#False Copyright Strike

[wombocombo4x3]

A Frustrating Situation

[garthnadermemestash]

Hypocrite

[beebly-boop]

Important distinction about those Mickey Mouse cartoons: while the silent version of Plane Crazy was published in 1928 and is now in the public domain, the sound version did not release until 1929. So while the version of Mickey from that cartoon might be safe to use for now, at the very least the audio recording from the 1929 version might be something Disney's litigious claws maintain a solid grasp on until this time next year.

Basically if you are planning on uploading those cartoons to YouTube or whatever now that the copyright is gone, make sure you have the 1928 versions specifically.

Copy Right and Public Domain in 2024

Happy 2024 all! its also Public Domain Day! a magical holiday here in America where things enter the public domain. Works published in the year 1928 (or 95 years ago!) have entered the public domain, which means they belong to us, all of us, the public!

Mickey's Back!

Yes! I'm sure you've heard, but Mickey Mouse (and Minnie Mouse too) is entering the Public Domain today. This has been news for a few years and indeed Disney's lobbying in the late 1990s is why our copy right term is SO long. So what exactly is now public domain?

Most people know about Mickey's first appearance Steamboat Willie, but a second short film, Plane Crazy was also released in 1928 so will also be public domain. So what's public? well these two films first of all, you're allowed to play them, upload them to YouTube or whatever without paying Disney. In theory you'll be allowed to cut and sample them, have them playing in the background of your movie etc. Likewise in theory the image of Mickey and Minnie as they appear (thats important) in these films will be free to use as well as Mickey's character as he appears in these works will be free to use. Now Mickey's later and more famous appearance

will still be protected. Famously the Conan Doyle Estate claimed that Sherlock Holmes couldn't be nice, smile, or not hate women in works because they still held the copyright on the short stories where he first did those things even though 90% of Sherlock Holmes stories were public domain. It's very likely Disney will assert similar claims over Mickey, claiming much of his personality first appeared in works still copyrighted.

Finally there's copyright vs trademark. Copyright is total ownership of a piece of media and all the ideas that appear in it, copyright has a limited set term and expires. Trademark is more limited and only applies to things used to market and sell a product. You can have a Coke branded vending machine in your movie if you want, but it couldn't appear anywhere in the trailer for your movie as thats you marketing your movie.

Where trademark ends and copyright begins and how trademarked something in the public domain is allowed to be are all unsettled areas of law and clearly Disney in the last few years as been aggressively pushing its trademark not just to Mickey in general but Steamboat Willie Mickey in particular

Ultimately the legal rights and wrongs of this might not matter so much since few people have the money and legal resources of the Walt Disney corporation so they might manage to maintain a de facto copyright on Mickey through legal intimidation, but maybe not?

And Tigger Too!

All the talk about Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie has sadly overshadowed other MAJOR things entering the public domain today. Most people are aware Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in 2022, but they might not realize his beloved friend Tigger didn't. Thats because Tigger didn't appear till A. A. Milne's second (and last) book of Pooh short stories, The House at Pooh Corner in 1928.

Much like Mickey Mouse only what appears in The House at Pooh Corner is public domain so the orange bouncy boy from the 1960s Disney cartoon is still on lock down. But the A. A. Milne original as illustrated by E. H. Shepard is free for you to use in fiction or art. His friend Winnie the Pooh has made a number of appearances since being freed, most notably in a horror movie, but also a Mint Mobile commercial so maybe Tigger too will have a lot of luck in the public domain.

Other works:

Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up

Peter Pan is a strange case, even though the play was first mounted in 1904, and the novelization (Peter and Wendy) was published in 1911, The script for the play was not published till 1928 (confusing!) meaning while the novel as been public domain for years the play (which came first) hasn't been, but now it is and people are welcome to mount productions of it.

Millions of Cats

The oldest picture book still in print, did you own a copy growing up? (I did)

Lady Chatterley's Lover

The iconic porn novel that was at the center of a number of groundbreaking obscenity cases in the 1960s and helped establish your right to free speech.

