5/28 miniwriting assignment 4:
Which do you think is the bigger social issue:
Can the problem be fixed?
Write a few sentences on the Sakai forum, or, if you really prefer, send them to me by email. I'd like them by the next class.
5/29 Paper 1
Videos
Privacy: Baase Chapter 2
§230 and the president
The P posted on Tuesday
There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent
Twitter added a "fact check", stating:
On Tuesday, President Trump made a series of claims about potential voter fraud after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an effort to expand mail-in voting in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. These claims are unsubstantiated, according to CNN, Washington Post and others. Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.
There are two safe harbors for online sites like Twitter:
The second clause means sites can create their own content-removal polices for "user friendliness".
What Twitter did in adding a link about voter fraud "facts" is not within the scope of either of the two points above. It is really hard to identify any legitimate legal mechanism to prevent Twitter's action.
Do sites like Facebook and Twitter have any duty to relay the president's comments without further comment of their own?
Voter fraud: historically, it is indeed very low, including mail-in voting. That might change, however, if (a) people figure out how to commit serious voter fraud using mail-in ballots, or (b) people figure out how to hack voting machines. Wait, (b) has already been done.
Anyway, there is indeed a huge difference of scale between past mail-in voting and some of the mail-in voting proposals for this November. And there is more potential for fraud. So Twitter's failure to make this distinction clear can certainly be seen as an error.
Free speech: the first amendment means only that the government cannot censor your speech.
Github reinstates Popcorn Time
What is popcorn time? What does github have to do with it? Why was it taken down?
Was this an abusive takedown?
Did the MPA actually claim to hold copyright on PT's code?
How does this relate to the first amendment and the right to publish computer code?
Comments from miniwriting 1:
Copyright crackdowns have certainly had an impact on YouTube, both in terms of what can be posted and in terms of what YouTube stars can include on their channels. Speaking of which,
The Dancing Baby
Not the computer-generated one, but the real [and adorably cute] child of Stephanie Lenz, dancing to a song sung by Prince. Lenz posted, Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) filed a DMCA takedown, Lenz filed a putback, and it took YouTube six weeks to put the content back. The video is at youtube-nocookie.com/embed/N1KfJHFWlhQ. The music is barely recognizable.
The case went to trial, with Lenz receiving legal support from the EFF. The district court held that copyright owners must consider Fair Use before issuing takedowns. The Ninth Circuit upheld in 2015 [emphasis added by pld]:
Copyright holders cannot shirk their duty to consider — in good faith and prior to sending a takedown notification — whether allegedly infringing material constitutes fair use, a use which the DMCA plainly contemplates as authorized by the law.
As a subtle point, the Ninth Circuit opinion also stated that Fair Use was something people had a right to do, not simply a legal defense against an otherwise-valid infringement claim (that is, it is not an "excused infringement"). [Statements made in passing in a court decision, but not essential to the actual decision, are known as dicta and are not binding precedent.]
The Ninth Circuit also stated that If Universal Music had a good-faith belief that Lenz' video was not Fair Use, then the takedown notice was legitimate.
Lenz and UMPG have since settled. As usual, the terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.
What does this have to say about the MPA's takedown notice for the Popcorn Time source code? Not about fair use, but about the idea that a takedown must be based on a good-faith belief in infringement.
YouTube's Content ID system has not been required to consider Fair Use.
EFF's Takedown Hall of Shame.
There are lots of examples here of bad-faith DMCA takedowns.
Should Google allow opt-out from searching?
Effects on hypothetical markets
Hotaling: A library made copies of a book (as microfiche), and then destroyed the copies. Oops, they destroyed the original and left one of the copies.
Cariou v Prince:
To what extent does Prince's work "stimulate productive thought"? To what extent does the "different aesthetic" rule apply to music sampling?
Copying and Reverse Engineering
Geohotz
Michael Eisner
Aereo
DMCA issues
Globe & Mail again
Viacom v YouTube and Viacom's Mistake
Do you think YouTube is illegitimate?
Intro to Privacy
What is it?
Do you have something to hide?