Wireside Chat Scrubbed, Fair Use Snubbed
by Adi
This was the original headline. I like it better 
Crossposted from the Open Video Alliance blog.
Irony: Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig Silenced by Copyright.
Lawrence Lessig’s presentation last Thursday at OVA’s first Wireside Chat was a huge success. Over 3,000 unique visitors tuned in, plus hundreds more watched at over 40 local screening events. But since Lessig’s slidecast of the 45-minute talk contained 15-second clips of copyrighted music by Warner Music Group, the YouTube version was literally silenced!
Lessig’s talk—in case you missed it—was about, of all things, the importance of fair use and current copyright issues. His presentation was highly critical and thoroughly educational—as TechDirt put it, “There could be no clearer example of fair use.” But yesterday, the YouTube-hosted video was scrubbed of its audio track, rendering the presentation useless. (The talk has since been restored, and remains available at Lessig’s blip.tv page—highlighting the importance of a broad, diverse video ecosystem without single points of failure.)
It’s still unclear whether the takedown was the result of a DMCA request or due to YouTube’s ContentID system, which automatically scans videos for copyrighted material and takes action. Luckily, Lessig has legal expertise and counternotice know-how. He filed a counterclaim informing YouTube that his video on fair use was, in fact, fair use. It doesn’t matter why the video was taken down; the lack of human review is no excuse for a serious flaw in the way YouTube handles copyright complaints.
Fair use, a doctrine in US law that allows for short transformative uses of copyrighted works, lies not only at the heart of remix culture, but also education, news, commentary, and criticism. When YouTube utilizes filtering systems like ContentID, or when media companies improperly take advantage of the DMCA, important expression is stifled. We constantly see examples of fair users being shut down; this policy of guilty-before-proven-innocent runs counter to the internet’s foundational values of freedom and openness.
We need to run with this. The fact that a video about fair use would be taken down for copyright infringement is bad press for YouTube, bad press for WMG, and bad press especially for the legal and technical system we have in place today. The importance of pushing to fix these flaws and create an open video ecosystem has never been stronger.