
How Copyright Enforcement Robots Killed the Hugo Awards - cenazoic
http://io9.com/5940036/how-copyright-enforcement-robots-killed-the-hugo-awards
======
rabidsnail
They do video fingerprinting with Vobile, which probably found a match and
triggered an automated takedown.

Ustream is incompetent, but Vobile is the villain here.

[http://www.ustream.tv/blog/2010/07/16/launch-of-improved-
mea...](http://www.ustream.tv/blog/2010/07/16/launch-of-improved-measures-to-
protect-copyright-holders-and-vobile-integration/)

<http://www.vobileinc.com/>

------
memset
Lots of people are saying that this is not evidence that copyright is evil;
only overreaching enforcement is.

I'd submit that, increasingly, these two ideas are indistinguishable.

I'm very much in favor of copyright (after all, I make a living by creating
protected works) but as automated and over-reaching enforcement like this
becomes the norm, it is increasingly difficult for me to defend this position.

Unfortunately, I don't know what the "next best alternative" to copyright
protection is. That is, what kind of system would one need to protect us from
these kinds of incidents?

~~~
rabidsnail
No monopoly protection at all, and all culture would be funded by kickstarter
(or clones).

~~~
briandear
What's your address? I want to help myself to all of your stuff. So what if
you've worked for it. I want it so I should have it. Private citizens ought
not have the right to retain ownership of anything. Everything should be free
right? So let's start at your house. It's cool though, you can have a
kickstarter to buy new stuff. I might even chip in $5.

~~~
EliRivers
Once again, a refusal to acknowledge the difference between taking a physical
object and making a copy of some information. They're DIFFERENT THINGS.

I'll say that again for the hard of thinking. Taking a physical object is NOT
the same as making a copy of some information.

Put another way, just to make sure, making a copy of some information is NOT
THE SAME as taking a physical object.

------
acabal
Definitely ridiculous. But this creates a case for hosting your own stream,
instead of relying on a capricious 3rd party who is too scared of media
cartels to serve its customers properly. It might be a little more work to set
up, but that's the price you pay in today's hyper-litigious copyright-mad
world.

~~~
lambada
Yes, it is more work but also in terms of the bandwidth to serve these awards
via their own service it would be far more expensive (not to mention hard to
maintain reliability of service). Yes, I suspect most of us could pull a basic
stream together pretty quickly, but that stream would likely not be up to the
standard that would be expected of such a prestigious ceremony.

~~~
windle
Exactly why we need Bittorrent Live to take off. P2P live video streaming can
help bypass shoddy bots.

~~~
rabidsnail
Hate to rain on your parade, but ISP-level NAT is coming (it's already here on
mobile) and it breaks P2P. Hole-punching doesn't work, you can't manually open
ports, and they don't support UPnP. If everyone is behind a nat who is left to
tunnel through? Why, a central platform! Skype already went down this road.

~~~
jordanthoms
Hopefully ISPs will be smart enough to provide native ipv6 before they start
doing NAT on their ipv4 addresses.

~~~
rabidsnail
Given that they're all also cable tv providers, I'm not sure how smart
providing ipv6 would be.

------
WildUtah
Copyright enforcement didn't kill the broadcast. Choosing an incompetent
streamer killed the broadcast. The streamer still hasn't even responded to the
users and organizers.

There are a lot of streaming providers that want your business. Choose better
next time.

~~~
btilly
The streamer may or may not be incompetent, but the copyright bot issue is
real. I am not a lawyer, but my reading of
<http://images.chillingeffects.org/512.html> section g.2.C is that they are
legally NOT ALLOWED to put the material up until 10 days after receipt of a
counter notice if they wish to maintain their DMCA safe harbor.

If my reading of that statute is right (I'd give that about even odds - but
feel free to read it for yourself), even a competent streamer would have had
to do the takedown. The statute does not say how quickly the takedown has to
be, it merely says "acts expeditiously". So any competent provider will have
an automated procedure, and once that procedure is triggered, that's it unless
the copyright holder takes it back, or 10 days passes.

I just love the irony that it is Neil Gaiman who it happened to. He has long
been a vocal proponent of copyright maximalism, and his positions on this are
sufficiently extreme that I refuse to ever again buy anything that he has
written.

 _Update:_ I've left the last paragraph untouched, but I decided to look for
Neil Gaiman in his own words on copyright. And I ran across
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI> which demonstrates that I'm
remembering his "grumpy" period but he's since been educated that "online
piracy" is not so bad.

I'm glad I found this out. I'll have to start buying his books again. (Yet
another example of how I can form an opinion, and hold it for years after the
facts behind that opinion stopped being true. If I didn't do this kind of
follow-up research, I would have never known.)

