Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

There's a meme -- a subtle meme in the form of either 'framing' or unexamined-assumptions -- that I keep seeing, and it keeps bugging me. It shows up in lines like this one:

Following the launch of [Viacom's] billion-dollar lawsuit, YouTube introduced filtering tools in an effort to prevent copyright materials from appearing on the site.

[Note: It has been pointed out to me that the article linked to above has since been edited to read "content that infringes copyright" instead of "copyright materials". My thanks to the BBC for making this edit. As that was merely a convenient example of a larger trend I've observed in the press in general, the remaider of this essay stands. I'll keep an eye out for a fresh example.]

Is the inherent problem in that sentence as written obvious to others as it is to me?

The very clear message, despite being carefully not said explicitly, is that only Big Corporate copyrights count, and the copyrights of the rest of us aren't "real copyright" just like alcohol isn't a "drug". None of us even count. Because otherwise, the fact is that any user-created content on YouTube[1] not explicitly released into the public domain is 'copyright materials' too; it's just legimately posted copyrighted material. Free Software? Creative Commons? Those are just intentionally permissive licenses attached to very-much-still-copyrighted material -- those licenses don't even work without copyright. Cell phone video of your buddies being silly, posted without any thought as to copyright, licensing, etc.? Protected as well: "A created work is considered protected by copyright as soon as it exists." Posting that video on YouTube is legitimate[2] because the owner of the copyright is the one posting it (and by doing so, giving YouTube permission to stream it to other users), not because it's "not copyright materials".

The only things on YouTube that are not copyrighted and not explicitly released into the public domain by their owners, are clips that are so old their copyright has expired[3]. Regardless of whether it was created by Viacom, BBC, CBS, or Joe Shmoe, the overwhelming majority of content on YouTube is protected by copyright. The question should not be "how much of it is copyrighted", the only legitimate qestion in the context of the Viacom dispute is, "how much of it is posted legitimately, by or with the permission of the material's owners or legal agents?"

Phrasing it the way I keep seeing it phrased, is at best Unforgivably Sloppy thinking and/or writing[4]. At worst, it's deliberately spreading the corporatist agenda that only the big companies' rights matter and the rest of us haven't any meaningful intellectual property rights.[5]

Regardless of which side you're on in the "should 'intellectual property' even be a meaningful concept" debate, or which of the many sides you're on in the "what's fair and what isn't regarding protection of intellectual property", unless you're an unapologetic shill for corporatism this kind of sloppy thinking, this poisoning of the meme pool that works to convince individuals that they have no IP rights (and that they needn't worry about ripping off any other individual's either), but the big corporations with big laywers do, cannot possibly be a good thing.

Let's try to fix this sloppy thinking. Remind people that nearly all the legitimate stuff on YouTube is covered by copyright as well, and "copyright" should never be used as a casual shorthand for "stolen" or "inappropriately posted" or (*ugh*) "corporate owned", because doing so makes it too easy to forget that our works are protected by copyright as well. And that many copyrighted works are being shared legitimately (whether through implicit terms-of-use for sharing-sites, through casual agreements that it's okay, or explicit licenses such as the various Creative Commons licenses or other licenses similar to those).

Let's not let that window close so far that we lose access to -- or memory of -- what rights we "little people" have.

[1] At least from users in Berne Convention countries.

[2] Assuming either that it's being used in a manner that does not require model releases, or that every recognizeable person in the video consents.

[3] Or, IIRC, certain materials created by or on behalf of the US government, but I need to go look that up.

[4] Okay, "or editing".

[5] Related to this is the subtext that only "big companies" can producse meaningful/signficiant works, that all art must be consumed by customers of 'real corporations', and that creating art worth other folks' attention isn't something we mere peons should think about doing.