Friday, April 15, 2011

Fair Use Fridays: YouTube Flunks Copyright School


According to Zeropaid's piece here, accused copyright infringers on YouTube will have to attend YouTube Copyright School, which involves watching a video and taking a quiz.

Why doesn't YouTube's video mention the public domain?  Watch the video and you will see a child-like figure being smashed with a gavel over the head for purported copyright infringement.   It is disturbing to see that YouTube is indoctrinating children into fear of quoting materials by authors living and dead by showing images of corporal punishment meted out by judges.

According to the video, if you are not sure what fair use is, you must consult a copyright lawyer.  Of course all children have copyright lawyers, so that is a workable solution.

YouTube's video doesn't mention copyright law's grounding in the US Constitution, nor the purpose of copyright law.

The US Constitution's Copyright Clause permits the US Congress:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

YouTube's video fails my copyright school.


More on the fair use doctrine.
More on public domain.






 http://www.dunnington.com/rdowd_bio.html
 Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here  

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was accused of infringement on YouTube by a person who hates me and wants to create trouble for me. After consultation with NBC's copyright lawyers, they determined my use was fair use and withdrew their infringement complaint. Under this scenario, I would have been required to take YouTube's copyright class? They didn't even anticipate innocent fair users would be accused? Come on, this is bogus.