How Long Does a Copyright Last?
A very informative video that discusses important things about copyright that you should know.
Tags: copyright, video
IAmaPirate.Org: Find out if you are a Pirate
IamAPirate.org is a website that asks you a few questions, and if answered truthfully, will tell you if you are a Pirate of not. When we speak of pirates here, we don’t mean the “Pirates of the Caribbean Captain Jack Sparrow Pirate.” This is about file sharing on the internet. Yes, that pirate kind of thing.
This simple tool was created by PirateParty UK. It is dubbed as the political party of the digital age. They represent the changes demanded by technology that governments and industries are resisting with all their might. Their primary objective is the reformation of copyright and patent laws to fit their purpose, and the privacy of the individual and freedom of speech to be upheld and protected.
If you support the cause of the group and believe that sharing stuff that you have already bought should be legal and reduce the excessive length of copyright protection, then answer the few questions and find out if you are truly a pirate in the eyes of media corporations. You can also share on Twitter if you are a pirate and that you are not ashamed to be one.
Tags: copyright, I am A Pirate, Piracy, twitter
YouTomb: Where Copyrighted YouTube Videos Rests in Peace
YouTomb is a website created by MIT Free Culture (a student organization in MIT) that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation. We all know that there is a very large amount of videos currently uploaded in YouTube that violates copyright laws. Some of them we never got to see because they have been taken down almost instantly after hitting the YouTube pages while some are taken down after gaining popularity and the original content owner decides to pull the plug.
YouTomb catalogs most of the popular videos which are already taken down. If you are thinking that you can watch the videos in YouTomb then you are mistaken, screen shots of the video and information about the takedown is as close as you can get to the buried videos. If that is the case then you may be wondering what the point is. Ever since YouTube decided to automate its takedown process for copyrighted audios and videos, MIT Free Culture became interested on how the YouTube takedown algorithm works. The goal of this project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm. Basically, anyone can file a DMCA takedown notification at any time that cause YouTube to immediately remove alleged infringing content. If the algorithm makes a mistake then this will usually cause inconvenience to the person submitting the video and the users of YouTube.
How the YouTube takedown algorithm works as explained by the MIT Free Culture Team:
Many rights holders believe that videos uploaded to YouTube damage their business or income stream. As such, rights holders can submit their works to a database of copyrighted work to be fingerprinted. Whenever YouTube’s automated system finds a matching fingerprint (or part of the fingerprint), it notifies the rights holder. At that point, the rights holder can optionally take down the video.
Since YouTube is the most popular video hosting site in the internet, it is good to know that there is a group like MIT Free Culture who takes interest in keeping tabs and constantly checking system faults. This will provide information for developing better systems and algorithms for startups and existing web services.
Tags: algorithm, copyright, copyright infingement, MIT, MIT Free Culture, you tomb, You Tube
