CC_Multimedia

toc =Multimedia, copyright and CC licensing=

As explained in the "Sharing your work: Open Access and Creative Commons" chapter of the DICE handbook, licensing a work under Creative Commons is a simple way to let users know what they can and cannot do with it. This is very straightforward when the work is a text. However, it is less simple for multimedia works in Switzerland and in other countries where tariffs for their broadcasting are due to collecting societies. Another crux is the legal distinction between streaming and embedding a work (see the relevant parts in the handbook). This page therefore presents some practical cases where these issues might be at stake.

=Lessig at Educause 2009=

Blip.tv video
The video of Lessig's "It's about time: getting our values around copyright right" talk at Educause 2009 can be viewed and downloaded in several formats at http://blip.tv/file/2827842, which also provides an embed code.

Permissions for the blip.tv video
This blip.tv video is under a BY Creative Commons license, indicated both in the description and within the video itself. This is the most permissive of all CC licenses, requiring only that further uses and modifications bear an attribution to the original author. And in fact, the video also lists and attributes materials by others used within it.

Some derivatives
For instance, on the basis of that "BY" license, I have made the following derivatives from this video:

Transcript
I transcribed Lessig's talk (from the audio version) and published the transcript in http://cc4dice.wikispaces.com/Lessig_Educause, indicating the attribution and the original license.

Excerpts
I made two excerpts - of the passage about Creative Commons in general and of the passage about Creative Commons in science and education - keeping the "back matter" (attribution for other people's works used in the slides, CC license) of the complete video in each, and uploaded these excerpts to YouTube, respectively in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YUsqFTUAFg and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c8anxJMuRU.

Captions / subtitles

 * I captioned these excerpts in English and subtitled them in French on DotSUB, by streaming the YouTube videos into the DotSUB players (http://dotsub.com/view/b5c4a121-e367-4bb9-bdb0-0b2c5cc08df9 for "Lessig at educause 2009: Creative Commons"; http://dotsub.com/view/3e4f2f48-1810-452f-8493-6b30bb6ae1eb for Lessig at Educause 2009: CC for science and education)
 * I then downloaded the captions / subtitles .srt files from the respective DotSUB pages and uploaded them together with the corresponding YouTube excerpts, so as to caption/subtitle them too.

Embeds
It is possible to embed in any blog post or web page: of /derived from Lessig's talk at Educause 2009, as their web pages all provide an embed code: i.e.a segment of .html code that defines the appearance and functioning of a player, and links - directly or indirectly - to the video file to be streamed in that player.
 * the blip.tv video
 * the 2 YouTube excerpts
 * the 2 DotSUb versions of these excerpts

Educause DRMed video
Educause offers a video of this talk by Lawrence Lessig in a player that requires the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in, which has DRM capability. It is paradoxical to offer a talk in which Lessig advocates Open Access and the culture of remix, under a Creative Commons BY license, in a player whose plugin works with strict registration requirements, under a proprietary license, and purports to only stream videos. Such "rights management" has proved at best totally inefficient in preventing copies. It might actually be an incitement to make and share copies with friends who do not want to or cannot install the plugin: no need to tamper with its DRM for that: it is enough to ignore such "protections" and capture the video from the output, or if this doesn't work, to camcord it.

=EMI and OK Go's YouTube videos=

No embed
In an op-ed entitled "Whose Tube?" , Damian Kulash tells about the first video his band, OK Go, uploaded to YouTube in 2006. Doing so formally violated the terms of OK Go's contract with EMI, their record producer, but - as he writes - "... back then record companies saw videos as advertisements, so if my band wanted to produce them, and if YouTube wanted to help people watch them, EMI wasn’t going to get in the way.". However things changed when record producers decided they wanted their slice of the money Google makes from the ads on YouTube pages. EMI passed a contract with Google to that effect, getting a payment for each streaming of a YouTube video featuring "EMI content". However, as Google only pays if the video is streamed from its original YouTube page, EMI imposed the removal of the embed code from the OK Go's YouTube videos.

Geolocalization
Moreover, YouTube videos by EMI artists have been geolocalized, which means they cannot be viewed in some countries - including Switzerland. Other music producers have imposed the same geolocalization too. (to be completed when/if EMI answers info request on which countries are excluded and why 1267145122)

=Embedding=

Two types of embedding
There are two types of embedding:
 * 1) embedding a file by first uploading it to a site / blog etc., from your computer or from a physical support (USB key, CD...)
 * 2) embedding a video that is streamed from another site, through an embed code that defines the appearance and functions of a player, and links to the video to be streamed in it.

Embedding and copyright
(from resources gathered in http://www.diigo.com/user/calmansi/embed+DICE )


 * In the first case**, the copyright situation is fairly clear-cut: you can only embed a file online if you are the rights holder of its content, or if you have the rights holder/s permission. Note however that even if the rights holder on a multimedia object authorizes its distribution, e.g. through a Creative Commons license, in Switzerland, you may have to pay rights to a collecting society.

And in October 2009, there was a rumor in the Dutch blogosphere that BUMA/STEMRA, the Dutch collecting society, was introducing high fees for embedding YouTube videos in blogs in its 2010 tariffs. However, the rumor seems to have been based on a misunderstanding: the screenshot of the 2010 tariffs posted by an irate blogger specifically mentions embedding files, not streams: i.e. these tariffs concerned the first type of embedding. This seems confirmed by the fact that at the end of December 2009, BUMA/STEMRA announced it had signed an agreement with YouTube about compensation to musicians, song writers etc. when their music is used in YouTube videos. EMI's decision to remove embed codes from YouTube videos by their artists probably harms these artists, as Damian Kulash contends in his NYT op-ed, because it deprives them of the viral advertisement provided by fans embedding their videos in blogs. But it clarifies the embed issue for bloggers and other users of YouTube videos: if rights holder do not remove the embed code even though they could, it should mean that they implicitly authorize its use.
 * The second case**, where a video is streamed from another site - e.g. a video-hosting platform like YouTube - has given rise to some controversies, in particular in July 2007 when some right holders and/or their agents sent "cease and desist" letters to bloggers who had embedded YouTube videos that violated copyright. But the argument that embedding a player in which a video was streamed from another site was the same as linking, hence not a violation, prevailed.

Precautions
Nevertheless, as Jonathan Bailey writes in "Copyright Risks in Embedding YouTube Clips" Bailey, J. (2007-07-09). "Copyright Risks in Embedding YouTube Clips". Blog Herald. URL: http://www.blogherald.com/2007/07/09/the-copyright-risk-of-embedding-youtube-clips/. Last consulted: 2010/02/25 : > Even though the odds of actually being sued or threatened with a suit for embedding a YouTube clip are slim, it is still worthwhile to take a few simple precautions to make certain you don’t have problems down the road: > 1. Don’t Embed Clearly Infringing Material (...) > 2. Embed from Official Channels (...) > 3. Stick to Popular Amateur Clips (...) > 4. Say Something About It: Generally, transformative use is much more highly protected than non-transformative use.(...) > 5. When in Doubt, Link Don’t Embed (...).

(in preparation 1267092124])