• Disney retracts copyright claim on a YouTuber’s “Steamboat Willie” video, allowing it to be monetizable and shareable worldwide.
• The claim had previously demonetized the video and restricted its visibility and embedding options.
• This move by Disney may signal its recognition of “Steamboat Willie” being in the public domain.
I’m having a hard time comprehending how this is a “win” when Disney had to voluntarily retract their claim with Youtube.
The short is in public domain. It is the goddamn motherfucking law. Disney does not have any say in the matter. We should not, and in fact do not, have to rely on them being “nice.” Not anymore. That’s the point.
Fuck them, in the ear, with an egg beater.
If I’m looking at dates correctly, Disney filed the strike AFTER it was in the public domain already. So it was a bullshit strike from the beginning, not just something that was struck before it entered the public domain and was left over.
The DMCA needs to be updated with fines for clear bullshit claims like this. As it is, there is no penalty for a company to just claim everything. I’d even be okay with platforms like Youtube receiving a portion of that fine for having to be in the middle of the bullshit copyright claims that were overturned because. Give the platforms an incentive to make the process streamlined and straight forward instead of the crap we have now.
I’d even be okay with platforms like Youtube receiving a portion of that fine for having to be in the middle of the bullshit copyright claims that were overturned because
YouTube is legally obligated to take the content down as soon as they receive the DMCA notice or else YouTube will become liable for potential damages. YouTube’s automated copyright claim system is inherently broken, but that’s a symptom of DMCA, not the cause.
From my understanding the big copyright owners basically have a stranglehold on youtube when negotiating how youtube should handle copyright stuff. The current copyright law was not designed to accommodate platforms such as youtube so if they don’t do as the copyright owners say it could result in a long court battle resulting in a decision that youtube itself is the one violating the law for being the one hosting the non-licensed content on their platform.
Not a lawyer and don’t even live in the US so i might not be the most reliable source on this though.
Your understanding is incorrect. Current copyright law includes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which handles platforms like YouTube.
The DMCA needs to be updated with fines for clear bullshit claims like this.
A fine is useless if the default is that the request is granted, which platforms like YT are more or less forced to do since you can submit thousands of request at no cost. Add a security deposit (and punitive damages in case of bogus requests) for each and every request and maybe you solve the problem.
I completely agree, but isn’t this the issue with private platforms taking over essential functions of society? If YouTube wants to play ball with the copyright lobby that’s their business. They could ban any video for any reason whatsoever, it’s their platform.
Youtubes copyright system isn’t really the ‘problem’, the copyright laws are. Youtube gets yelled at by both sides at the same time and generally takes a reasonable middle man position. It’s not youtubes job to arbitrate who owns what.
And they’re pretty much required to take things down, it prevents them from being liable. After that, the uploader can challenge this decision, and if the claimer doesn’t back down, it goes to court.
Unfortunately, claimers are currently not required to provide any proof, nor are they required to pay for any legal costs (at least not upfront), so it’s just simpler for the uploader to take the L.
This is the key issue; the DMCA provides basically no penalty for making false claims. The natural choice is to claim everything and see who fights you.
Yep, agreed, that’s the worst thing about it. Makes sense more or less otherwise.
We should start a brigade to issue DMCA takedowns for every Disney video on YouTube.
They’re only required to take stuff down in response to DMCA claims.
They have absolutely no obligation for their alternate process to treat claims as valid until proven false.
You’re right, copyright laws were written ages ago when mass media was exclusively owned by big media companies. If there was ever a copyright dispute, the company’s lawyers would meet up with the other company’s lawyers and either settle or go to court, and both parties could easily pay for the legal fees because they were, you know, big media companies.
But nowadays everyone can simply upload something that can potentially reach billions of people, which is unprecedented in human (or legal) history, and the legal system simply hasn’t caught up to this radical shift in the status quo. This is why Youtube has to compromise between the big media conglomerates with expensive lawyers and, well, the rest of us.
