Google is known for its quick reactions to copyright claims, taking down videos from YouTube and Google video at the request of original copyright holders -- especially big players like TV networks. Recently, Paulo Ordoveza found one of his videos was the victim of one of these claims, and it was taken down from Google Video. The strange thing is that he had recorded his piece -- a time-lapse of some clouds -- back in 2006, way before it was used by Arianna Huffington's 23/6 Media as part of the infamous "Anonymous Message to Scientology" video.

Paulo says the video is coming back up, but this incident still raises a bigger issue about the effectiveness of Google's automated copyright enforcement scheme, which uses "a program that analyzes similarities in audio or video between user videos and a library of reference content provided to us by copyright owners. When a video matches a reference file, that video is automatically disabled." Is a system like this adequate when it comes to independent authors who want to make a video freely available for use, avoiding any kind of aggressive copyright enforcement?

For the record, Paulo never had a problem with 23/6's use of the video, and he's a fan of Anonymous. 23/6 also never asked that the original video come down. You can compare the two videos for yourself: here's the original, and here's the Anonymous Message.

CORRECTION: Paulo writes in to correct a few things here. The original Anonymous Message was not done by 23/6, who actually made a later parody of that video. Also, the correct link for the clouds from 2006 is here. Thanks, Paulo!

[via BoingBoing]

The crack of the bat, the smell of the grass and the pain of losing your purchased content to DRM deactivation. In what can only be called the biggest bonehead move since Bill Buckner's error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Major League Baseball has deactivated a DRM license server used to verify your worthiness to play back video of games you purchased online.

Due to an earlier decision to switch DRM providers, MLB's new content and old content are managed by different license authentication servers. After making the switch, MLB has arbitrarily decided it has no intention of honoring its earlier commitments to fans who purchased downloaded games under the old system, thereby rendering many fans shut-out.

Claiming the full-game downloads were "one-time sales", MLB is completely unapologetic to fans who've lost their purchased content to the horrors of DRM death. Quoted on Boing Boing, baseball super-fan and author Alan Wood writes, "Just got off the phone with a MLB customer service supervisor. [who said] 'MLB no longer supports the DDS system' that it once used and so any CDs with downloaded games on them 'are no good. They will not work with the current system.'"

Shame on you Major League Baseball, this is fraud. We've warned Download Squad readers that buying DRM "protected" media is a crap-shoot, but when issuing those warnings we were mostly concerned about smaller media sales outlets going out-of-business in an ever evolving digital media landscape. This goes so far beyond those fears, with an active and profitable business making a clear and informed decision to yank the DRM rug out from under your purchased content.

Is it any wonder non-drm downloads via P2P are so popular? It's not simply about "free" in the base, capitalist notion of how much money changed hands, it's more pointedly about "freedom", the freedom to do what you wish with the content you've collected. If consumers aren't given options which allow them to get their content free as in freedom, they'll take that content free as in beer.

Great day in the morning; Content owners who were knocked off-line by Viacom's indiscriminate shotgun approach to using the DMCA have taken a strike in return. When you fire off a DMCA "takedown" notice -- as you might remember from the Michael Crook incident -- you're making a claim that the content you want removed actually belongs to you. The content owners affected by Viacom's less than precision attack on YouTube are suing Viacom for claiming rights to content it doesn't own.

This is a pretty clear cut battle of corporate rights versus citizen rights. Viacom is playing the gotta break eggs to make an omlet defense, downplaying the chilling effect its indiscriminate use of the DMCA had on other legitimate copyright holders. What's flawed about that logic is this; If Viacom's copyrights are important, so are yours. We must seek to defend independent producers just as vigilantly as we aim to protect the Viacoms of the world.

[via Techdirt]

See Also:
Viacom files copyright suit against Google for $1 billion
EFF looking for victims of Viacom
Viacom becomes DMCA bully