All Quiet on the Western Front and The Threepenny Opera in their original German (but you can translate them if you want), The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie, and Orlando by Virginia Woolf will also be joining us in the public domain along with any and all plays, novels, and books published in 1928

for Films we have The Man Who Laughs who's iconic image inspired the Joker

Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, Buster Keaton's The Cameraman, Should Married Men Go Home? the first Laurel and Hardy movie, Lights of New York the first "all talking" movie, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Wind, as well as The Last Command and Street Angel the first films to win Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively will all be entering public domain

For Musical Compositions (more on that in a moment) we've got

Mack the Knife by Bertolt Brecht, Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love) by Cole Porter, Sonny Boy by George Gard DeSylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson, Empty Bed Blues by J. C. Johnson, and Makin’ Whoopee! by Gus Khan are some of the notables but any piece of music published in 1928 is covered

Any art work published in 1928, which might include works by Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alexej von Jawlensky, Edward Hopper, and André Kertész will enter the public domain, we are sure those that M. C. Escher's Tower of Babel will be in the public domain

Swan Song, Public Domain and recorded music

While most things are covered by the Copyright Act of 1976 as amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, none of the copyright acts covered recordings you see when American copyright law was first written recordings did not exist and so through its many amendings no one fixed this problem, movies were treated like plays and artwork, but recorded sound wasn't covered by any federal law. So all sound recordings from before 1972 were governed by a confusing mess of state level laws making it basically impossible to say what was public and what was under copyright. In 2017 Congress managed to do something right and passed the Music Modernization Act. Under the act all recordings from 1922 and before would enter the public domain in 2022. After taking a break for 2023, all sound recordings made in 1923 have entered the public domain today on January 1st 2024, these include.

Charleston by James P. Johnson

Yes! We Have No Bananas (recorded by a lot artists that year)

Who’s Sorry Now by Lewis James

Down Hearted Blues by Bessie Smith

Lawdy, Lawdy Blues by Ida Cox

Southern Blues and Moonshine Blues by Ma Rainey

That American Boy of Mine and Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra

Dipper Mouth Blues and Froggie More by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, featuring Louis Armstrong

Bambalina by Ray Miller Orchestra

Swingin’ Down the Lane by Isham Jones Orchestra

Enjoy your public domain works!

[fight-nights-at-freddys]

i’m sorry but this is so shitty. i get not wanting to see nsfw of your characters, and i totally respect any creator setting boundaries and asking people not to send them that stuff. HOWEVER, you have to accept that once you make your characters public, people are going to treat them in ways you don’t personally like.

making a COPYRIGHT FORM so people go on a witch hunt, just so you can copyright strike them (falsely, mind you. fanfic and fanart fall under transformative works) is such a gross thing to do.

it doesn’t matter if the characters were based off your childhood, or personal experiences. it doesn’t matter how tightly you want to guard them and keep them safe and pure. the only solutions are setting boundaries between you and your fanbase, removing the characters from public eye and stop making content for them publicly, or learn to ignore it.

going all anne rice over people sexualizing a character is not the way to go though.

[echoekhi]

I’m Declaring War Against “What If” Videos: Project Copy-Knight

What Are “What If” Videos?

These videos follow a common recipe: A narrator, given a fandom (usually anime ones like My Hero Academia and Naruto), explores an alternative timeline where something is different. Maybe the main character has extra powers, maybe a key plot point goes differently. They then go on and make up a whole new story, detailing the conflicts and romance between characters, much like an ordinary fanfic.

Except, they are fanfics. Actual fanfics, pulled off AO3, FFN and Wattpad, given a different title, with random thumbnail and background images added to them, narrated by computer text-to-speech synthesizers.

They are very easy to make: pick a fanfic, copy all the text into a text-to-speech generator, mix the resulting audio file with some generic art from the fandom as the background, give it a snappy title like “What if Deku had the Power of Ten Rings”, photoshop an attention-grabbing thumbnail, dump it onto YouTube and get thousands of views.

In fact, the process is so straightforward and requires so little effort, it’s pretty clear some of these channels have automated pipelines to pump these out en-masse. They don’t bother with asking the fic authors for permission. Sometimes they don’t even bother with putting the fic’s link in the description or crediting the author. These content-farms then monetise these videos, so they get a cut from YouTube’s ads.

