Scouta gets Icky Thumped: strange copyright loop
We received a DMCA takedown notice yesterday which is a first for us here at scouta.com. And it is a beauty.
Web Sherriff acting for the White Stripes sent us a DMCA takedown notice (asking us to remove content or links) for a YouTube video for the White Stripes’ Song Icky Thump which has been placed on YouTube by Warner Bros Records (the White Stripe’s label).
There’s a strange copyright enforcement loop here and I’m sure you can see it:
- Warner Bros Music put the video on YouTube. They allow embedding and playing the video embedded. You can still go there and embed the video in your blog. Go on.
- The YouTube video get added to scouta favourites by a scouta user. (Scouta’s CEO Richard Giles, as it turns out)
- Robots or humans at WebSherriff acting for the White Stripes, issue Scouta with a takedown notice for the Scouta fave (pdf).
Mad, isn’t it. One arm adds something to YouTube and positively encourages sharing and the other arm issues takedown notices for sharing.
It must be a mixup or confusion or overzealous robot, surely.
Anyway, in the meantime we’ve removed the link to YouTube (that’s just sensible when dealing with the DMCA) pending and explanation from WebSherriff. There’s a link to this post instead on that scouta fave url.
I propose we call this kind of two-armed bumble an Icky Thump.
We’ll let you know what happens, and I’m sure we’ll have that item back in Scouta shortly.
More on this in an excellent article at TechCrunch.
[Update: there’s now a Scouta Group to hold media around this story. And Richard discusses the issue with Cameron Reilly on the G’Day World Podcast #259]
July 4th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Web Sheriff
Protecting Your Rights on the Internet
Tel 44-(0)208-323 8013 / Fax 44-(0)208-323 8080
websheriff@websheriff.com www.websheriff.com
Hi-There Scouta,
In view of the contents of your blog piece above - and TechCrunch’s reporting of it - we thought that we should throw some light on this for you and your readers as follows :-
1. Contrary to suggestions, this would actually appear to be a HUMAN error, as Web Sheriff does not Spam blogs and media sites … … in fact, we actually price ourselves on the fact that all data that we assimilate is checked by real people as opposed to some robot … … this is what enables us to distinguish between, say, a Russian, pirate, pay-to-download site and an artist’s biggest fan who just happens to have put an mp3 on his / her blog before release out of (understandable) enthusiasm for the artist … … which makes it all the more embarrassing on the extremely rare occasions that we get a ‘friendly fire’ incident / someone gets hit by a stray bullet.
2. Additionally, Web Sheriff always adopts a fan and blog friendly approach, as we do not think that music fans should be persecuted for merely being over-enthusiastic and, as such, do don’t adopt the ‘big stick’ approach that certain agencies / rights bodies employ … … we simply carry out artists’ and labels’ wishes and, at the end of the day, it’s their choice to decide whether or not they wish to allow their music (or videos) to be distributed on the net before release, as it’s their music !!
3. To place this into context, tens of thousands of DMCAs are (correctly) issued by Web Sheriff everyday - and all over the world - and incidents such as this can generally be counted on the fingers of one hand (each year).
So, our apologies to you at Scouta (as we understand that you have permission to link to this clip on YouTube) and, even though big news has been made of this little story, we genuinely appreciate being able to air our response with you and your readers.
With Thanks & Regards,
WEB SHERIFF
July 4th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
DCMA - WTF?!?!?!
I think we all dig out the black pudding for a return-ecky thump!
July 4th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Thanks, Web Sherriff. We’ll restore the item straight away. Thanks for the quick response.