From the Creative Commons blog:
YouTube just made an incredibly exciting announcement: it’s testing an option that gives video owners the ability to allow downloads and share their work under Creative Commons licenses. The test is being launched with a handful of partners, including Stanford, Duke, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCTV.
We are always looking for ways to make it easier for you to find, watch, and share videos. Many of you have told us that you wanted to take your favorite videos offline. So we’ve started working with a few partners who want their videos shared universally and even enjoyed away from an Internet connection.
Many video creators on YouTube want their work to be seen far and wide. They don’t mind sharing their work, provided that they get the proper credit. Using Creative Commons licenses, we’re giving our partners and community more choices to make that happen. Creative Commons licenses permit people to reuse downloaded content under certain conditions.
Visit YouTube’s blog for information. And if you’re are a partner who wants to participate, fill out the YouTube Downloads – Partner Interest form.
Now all we have to do is relly on the word of people like Shepard Fairey and the amateur copyright lawyers who posted their “knowledge” on the last post (everything is fair use, everything is transformative) to “safely” copy/share/steal?
What you don’t get is that (IANAL) the culture for use of youtube videos has always seemed to be cc-by-nd, in that I don’t know of any cases where folks got in trouble for embedding youtube videos in a “commercial site”, sometimes defined as a “blog with ads.” It seems (IANAL) that suddenly putting half or a tenth of the videos under cc licenses which explicitly allow commercial use puts at jeopardy the wonderful internet culture which existed prior, where commercial or noncommercial use was implicitly (IANAL) provided.
Flickr, on the other hand, once had a wonderful culture of being a “photo sharing site,” but then suddenly there was a de facto (IANAL) situation declared where use of the “Blog This!” button put one at risk of a lawsuit. The whole case seemed to hinge on some laypersons’ assertion that posting to a “blog with ads” was commercial theft of copyrighted work. Flickr employees at first insisted it was okay, then retracted. Where were you?? Praising Flickr.
It would help for you to get to know the institutions a bit before you go and thrust your nonprofit upon it. I’m sure these agreements made very happy the programmers and lawyers in your institutions and the groups you’re setting up cc licenses with, but the way you’ve done it may either i) impede and disrupt a thriving sharing community that was already there, or ii) ignore and to nothing to prevent cyber-bullying (“He posted my image to a blog with ADS!” ) that your lawyering could have helped correct and clarify. Perhaps you should have declared that all youtube videos were already, according to the established culture (IANAL) cc-by-nd, and just let folks opt-in to tougher standards.
What is fair-use or transformative has always, necessarily been fuzzy depending on the situation. Basing an Obama picture on an FDR pic is more likely ok than on an Obama pic.
But given the risk of being fairly or unfairly accused of copyright violation or making an innocent copyright violation (if he forgot that he saw a photo before subconsciously copying it) it looks like all LEGAL RISK to me to say COPY THIS.
Why not put a sign on your back, SUE ME?
Might be nice if we got a decent legal opinion from a copyright lawyer instead of pontification on subjects out of his area of expertise.
IANAL a copyright lawyer but I know a man who is.
I broached this subject regarding my own blog and content from media sharing sites. His answer was simple:
Unless there is a note or reference to something explicitly saying that the image is not to be used or that the author must be consulted then use it but if you are asked to remove it do so and quickly and without argument.
He did state that this was an opinion based as much in commom sense as in law.
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