In short, an industry has emerged from the systematic copyright theft of fanfiction, for profit.

Project Copy-Knight

Since the adversaries almost certainly have automated systems set up for this, the only realistic countermeasure is with another automated system. Identifying fanfics manually by listening to the videos and searching them up with tags is just too slow and impractical.

And so, I came up with a simple automated pipeline to identify the original authors of “What If” videos.

It would go download these videos, run speech recognition on it, search the text through a database full of AO3 fics, and identify which work it came from. After manual confirmation, the original authors will be notified that their works have been subject to copyright theft, and instructions provided on how to DMCA-strike the channel out of existence.

I built a prototype over the weekend, and it works surprisingly well:

On a randomly-selected YouTube channel (in this case Infinite Paradox Fanfic), the toolchain was able to identify the origin of half of the content. The raw output, after manual verification, turned out to be extremely accurate. The time taken to identify the source of a video was about 5 minutes, most of those were spent running Whisper, and the actual full-text-search query and Levenshtein analysis was less than 5 seconds.

The other videos probably came from fanfiction websites other than AO3, like fanfiction.net or Wattpad. As I do not have access to archives of those websites, I cannot identify the other ones, but they are almost certainly not original.

Armed with this fantastic proof-of-concept, I’m officially declaring war against “What If” videos. The mission statement of Project Copy-Knight will be the elimination of “What If” videos based on the theft of AO3 content on YouTube.

I Need Your Help

I am acutely aware that I cannot accomplish this on my own. There are many moving parts in this system that simply cannot be completely automated – like the selection of YouTube channels to feed into the toolchain, the manual verification step to prevent false-positives being sent to authors, the reaching-out to authors who have comments disabled, etc, etc.

So, if you are interested in helping to defend fanworks, or just want to have a chat or ask about the technical details of the toolchain, please consider joining my Discord server. I could really use your help.

------

See full blog article and acknowledgements here: https://echoekhi.com/2023/11/25/project-copy-knight/

[cinemamind]

Might as well post this here for posterity, since Youtube has yet to resolve the matter.

A couple of weeks ago, my short film 'Pleasant Inn' got a false copyright strike from an individual named Kazi Zidane Mim. He has been striking any Youtube channel that reacted to my short film in the hopes of uploading his own stolen version titled 'Paradise Hell.'

For comparisons, here is my original short film:

[This is a horror animation and contains flashing lights, so viewer discretion is advised]

And here is Kazi Zidane's stolen version:

Kazi Zidane Mim has a history of just flat out stealing.

As an example, this is his 'Bloody Mary graphic novel,' which is actually a manga called 'Ibitsu,' with only the text/dialogue changed.

He's literally just selling this on Google Books and Amazon without any push-back.

I also found out that he has a Sketchfab account.

Why is this important? Because Sketchfab offers a great library of 3D models made by other artists, such as this animated deer by Games in Motion Studios;

Look familiar?

I'm sure coincidences are possible, tho 🦌

Kazi Zidane even made a bogus IMDB page of my stolen short.

And to add insult to injury...

So far, Youtube hasn't done anything about this and I'm tired of waiting. Many channels have received false copyright strikes by Kazi Zidane Mim just for reacting to 'Pleasant Inn' since 2019.

[moderationatitsfinest]

YouTube's false copyright striking problem

The YouTube algorithm had its fair share of problems. However, it has been brought to the attention of Roblox content creators who had their videos taken down randomly. This unfortunate turn of events led to a controversy over moderation on the online platform.

A well known content creator, known as SharkBlox, has made a video explaining how you can copy anyone's avatar in Catalog Avatar Creator, a game on Roblox where you can try on clothing. However, as if the game itself had a patent, an AI software company seemingly used AI to take it down. Unfortunately, YouTube's copyright policies prohibit the use of AI to send false copyright takedown requests.

For those of you who have uploaded any Roblox content, a word of advice: lawyer up. Bolster AI should be facing a lawsuit because this is highly illegal.

