the company is already using Audible Magic, an automated system that can detect media bearing a registered copyright in order to remove it from a user’s stream. The system, however, may not be easily available to small or independent creators such as the maker of the viral video about tattoos.

Audible Magic, even if it were universally available, also does not offer a revenue sharing mechanism. Then there’s the question of how easy it will be for creators to discover their content is being shared in the first place, given that Facebook videos are not public in the same way that YouTube ones are.

“This is a significant technical challenge to solve,” according to the Facebook spokesperson, who suggested more information will be forthcoming this summer. (Skeptics, in the meantime, may wonder why Facebook, which is so excellent at technology, has been confounded by an issue Google solved in 2007).

It will be no surprise, then, if Facebook has a ContentID system of its own up and running by the end of the year, especially given the news it is pursuing video music deals. At that point, some may come to the conclusion that Facebook could have matched YouTube’s copyright tools all long – but first it had to catch up.

Facebook has quickly ramped up to a YouTube-size video platform. Now, what is it going to do about copyright?

4 billion views a day and “freebooters”

The only snag here, of course, is that content creators lose out on revenue as well. On YouTube, the tattoo guy earns 55% of ad revenue associated with the video while on Facebook he earns nothing.

Facebook sits in a safe harbor, for now

How long till Facebook cuts a deal?

BRUSSELS - An obscure clause in EU copyright rules means no one can publish photos of public buildings in Belgium, like the Atomium, or France’s Eiffel tower at night without first asking permission from the rights owners.

The optional rule extends to the buildings of the European Parliament in Brussels and in Strasbourg.

“Every website of every MEP that uses [an image of] the parliament building on it is a copyright infringement in the sense of the law,” said Dimitar Dimitrov, a so-called Wikimedian or policy expert for the European Wikimedia chapters in Brussels, on Tuesday (4 November).

The EU’s 2001 information society directive contains a clause that says photos of architectural projects in public spaces can be taken free of charge. Experts describe it as a freedom of panorama, after the term used in German copyright law, Panoramafreiheit.

But the clause is optional. France, Belgium and Italy decided not to transpose it into national law.

“If you take an image of the Atomium and put it on Facebook, that is copyright infringement,” said Dimitrov.

The Atomium website notes “any use of the image of the Atomium must be submitted to the organisation before it is published.”

Only people who take photos for non-promotional uses on “private websites” do not need to ask.

The Atomium picture on Wikipedia's page is a photo of a model built in Austria. Elsewhere, the monument is simply blackened out to respect Belgian rules.

In France, the issue is further complicated.

People can now take photos of the Eiffel tower during the day but not at night. This is because the architect has been dead so long that the copyright rules no longer apply. But they have since installed lights.

“The lightshow is protected by copyright,” notes Dimitrov.

The rule changes from member state to member state.

In Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovenia, for instance, it is fine to take photos of public buildings so long as the images are not sold.

Elsewhere, like the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany, anyone can take photos of public buildings for any reason without risk.

Another oddity is that because the European Parliament does not own the copyright license of its buildings, it cannot legally grant permission for people to take photos of it.

Wikipedia, for instance, despite getting a written permission to use a photo of the Strasbourg assembly from the parliament’s secretariat earlier this year, was still unable to use it.

“We had it checked it with our lawyers and then it turns out that the parliament doesn’t own the right to its own buildings,” says Dimitrov.

The owner is a French architecture bureau, which only grants permission when photos are used for news purposes. One possible way around is to take a photo of the flags with the parliament building in the background.

The rule is seldom enforced and its fragmented nature, especially when put online, creates legal uncertainty and confusion for those who attempt to apply the laws in full.

“It’s only a problem if you follow the law,” says Dimitrov.

The confusion has long caught the attention of EU lawmakers.

Former EU digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes even had a minor twitter war over the summer with Atomium’s director.

For German Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda, the problem is that the freedom of panorama exception in the 2001 EU rulebook is not mandatory.

“A lot of member states have either not implemented it all or they have implemented it in a very restrictive ways,” she says.

The 2001 EU copyright laws are up for reform but debates and future public consultations means the EU commission won’t be expected to present a proposal any time soon.

A regulation or a directive?

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker requested that his new EU digital chief Gunther Oettinger put forward some ideas on the digital single market within the first six months of his mandate.

When asked if this includes copyright reform, the commission is vague, noting instead “copyright rules should be modernised, during the first part of this mandate”.

But Oettinger, speaking at a closed event at the German Bundestag committee on the Digital Agenda on Tuesday, is reported to have said he could envisage tabling a non-official draft within six months and did not rule out upgrading the directive into a much stronger regulation.

A commission spokesperson was cautious about Oettinger's statements and would be surprised if anything came out in six months but noted that the commissioner is open to the idea of both a directive and a regulation.

"Whatever he says at this stage are his personal ideas but not any formal position that the commission has taken," said the contact.

The spokesperson noted that an impact assessment report needs to determine whether or not a directive or regulation is needed.

The mixed message is causing concern for some who want the reforms to be tabled sooner rather than later.

