Fair use is the facet of intellectual property law that allows portions of copyrighted material to be used for criticism and parody and it is a hot button issue in the online content world. For instance major fair use issues that have popped up at YouTube in the last few months include permanently disabling the account of a prolific video film critic and using its ContentID system to remove Warner content after a dispute between the two companies. And in another high profile fair use clash, the AP is suing artist Shepard Fairey over his iconic Barack Obama prints which the AP claims were based on a photo of Obama owned by the AP. According to Fairey and Obama for America, the original print was based on an AP image but when Fairey began to work with the campaign in an official capacity they provided Fairey with a campaign owned photo of Obama to work from. So if two people own similar photos of the President and an artist makes a print from one of them, how do you decide what photo was the inspiration?
I want to highlight a couple helpful resources on fair use law, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s fair use guide and the Stanford University Copyright and Fair Use Center. The most frustrating thing about fair use is that the burden of proof is on the user. There is no clear criteria for what qualifies as fair use. This allows large conglomerates to easily push around individual artists and critics who do not have the money to fight clostly legal battles even if the individual is clearly using copyrighted material in good faith. As the EFF’s FAQ points out, it is also unclear if fair use is a right or just an acceptable defense against copyright infringement.
What is clear is that the law is not adequately protecting the average citizen’s right to expression, as well as stifling the sharing of art and criticism. What is most frustrating about the current situation is that the current legal situation does not appear to be in anyone’s best interests. Artistic derivative works and criticism do not serve as adequate substitutes for original works so they are not actual threats to original rights holders, in fact they often serve to spark interest in the original works. Thusly, going after critics and artists is not in the long term interest of large conglomerate rights holders. However, legal departments feel like they are serving the short term interests of these conglomerates by bullying and possibly winning settlements. Reform of intellectual property law to catch up with modern technology is going to be a long arduous process. I am curious and excited to see what direction the Obama administration takes us in. Sadly I expect we will have to wait a while given the number of higher priority crises in President Obama’s docket.
After all my posts on the Israel-Palestine conflict it is nice to get a reminder that YouTube is more than just a instrument of war (it’s weird to be able to write that). According to Reuters, the Vatican is opening a YouTube channel to show Pope and church events.
Hamas has launched a new website, www.palutube.com, to highlight pro-Palestine videos from the war in Gaza and assorted other pro-Palestinian content including nationalist songs and spirited demonstrations. This is in response to Israel’s already strongWeb 2.0 presence covering the war. Palutube is in Arabic by default but a drop down menu on the right side allows you to switch to English. Currently I am having a great deal of trouble loading the site so don’t be surprised if you have trouble as well. Nonetheless I will try to embed a video from Palutube below. It is worth noting that because Hamas has chosen to host their own website (though not host all of their own videos), they are not bound by any other web portal’s terms of service (like the IDF is bound to YouTube’s TOS and authority). Thus there is some powerful and controversial language on Palutube. Most notably a banner that reads “The Zionist Holocaust in Gaza of the Innocent People [sic]“.
We are now talking about a war in which Israel refuses to allow foreign journalists access into Gaza, and both sides are battling for global support and to shape the narrative of the conflict via Web 2.0 strategies. As the Gulf War was the first cable news war, the current Israel-Palestine conflict is the first YouTube war. The obvious question being: is this the future of wartime journalistic propaganda?
It is clear from watching just a few of the videosavailable on Palutube that there is a different tone here than on the IDF’s YouTube channel. The IDF’s content has focused on justifying their attacks, which have been widely criticized as a disproportionate response to Hamas’ aggression, through videos of Hamas’ rocket attacks and evidence of other Hamas wrongdoing. In contrast the new Hamas site is a mix of videos that either display the large scale suffering that is going on in Gaza or provide evidence that Palestinian morale in Gaza is not dead through songs and videos of demonstrations.
The latter videos are particularly of interest considering the character of the Israeli attacks. It is quite clear that Israel’s attacks are an act of aggression by the side with the upper hand. Hamas rocket fire into Israel, while indefensible from the perspective of someone who would like to see the conflict resolved through diplomacy, is essentially impotent in comparison to the Israeli response. The Israeli message is that Hamas is thoroughly out gunned and by continuing to fire into Israel Hamas is inviting Israel to respond tenfold simply because they can. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece Rashid Khalidi presented a particularly insightful quote from former IDF chief of staff Moshe Yaalon: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” Temporarily setting aside how disturbing that statement is, with Palutube Hamas appears intent on saying it is also not correct.
