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ryandrake12/08/202410 repliesview on HN

The word "copyright" is slowly transforming into a more generic meaning where a big company silences a little company/individual that it doesn't like. This case doesn't seem to have anything to do with actual copyright. Did the company specify exactly what content they believed was copied?

If you have a kid under 20, ask them what "copyright" means. They'll probably describe it to you in terms of corporate bullying rather than anything that has to do with intellectual property or copying.


Replies

Karellen12/08/2024

> When you look at how “IP” is used by firms, a very precise – albeit colloquial – meaning emerges:

> “IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers.”

> That is, in a world of uncertainty, where other people’s unpredictability can erode your profits, mire you in scandal, or even tank your business, “IP” is a means of forcing other people to arrange their affairs to suit your needs, even if that undermines their own needs.

-- Cory Doctorow, IP (Locus, Sep 2020), https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

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xenadu0212/08/2024

This is more of a YouTube thing. They are very trigger-happy on copyright and implement a "strike" system that will quickly get you demonetized. It's fairly easy to file a strike against anyone and the target has little recourse other than taking down the video even if it has nothing to do with copyright.

It's not DMCA so you don't even have the right to counter-file. And of course since it's Google there's no one you can call or email to get real help unless you're a super popular channel with an assigned rep.

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whycome12/08/2024

I’ve seen videos where the wording says “no copyright intended” — it’s a peek at how they understand the concept.

TeMPOraL12/09/2024

> They'll probably describe it to you in terms of corporate bullying rather than anything that has to do with intellectual property or copying.

Unless they dream of becoming a content creator or a vlogger, in which case they'll describe it as a Law of God, protecting the tiny Content Creators from the evil sinners who Steal and Plagiarize, and that occasionally gets abused by the corporate lords we all sharecrop for.

lmm12/09/2024

“This doing of something about disputes, this doing of it reasonably, is the business of the law. And the people who have the doing of it in charge, whether they be judges or sheriffs or clerks or jailers or lawyers, are officials of the law. What these officials do about disputes is, to my mind, the law itself.”

Are the kids wrong?

aleph_minus_one12/09/2024

> The word "copyright" is slowly transforming into a more generic meaning where a big company silences a little company/individual that it doesn't like.

This has basically always been the case and is what copyright is, by design, for.

aembleton12/09/2024

In this particular case, it seems to be a small company/individual filing a claim against another individual. Tom Evans audio is a very small outfit.

freejazz12/08/2024

It has nothing to do with copyright law. It's not an act of law, it's an act of YouTube.

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firecall12/08/2024

> If you have a kid under 20, ask them what "copyright" means. They'll probably describe it to you in terms of corporate bullying rather than anything that has to do with intellectual property or copying.

Instead of the original intention which was to grant the right to copy.

Copyright should be energising capitalism, not killing it. But yet here are!

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pinkmuffinere12/08/2024

I disagree with you argument — _we_ don’t know what the copyrighted portion was, but that doesn’t mean no such portion exists. Likewise, asking-kids-under-20 is not a method I’d generally endorse for legal issues.

Per the article, it is unclear what was copyrighted. It’s possible that YouTube knows but is not making it public, or maybe even YouTube doesn’t know. I definitely feel that YouTube’s handling of copyright issues is annoying, I feel like the creator should be told what YouTube knows. But that’s not an issue with copyright itself.

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