If you are a content creator who has had this happen before, add this to your blog. There could be others just like you who have had this issue. Hoipefully, YouTube will take action.

[thorusofer]

Today we're talking about an aspiring artist by the name of JiggyDarkSkin who, perhaps accidentally or on purpose I'm unsure of which right now, has become a copyright troll regarding Nintendo songs. They've messed with me and what I want to do, so now we're going to talk about them! https://youtu.be/C2N98KECBAI

[purpledemonlilyposting]

So here's the timeline:

One of Lily Orchard's minions tried to dox me.

Lily Orchard confirms my real name by subjecting me to false copyright strikes on YouTube.

Today Lily Orchard drops my real name on her stream and tries to pin her old Tara Callie sockpuppet on me. You know, the one she used pre-transition to gaslight and sexually harass a young lesbian.

And she somehow thinks this makes HER look good.

[saiscribbles]

Lily Orchard is attempting to take down my YouTube channel with false copyright strikes. None of these strikes can stick as she isn't taking legal action against me and has no legal recourse for her content. I have a feeling she's after my personal legal information which I have to provide in order to dispute.

[spacefrog1984]

Lily Orchard and Harassment

Since the Lily Orchard sycophant I originally reblogged has blocked me for the following, I figured I'd make it a full post. To the fans of Lily who will defend her to their own death, uncritically accepting that Lily is the victim of an organized harassment campaign, I ask: What do you think counts as harassment? Here, let's be specific:

Falsely copyright striking your critics?

Organizing your own fans to falsely mass report your critics?

Misgnedering your critics?

Being transphobic towards your critics?

Accusing your critics of plagiarism when you have no proof?

Because guess what, while few of Lily's critics have done any of this, Lily is guilty of all of this. I've given only a short list with one example each, but you shouldn't need more than this to see that Lily is a retched, manipulative, and abusive hypocrite. She's conned you and others into thinking that she's a victim and that victims are justified in anything they do to strike back against their "abusers."

Try to reflect on why you like Lily or why you defend her; question your motivations here. Does it primarily come down to tribalism? (i.e., this person is part of my community or I am part of a community built around this person, so I must defend them no matter what, no matter how wrong or despicable their actions are). Just turn on Fox News to see this mentality in action. Do you really want to reflect that in your own life?

[kallmeweird]

⚠️please boots this can help creators & an artist who got their art stolen and erased ⚠️

Please go watch jay/kubscouts lates video and please check this tumbler account called

Cinemamind

David’s tumbler account and boot and repost the post that he has made because of image-e-animation

Alright so I not sure if anyone has seen the latest video of jay aka kub scouts but if not I’ll give you the short summary that jay gave on his x/twitter account his user is (JayKubScouts) since not everybody has x/twitter

Someone stole an artist name David romero’s work ‘pleasant inn’ and is passing it off as an ai animated film call ‘paradise hell’ and false copyright striking anyone who has reacted to David romero’s work & even took down David’s own video.please help

So yes someone actually had done that and people who had reacted to David’s work are also getting affected like jay(kub scouts) and other creators who have reacted to scary & horror animation can be affected

And the fact that the person who stole his work (image-e-nation) is actually pathetic & sad since he now is affecting so many creators also David himself since he has provided evidence that he is the original artist and also has gotten his work taken down with that

because you that person has stolen art from David and pass it on as his own video TAKING David’s credit and passing it on as an ai movie witch just says a lot to me because ai it already harmful to artist them self’s since ai artist are now taking credit for art that they didn’t made at all

And also David isn’t the only person who (image-e-animation) has stolen art from he has stolen multiple artist art and took credit as if he made the art themselves but he as deleted them or just hid the art (please check David’s account for more information)

Oh and if you’re wondering if YouTube has done anything no they haven’t witch isn’t a surprise because YouTubers like dantdm & coryxkenshi had made a call out post/ videos to YouTube I believe in 2023

and as a beginner artist myself this is just disgusting & pathetic that someone can actually do this to an artist that has done nothing wrong at all

[confused-rat]

Ah, Lily and her favorite wounded animal "why should I ever strive to be better when people are mean to me anyway" gambit.

