Ebert and Roeper, beware: Your thumbs are in jeopardy.
In today's Alice-in-Wonderland world of digital copyright enforcement, we shouldn't be surprised that Hollywood is following the advice of the Red Queen: "Sentence first, verdict afterwards. Off with her head!"
Or, in this case, off with his thumbs.
On Jan. 12, YouTube amputated 5 hours worth of material posted by respected film critic and movie historian Kevin B. Lee because it contained (prepare to be shocked) clips of the movies under discussion.
"Infringement!" cried Big Hollywood.
"Chop!" said YouTube.
For the full story, see the blog posting by Lee's colleague, New York Times movie critic Matt Zoller Seitz.
Commentary and criticism are, of course, the quintessential examples of Fair Use, and Fair Use, according to the Supreme Court, is one of the key reasons that copyright law itself is not an unconstitutional abridgment of the First Amendment.
But the content owners who complained to YouTube care not a fig for Fair Use or Free Speech or the First Amendment. And so, with YouTube's capitulation, the Internet loses a legally protected digital treasure trove.
Coincidentally, two days after this massive violation of the public's Fair Use rights, Alec French, Senior Counsel for NBC Universal, announced at the Congressional Internet Caucus State of the Net Conference that automated content filtering is completely compatible with Fair Use. Add any commentary to a video file, French said, and the filters will simply let it slide by.
ISPs, according to French, should deploy these omniscient filters and adopt a "graduated response" policy, where Internet users are terminated after "three strikes". Presumably it's the user's account and not the individual who is to be terminated, but that remains unclear. Pity the poor YouTube viewer who happened to watch three of Kevin Lee's commentaries before they were taken down. Fair Use? Bah! Sentence first, verdict second. Off with his head!
From Kevin Lee's story we know that Big Hollywood's claim that automatic content filtering respects Fair Use is just the latest in a series of Big Lies. Previous examples include the fifteen-fold overstatement of Hollywood's losses attributable to colleges and Jack Valenti's famously backwards prediction that VCRs would be the death of the movie industry.
Gigi Sohn called this latest instance of Hollywood hype "shock and awe". We can only hope that the targets of the campaign will see through the smokescreen.
And that Kevin Lee gets his thumbs back.
Steve
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