The law is only as powerful as people are willing to enforce it.
Just because it’s a “goddamn motherfucking law” doesn’t mean shit if powerful corporations are willing to spend unholy amounts of money to make you prove it in court.
The “Happy Birthday” song was believed to be in the public domain for centuries but Warner Brothers was able to convince people to just pay them a license fee in order to prevent going to court. It was only in 2016 that a court ruled that it was in the public domain.
So yeah…Disney could have been real douches about this. But they are, uncharacteristically, being nice about it.
But they are, uncharacteristically, being nice about it.
I think it’s indicative of Disney’s character that this worries me more than anything else.
I’m actually not too worried about it. A lot of people were watching the whole “Steamboat Willie” copyright sunsetting with great interest since it was what drove Disney to lobby congress to push legislation to protect it.
So there would have been a pretty large outcry if Disney decided to sue people for it, especially after it had expired. Given the fact that they are already fighting PR battles with DeSantis and the “anti-woke” crowd, they are probably being pragmatic and not fighting a battle that they’d pretty much lose in court as well as in public opinion.
Yeah our law teacher always stressed that there is a big difference between having a right and getting your right
Disney, or anyone for that matter, can copyright claim any video. Youtube just plays ball because that’s the simplest thing to do.
It’s on them to prove, in court, that it actually is copyrightable and that they own the copyright to the content, which they’d fail to do.
The win is for the uploader and for the public, since now you can “be sure” that Disney won’t take you to court over it, which would be a costly endeavor for you. Even if Disney would almost surely lose.
Maybe the creator was in a SLAPP state and Disney was going to be paying for their lawyers anyway.
Afraid it doesn’t apply to copyright claims, but I might be wrong on that
Well, damn it, it should. That’s a prime example of an abusive suit, with media companies holding all the cards and quite willing to toss takedowns over the wall if the recipients are too afraid or poor to fight obviously baseless claims.
I think people misunderstand this and that you explained it well. It wasn’t a court that struck down the video, it was YouTube. I’m not sure though what American law has to say about monolithic platforms like YouTube and hosting public domain content.
If it’s public domain, then by definition anyone can upload it, for any purpose, and monetise it however they see fit. YouTube could ban anyone else from uploading Steamboat Willie and only have their own version to watch, or they could let literally millions of people upload versions. They can basically do whatever they want with it now.
Disney does not want to risk being labeled as a vexatious litigant in copyright court. They need to keep an aura of good faith there because of how reliant they are on bending copyright law to their will. Operating in bad faith could get them much harsher rulings on much more valuable IP.
Since it says Copyright Strike and not DMCA takedown we can assume quite simply that this was the automated system at YouTube doing it’s thing.
Steamboat Willie is in their system as Disney’s, but its now public domain. As this is the first time that’s happened whatever was in place (or wasn’t if it was forgotten about) to remove the Auto-Detektion failed to start ignoring Steamboat Willie and the video was struck.
Disney, being a big corporation, took a few days to get that news filtered to whoever can release that kind of thing.
This story seems like yet another example of YouTubes system being less than ideal, not one of Disney being counts (this time)
This makes the most sense.
When I release music through distributors, there’s always an option to enter it into contentid so YouTube can do claims on my behalf. This is all automated and I don’t assume YouTube takes the copyright lifespan into account.
If we extrapolate this to Disney’s use case, they would have had to actively locate it in their contentid entries to YouTube and then remove it that day and hope YouTube refreshes their contentid system timely enough. It’s not very far fetched that someone messed up in this chain. So I would honestly give Disney the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Don’t get me wrong, they have an awful relationship with the copyright but let’s make damn sure we criticise them for the right things, otherwise they will only learn that they will get shit on either way and stop thinking about being assholes.
Because this is about YouTube and not the actual law itself.
You could take this to court and defend your use if it. But in this case, it’s just YouTube and it’s own systems being abused by Disney.
“allowing it” as if disney owns the public domain.