A commission public consultation on copyright was already carried out earlier this year. It secured over 10,000 responses to 80 questions.

“The old commission made a long assessment of these replies and the way Oettinger sounds now is like this hasn’t happened yet,” said the German MEP.

Source: euobserver

News: design brands including Vitra, Artek and Flos have joined forces to attack the UK government for delaying the implementation of a law that would outlaw the sale of copies of their furniture and lighting products.

The brands have formed a coalition to lobby the government after learning that the law, which was passed last year, may not be brought into effect until 2018.

The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 contained provisions to bring UK copyright law into line with most of Europe, where manufactured goods are protected for 70 years after the death of the designer. Existing UK law only protects designs for 25 years.

"The UK has never had the same level of intellectual property protection as the rest of Europe," said Tony Ash, managing director of Vitra in the UK, USA, India, Middle East and Far East. "There it's 70 years plus the lifetime of the creator but here it's 25 years from creation. So we've always been at a disadvantage. We lose business and the designers lose royalties."

Ash claimed the anomaly meant the UK had become "a laughing stock" and told Dezeen: "The UK has become a Trojan Horse for the importation of copies into Europe".

The coalition, which also includes furniture and lighting brands Thonet, Republic of Fritz Hansen, Tecnolumen, Artemide and Cassina and is supported by designers Ed Barber and Jay Osgerby, claims the delay in implementing the law is "undermining the UK design industry and flooding the market with illegitimate and poor quality overseas replicas, with little benefit to the British economy".

The law was passed in Spring 2013 and was expected to be brought into force by April this year. However this month the government announced a consultation process on its latest plans, which involve a three-year transition process to allow affected businesses to adapt to the new law.

It is understood that the Expired Copyright Homeware Organisation, which represents UK companies that import copies of designer goods, has persuaded the government that its members need more time to prepare for the changes.

However Ash said the delay was damaging to the businesses' design brands and designers.

"It beggars belief that more than a year after the law was changed, UK designers are still subjected to copyright regulations that allow the market for inferior quality fake goods to legally thrive," he said. "Make no mistake, these are poor imitations of what are iconic designs and there should be the same stigma attached to them as to buying a fake handbag, watch or DVD. The principle is no different."

He added: "We now have regulations that bring us into line with the rest of Europe. It's high time these were enforced and we urge the government to expedite this process. A drawn out transition undermines the UK design industry and only benefits overseas manufacturers who are importing these products, defrauding designers and ripping off the public."

Ash claimed that "99.9 per cent of the world's copyists are Chinese" and said that Vitra products including chairs by Charles and Ray Eames and Verner Panton were particularly popular with copyists.

UK industrial designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby backed the coalition's efforts.

"Imitation is not the greatest form of flattery in this case," they said. "These copies are of poorer quality and are thefts of designers' hard work and creativity that should be protected. The means are in place to clamp down on these illegal (at least this would be the case under the new law) copies, and the new copyright regulations should be brought in immediately and rigorously enforced."

The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 contains a repeal of the controversial section 52 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which gave less protection to manufactured goods than to unique or low-volume items such as works of art.

The act followed a vigorous campaign headed by Elle Decoration editor Michelle Ogundehin to give designers the same rights as other creatives. Ogundehin launched the campaign in 2011 after learning that the wife of Prime Minister David Cameron had bought a reproduction of the Castiglioni brothers' 1962 Arco floor lamp, which is produced by Flos.

Source: dezeen magazine

YouTube has paid out a cool $1 billion to copyright holders since 2007, the company confirmed to NBC News. It's all part of YouTube's Content ID program, which, according to a Google spokesperson, scans 400 years' worth of content every single day for potential copyright issues. What is Content ID? Back in the old days before Google purchased YouTube, major TV networks and record companies complained that the service was chock full of copyrighted programs. In order to cut down on the never-ending flood of "Simpsons" and "Seinfeld" clips, Google developed Content ID in 2007, which compares videos and songs to original copies provided by the copyright holder. If you are a TV network, you can decide whether to shut down violators or profit off them by running ads against their content and keeping the profit. The majority of Content ID's 500-plus partners decide to monetize instead of ban those videos, according to Google, which could explain why the entertainment industry shifted from complaining about YouTube to awarding it a Primetime Engineering Emmy Award in 2013.

Source: NBC News

Aston Alliance is an international consortium providing consulting services and legal protection of intellectual property. The Consortium deals with all aspects of filing, maintenance, prosecution, licensing and litigating of copyrights, patents and trademarks and provides a full range of intellectual property (IP) services Eastern Europe and CIS countries including licensing and IP management services.

Aston Alliance is the owner and operator of several IP related portals, including Brandnews.biz, Avtor.uz, Patentmanager.biz and the Center for Combating Counterfeiting.

Website of the consortium: http://aston-alliance.com/

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FB's video plan? Deal with copyright later

Belgian and French copyright laws ban photos of EP buildings

Design brands attack UK government over copyright law delay

YouTube Has Paid $1 Billion to Copyright Holders Since 2007

Aston Alliance became strategic partner of INTEROCO