These images may be enhancing the realness of military violence, but they are also coded to be received in the same vein as movies, as videogames. They allow the IDF to control the narrative of the attacks; the IDF can retroactively write the script of the invasion.
Joe is absolutely correct that the IDF is attempting to control the narrative of their attacks. The IDF YouTube channel is clearly propaganda in the sense that it is entirely one-sided and can be misleading. But I wonder whether, as Joe says, these videos are to be received and processed like video games and movies. Take this video for example:
As video games have evolved most game makers have taken the opportunity of newer, better technologies as a challenge to improve the realism of their games. Note Call of Duty 4. If you follow that link to the game’s Wikipedia page and glance at the “Story” section you will find a long convoluted tale involving decades of complex international relations and leaders with conflicting interests. While in the past it may have been unclear what was the conflict between Megaman and Doc Wily (imagine the “Grendel” of the Megaman series where you play as one of Wily’s robots attempting to infiltrate Dr. Light’s lab where Light is attempting to finally complete his robo-terrorist Megaman). In the present games have tapped into the motivations behind real world conflicts.
That is exactly what the IDF YouTube channel lacks. The videos have a journalistic feel, as though these are “pure” documents where “the facts speak for themselves.” However, the juxtaposition with contemporary video games makes it all the more clear the videos are propaganda. We know from Call of Duty 4 if someone is going through all the trouble to commit the acts documented by the IDF, they must have some motivation. Israel does not share that motivation with us, they can’t, and this is why their coverage of the war has to be propaganda. If in the IDF YouTube channel or the Israeli consulate’s Twitter feed there was any acknowledgment that Hamas believes their actions to be somehow justified, that would appear to be sympathizing with the enemy you are slaughtering. It would open up the door to the idea that perhaps Israel has taken the wrong course of action. The IDF YouTube channel fails to pass the sniff test of a present-day video game.
The IDF has released two new YouTube videos that are sure to add new sparks to a number of already contentious debates. In the video below IDF Captain Benjamin Rutland explains the IDF’s motivation behind controversial mortar fire on a UN school in Gaza.
Another video cited by Captain Rutland shows the alleged Hamas rocket fire from the UN school. Israel is correct that by housing their forces in a UN school Hamas is in violation of international law however Israel’s attacks on Gaza are also in violation of international law. Due to the density of the population in Gaza Israel’s attacks are in violation of Geneva Conventions. And here we violate international law to punish those who see it fit to violate international law…
UPDATE: The UN has issued a statement denying there were any Hamas militants in the attacked school.
Yesterday’s New York Times ran an article on Google’s ever-expanding book search. I have found Google’s book search to be an amazing tool when doing scholarly work. It is encouraging that they are working with publishers and authors to share profits from ads on book searches.
China’s government may be upping the ante in their censorship efforts. The Chinese government recently issued a statement condemning major Chinese & international web entities, including Google, for how easily pornography can be accessed online. Google’s policy is to cater search results to specific countries’ laws by monitoring IP addresses (for instance, in several European countries it is unlawful to seek out Nazi related material so Nazi related websites are filtered out of their Google search results). Google has also stated they would prefer countries to lift their content bans to Google making judgments as to what is acceptable within the laws of each nation. Our literary history is filled with fantastical conceptions of Utopian societies (not to mention real-life attempts to create Utopian societies on this Earth). A single society without censorship laws would be an interesting first step.
Lawrence Lessig argues that FCC regulations should be eliminated to promote technological innovation. I am cheating a bit here, in that it is not Monday’s news but the article is worth your time. While the two domains are vastly different it is interesting to see a respected intellectual in the field of communications press for deregulation as the world suffers through a recession most blame on deregulating the financial markets. At the moment I cannot think of a way this sort of deregulation could cause a global crisis but I suspect the possibility exists.
Turkey’s government is still in the midst of a longstanding debate over how to handle YouTube in a country where content insulting Turkey’s modern founder Ataturk is illegal. Most recently there was a judicial ruling banning YouTube entirely. Turkey is yet another government facing difficult decisions about censorship laws created in parochial world as we now live in an inescapably international world.
Facebook has been flagging breast feeding photos for removal. Despite online and offline protests by breast feeding mothers, they have no intent to change their policy. I am surprised by Facebook’s stance on this issue, which is essentially a shrug and a “those are the rules.” Which is a disconcerting, thoughtless, anti-woman response. It does not take an acrobatic reading to see this as Facebook deeming women’s bodies and women’s relationships to their infants as obscene.