~~~
icebraining
That's only true if it was a DMCA takedown notice. If it were their only
copyright detection systems - which I think it's more likely - it doesn't
apply.

~~~
rabidsnail
It was almost certainly an automatic takedown from Vobile, which they use
([http://www.ustream.tv/blog/2010/07/16/launch-of-improved-
mea...](http://www.ustream.tv/blog/2010/07/16/launch-of-improved-measures-to-
protect-copyright-holders-and-vobile-integration/)).

------
miahi
It is way cheaper to ban everything in sight than have the copyright holders'
lawyers banging at your door for infringement. All the rest is just bad
support, but ustream are covered by their terms: "[...] we also reserve the
right to terminate the Site, Services or your access thereto at any time and
for any reason". Using this kind of service as your unique way to broadcast is
not the way to go. Next time you are using a free service with such terms,
google for all the other similar services and use them as well. "Always have
backups" applies everywhere.

~~~
antoinevg
Cheaper until everyone follows the advice to take their business elsewhere.
Then what?

~~~
Evbn
Else _where_? When the copyright cartel has all vendors under under their
control...

~~~
briandear
Yeah, that pesky cartel, trying to protect their stuff. How dare they! This
case isn't a case of the copyright cartel -- the content producers gave
permission for usage. It's a case of inferior software being used. Copyright
law isn't the problem, shitty software is. UStream ought to have a way to pre-
authorize content to prevent this stuff from happening in the first place.
They should have been more aware of the quirks of their system and planned
accordingly. This is just an example of bad technical leadership on the
Ustream team.

------
hcarvalhoalves
It's easy for the author to say that "dumb robots, programmed to kill any
broadcast containing copyrighted material, had destroyed the only live
broadcast of the Hugo Awards".

What he ignores, though, is how easy it is for them to get sued about
copyright infringement.

That's what copyright law creates: fear, uncertainty and overly complex,
confusing DRM systems.

~~~
eurleif
I don't know of any law which would require Ustream to actively monitor
broadcasts for copyright violation. Do you?

~~~
rmc
No law explicit, no. But there is loads of laws they may break and loads of
ways many rich companies could sue them if they didn't use bots like this.

~~~
icebraining
I don't see any. As long as they comply with DMCA takedown requests, they
should be under safe harbor status.

~~~
mikeash
Until a *AA gets tired of them "taking advantage" of the law and sues them
into oblivion... won't even matter that they were on the right side of the
law.

~~~
icebraining
It's not that clearcut: [https://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-not-guilty-of-
copyright-...](https://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-not-guilty-of-copyright-
infringement-us-court-rules-100520/)

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SeanLuke
It seems to me that the basic problem was that the Hugo awards decided to
broadcast using a service provider without a contractual arrangement. Is the
Hugo really that low-rent?

If you're doing something big, always draw up a contract. Otherwise you're
subject to terms like...

<https://www.ustream.tv/terms-popup> [see sections 11, 12, and 13]

------
mtgx
Automated copyright enforcement like what Ustream has and Youtube's ContentID
are horrible. Imagine what would happen if the rightholders cartel manage to
pass a treaty like ACTA, where ISP's are responsible for user's watching
behavior. It doesn't seem too far off to think that they will implement an
automated system like this, too, and then you'll find yourself banned from
visiting a large portion of the Internet.

------
beedogs
I'm starting to think the concept of "intellectual property" is more trouble
than it's worth. A lot more trouble.

~~~
briandear
The irony is that you wouldn't have the Hugo awards with no IP protection. The
publishers wouldn't publish any of the books because there'd be no profit and
the writers wouldn't write because they'd have to get jobs doing something
else because the writing wouldn't pay the bills.

Why the hell should someone's creation not be protected from theft? If I write
an amazing novel, why should it be ok for someone else to put their name on it
and distribute it everywhere? Why shouldn't I be allowed to sell products
using someone else's logo? Without IP protection, you don't have IP and you
won't have any incentive for people to try and create something better. I
wouldn't work years on a project only to have some jackass steal it.

~~~
cturner
There were books published before copyright existed, and would be if copyright
was removed.

With only a handful of exceptions, successful writing isn't enough to make a
good living under the current regime, where writers make money by having a day
job. As with music, publishers who make money, not creators.

Copyright infringement isn't theft, and no amount of tough talk will make it
so.

------
jorgem
Someday, somehow, someone will take down the Super Bowl or the World Cup final
off "network television". I don't know how it will happen exactly -- maybe
part of the network stream will go over the internet on it's way to/from a
satellite feed, or something.

That day, the shit will hit the fan.

~~~
rabidsnail
There's no way the NFL is going to distribute their video over a public
platform. CDN, yes, but CDN's don't have the same pressure from copyright
holders that public platforms do, and don't fingerprint.

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scdoshi
Maybe <http://www.tapin.tv/> could have filled in when the official stream
went down. Crowdsource the stream?

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nnethercote
Lawrence Lessig is saying "I told you so" right now.

------
mtgx
P2P WebRTC can't come soon enough.

~~~
HoLyVieR
With Flash you can use the RTMFP protocol to do the exact same thing (stream
audio, video and data in P2P). It's just not a very known technology.

If you really can't wait for P2P technology for browser you can check it :
<http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/cirrus/>. As far as I know, it's the only
way to do true P2P in a browser.