The reality is, she can use discriminatory language and abuse copyright strikes as much as she pleases? No critic with a blog can physically stop her. It's just that when she does shitty things, people are going to point at them and go "that's kind of a shit thing to do", so it's really less about taking the high road and more about whether she wants to admit that apparently the only reason she has to NOT do shitty things is the promise of social gratification.

Also there's the whole part where she's lying about all the claims against her being false, but whatever.

Lily really does think that as long as she’s a victim, she’s absolved of any action she takes — and really, that explains a lot about how she thinks and why she insists villains can’t have points. 

The idea that someone can be right about something and still be a bad person threatens her own image/worldview. If her audience starts to grasp that “doing bad things to fight bad things is not necessarily okay” they might start to apply that logic to Lily herself, and she absolutely cannot have that. 

Because harassing, doxxing, dehumanizing, lying about serious issues — none of that is okay. No matter who you are. 

[fight-nights-at-freddys]

@maknaasfalti

first of all, being this condescending and mean isn't gonna change anyone's minds. you're being an ass.

just because the content gets taken down, doesn't mean it violates copyright law. you know that as well as i do. that's why so many sites take down things that are falsely DMCA'd, and they get put back up later. they act first, ask questions later. that's how most sites operate.

that's not how boundaries work. you set boundaries FOR YOURSELF. once you start telling other people what to do and how to do it, you start making RULES.

this has nothing to do with being proship, really, but it has everything to do with keath falsely copyright striking people due to their personal distaste or disgust for what other people do.

also saying "kill yourself" over pinecest (re: fiction) isn't cute! nor is your blatant xenophobia of rural americans!

NOW let me outline why it would be a false copyright strike!

(i'll also @silly-lil-bimbo for this section)

once again, we go back to THE ACTUAL LAW (17 U.S. Code § 107) which clearly states it that the factors considered when referring to copyright and fair use are as follows:

the purpose and character of the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes,

the nature of the copyrighted work,

the amount of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

also note the fact the work is unpublished does not bar itself from a finding of fair use.

the fact is, it's entirely on a case-by-case basis, as a lot of this is subjective and completely depends on the judge presiding over the case. HOWEVER, fanfiction is very likely to count as "transformative", due to the nature OF fanfiction. there's a reason AO3 is still up and the entire site hasn't been removed for copyright infringement.

in the case of yaelokre, specifically the nsfw works, they're only taking the characters and some elements of the story, but they're not appropriating the entirety of the work, making profit off of it, detracting from the potential market value of the original work, or claiming it as their own, which is NECESSARY to prove it is an infringement of copyright.

regardless of all that, the fact remains it is shitty to try and strike down what fanfiction writers/fanartists do just because YOU PERSONALLY do not like what fans do with your characters. keath made their characters public, now they have to deal with the consequences of that, or remove their characters from public eye. very simple.

at this point, i hope people DON'T make fanfic/fanart for yaelokre lest they get a cease and desist, because who knows what keath/the people working with them will determine as "inappropriate, offensive, or misinfo".

[that-one-kiddo-in-the-back]

I find it funny how Lily says “Why do you care if I don’t cover the trans Moon Girl episode”

Lily… you talk about how rep isn’t done right… and you… a trans creator… I think would be more vocal about it since it was pulled out.

Huh… why wouldn’t you cover this episode Lily since you’re clearly Soooooooo smart and it would help your channel.

Doing something my fans actually want? No.

Instead, let's talk about a game franchise just to piss off my one of my critics and then falsely copyright strike it just to be an OwO stinker.

[cinemamind]

Thank goodness you keep such good documentation of your works in progress! Aside from being super cool to look at did you ever anticipate having to pull stuff like that out as proof you actually made what you made?

Oh yes, because a similar thing happened a few years back when another short film of mine, 'Other Lily,' was given a false strike.

Back then, all I had to do was show Youtube a couple of the original background paintings and the copyright receipt.

The strike was appealed immediately.

But all things change.

And with Youtube, it's for the worse, because even having proof didn't seem enough for them anymore.

Still, best to keep records of everything. Just in case.