Disney doesn’t allow it, retracting the claim is what allows it.
I actually didn’t expect Disney to respect public domain. Everyone 100% has the right to absolutely shit on them for strangling copyright law all these years, though.
I’m honestly pretty shocked they even let it go public domain at all.
They’ve already had the rules changed to extend their copyright multiple times. I think they ran out of excuses at this point like your coworker who’s missed work due to their grandma dying for the fourth time this year.
Also because the Congress that approved the extension were majority of Republicans both at senate and house.
Who would have guessed they would favor the multi billion corp rather than the public.
Jake from the corridor crew did a video speculating what the reasoning is behind it: https://youtu.be/u2dIvUAd5QE?si=rC2Kg_c-hCy0niYF
Disney should be dismantled for being cultural terrorists
Their recognition doesn’t change the fact that it’s in the public domain
It does change the fact that people don’t have to be afraid to use any of it.
Even though Disney would lose in court, you really don’t want to ever be in the same room as Disney’s lawyers.
On the one hand, I was tempted to disagree with you out of principle - Since being on the winning side is almost always favorable.
… But on the other hand, I rarely want to be in the same room as any lawyers, much less Disney’s. So yeah, I’d rather just avoid being in a situation where I have to be on either side - winning or otherwise =]
Fuck off Disney.
“We will be back with a trademark claim” - Disney, probably
Trademark would require that they’re using it in merchandizing or marketing. If the channel is simply re-uploading the original, Disney has no valid trademark claim.
It’s a joke.
this is a video that everyone has to watch, and keep watching until it goes viral
Here’s a link to the video in question: https://youtu.be/JMYJxCj6pmI
I didn’t think it was very funny at first, but the “no gag reflex? no wonder Goofy likes you” got me pretty good.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/JMYJxCj6pmI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Since more and more works arrive into public domain, are there aggregate sites/torrents with fresh “releases”?
https://blog.archive.org/ marks the beginning of each year with some articles featuring the new public domain material.
For digital copies of written works in the public domain, projectgutenberg.org is a good source.
Obvious self-answer is archive.org e.g. https://archive.org/details/movies?query=steamboat+willie
damn I can’t believe they have to give up the mountains of cash that have been rolling in all these years from this video I think capitalism must be super difficult
Disney followed the law is news. This is wild.
HANDS OFF OUR WILLIE, DISNEY!
Since it says “worldwide”, I want to point out that Steamboat Willie is in the public domain in the United States, but that doesn’t mean that it is elsewhere. For example, in Europe the law sets a copyright term of author death + 70 years so Steamboat Willie won’t be in the public domain there until 2036. So Disney is free to copyright strike Steamboat Willie outside the US however they want.
Many jurisdictions have exceptions that if a work is out of copyright in it’s original jurisdiction, it is out of copyright
It is called the principle of the lesser term
2024 the year Disney became less evil 🤯
Not really. They are literally just following the law
deleted by creator
Nope. They filed the DMCA strike after the IP entered the public domain. Scumbaggery as usual.
Following the law doesn’t lessen one’s evilness.
What? No. They tried to do something that’s outright illegal and only stopped because enough people called them out on it.
It’s not illegal to file a false copyright claim, unfortunately.
It’s not illegal in the way it’s not illegal to violate a copyright
You can sue them for it though, or you could if there wasn’t such a huge power imbalance
Sue them for what? Disney can make as many copyright claims with Youtube as they want. There are no laws regulating that. That is purely a Youtube decision.
Damages first and foremost, if you miss out on money because of false claims, there you go. If you lost money and they did something wrong, you can sue for compensation and/or to make them stop
Additionally, if you can prove they’re doing it maliciously and knowingly in an effort to stop you from doing business, tortuous interference.
Legal eagle has a video on it not too long ago, it was about a YouTuber making copyright claims against another YouTuber criticizing them, I think the whole thing was related to elden ring?
He goes into way more detail and different situations, but the takeaway is that there is a theoretical path to do this