It turns out Israel’s new media campaign to justify its attacks in Gaza is not limited to the IDF’s YouTube channel. The Israeli consulate has a Twitter feed that includes links to news items, quotes and brief comments. The more of this I see coming out of Israel the more comfortable I feel calling it little more than propaganda.
Benazir Bhutto’s daughter made a hip-hop video tribute to Bhutto, the assassinated former-Pakistani leader, and posted the tribute on YouTube. Is it too distant for me to leave my comments at this is a fascinating way to express one’s grief?
We live in a truly absurd age, if you require evidence of this notice that the Israel Defense Forces media & PR wing has setup a YouTube channel to share videos of the IDF’s air attacks in Gaza. Anyone want to join me on a trip to Montparnasse Cemetery for a seance with the spirit of Jean Baudrillard?
In the last year we have seen a rise in “citizen based journalism,” but it is strange (though unsurprising) to see a nation’s military attempt to usurp media coverage of their tactics with video recorded during missions. It is even more strange that the IDF’s idea of justifying or explaining their actions is to provide the world with video of who they are blowing up as those people are being blown up. Yet I must admit, it worked. The first thought that came to mind when I saw what appeared to be Hamas operatives loading and transporting rockets was “Yeah, maybe someone should blow those guys up.” Allow me to say that I am not voicing support for Israel’s actions, just that on the shallowest cognitive level, maybe more visceral than cognitive (maybe visceral, then cognitive?), the IDF’s videos were effective.
Among the interesting ironies here: in a culture that has trended towards fantasy, digital existence and detachment from basic human experiences, here YouTube is allowing the violence in our world to be made more real rather than less. These videos are not the sort of images one would typically find in war coverage on the world news. And to further entangle things some of the IDF’s videos have been taken down, most likely due to graphic content but YouTube policy is not to offer comment on why particular videos were removed from the site. According to the IDF’s brief statement on their YouTube channel’s home page YouTube has allowed some of the censored videos to be accessible again.
I would also like to add that despite my claim about these videos enhancing the realness of military violence I am not wholly uncritically accepting these videos as the real of the Gaza attacks. If the IDF has say, videos of two different bombings. One video is clearly targeting Hamas operatives while the other is more ambiguous, targeting Palestinians believed to be Hamas operatives but not engaged in suspicious activity and possibly innocent civilians. I realize these two theoretical videos would not have an equal likelihood of making it to YouTube.
Warner Music recently pulled their artists’ music videos from YouTube after negotiations between the two companies broke down. Warner Music is seeking an increase in the fee they receive when one of their videos is watched on YouTube. There is also rumor that a group of major music labels, including Warner Music, are considering founding their own rival to YouTube. The proposed new site would be similar to Hulu, a partnership between major television networks to offer full programs online with commercials.
It will be interesting to see the direction YouTube chooses as it begins to accrue rivals. Three years ago when YouTube was first becoming popular it was essentially the only site specializing in providing video on demand. Hulu seems to be less of a threat to YouTube because YouTube’s strength is providing brief clips rather than half hour programs. A music video website launched by major music labels would be a real threat to steal some of YouTube’s traffic as music videos are a major chunk of YouTube’s content. It is not wholly unlikely that we will reach a point where most large corporate content providers either provide content on their own websites exclusively or via consortiums like Hulu, at which point the interest in YouTube’s more grassroots content will truly be tested.
I believe YouTube will have staying power even if it loses most of its major corporate content. YouTube will be moving from being the entire online video encyclopedia, to being primarily a site for user generated content. But as we’ve seen users love uploading videos to YouTube and some people have even been able to launch careers that way. I also cannot imagine YouTube losing favor among smaller entities like independent record labels. For smaller entities YouTube’s market dominance is a chance to easily make your work available to a vast audience rather than a threat to your profit margins. I imagine this is what Google envisioned with their purchase of YouTube in 2006, despite some critics’ concern that YouTube would fold or be unprofitable without full corporate support. There was never any reason to believe corporate content providers would stick with YouTube as it became easier and made more business sense to host their own content but it is difficult to envision the entirety of the internet suddenly deciding they no longer want to share videos with each other.
And in another high profile fair use clash, the AP is suing artist Shepard Fairey over his iconic Barack Obama prints which the AP claims were based on a photo of Obama owned by the AP. According to Fairey and Obama for America, the original print was based on an AP image but when Fairey began to work with the campaign in an official capacity they provided Fairey with a campaign owned photo of Obama to work from. So if two people own similar photos of the President and an artist makes a print from one of them, how do you decide what photo was the inspiration?