Here’s a tiny piece of a backlit ad for some perfume. I saw it on my way home and had the idea to hold the camera flat to the glass. Remember that I always keep the Conversion Lens Adapter mounted, even though I don’t use the conversion lens or a filter most of the time? That’s one of those images you probably wouldn’t make with a DSLR.
Other than that, you may remember that I have uploaded quite some Songs of the Day to YouTube. Well, today I received the following mail:
Dear amanessinger:We have disabled the following material as a result of a third-party notification from Michelle Shocked (Campfire Girl Publishing) claiming that this material is infringing:
Michelle Shocked - Disoriented http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YiCkOA0HP8
Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube’s copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.
If one of your postings has been misidentified as infringing, you may submit a counter-notification. Information about this process is in our Help Center.
Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material was disabled due to mistake or misidentification may be liable for damages.
Sincerely,
— The YouTube Team
When I wanted to view “My Videos & Playlists” on YouTube, they redirected me to some “Copyright school” video that I was supposed to look before answering a few questions. I passed the test without having seen the video, and when I was back to my list of videos, I selected all of them and deleted them. All gone now.
On my “Manage Account” page I found the following:
Account Status: Community Guidelines Your account is in good standing.Account Status: Copyright Your account is not in good standing. You receive copyright strikes when we are notified by a third party that a video of yours infringes their copyright. Accumulation of three strikes may result in the termination of your account.Please visit our Copyright Tips page to learn about copyright. If there are any videos on your account for which you are not certain you have the necessary rights, please delete them now.
If you believe a claim was made in error, you can also access references on fair use from the Copyright Tips page, and find the instructions for submitting a counternotification in our Help Center.
The strikes you have received are listed below. For your reference, a copy of each warning message has also been sent to the email associated with your account.
Strike 1: Michelle Shocked - Disoriented - (amanessinger) Video ID: 3YiCkOA0HP8 Removed due to a copyright claim by Michelle Shocked (Campfire Girl Publishing) on Jul 25, 2011
There is a strong impulse to close my account, but I may want to use it for educational videos, either Photoshop or programming related, in the future, thus I keep it up in its stricken state.
Why did I do that? Why did I delete my videos? After all, only one of them was “infringing”. Well, strictly speaking, of course all of them were. I don’t have the copyright to any of of those songs. When I uploaded Michelle Shocked’s “Disoriented”, YouTube’s automatic signature matching algorithms did not flag it and the video was visible in all countries. There must have been a manually submitted claim yesterday. This is something that could have happened with any other video at any time. Even if I had stopped uploading now, I could have received the two additional strikes that would have terminated my account.
I suppose Google would have only terminated my YouTube account, not the Google account, but I can’t be sure. I use GMail, Reader and Google Docs and I rely on my account. It’s a system that has worked very well in the past and I don’t want to take any risks.
Well, here we are. I will still have Songs of the Day, I will still link to YouTube, but I won’t ever again upload any songs. It’s pretty sad, because YouTube is such an excellent vehicle to talk about music. You like something, you show it, you get a response, you like that and go and buy some music. In fact YouTube has always sold music to me and I suppose my videos may have sold some songs as well. This is advertising done for free by enthusiasts, but of course corporations don’t understand it.
Anyway. After this long rant, here’s the Song of the Day: “I Only Have Eyes for You”, the title track of Lester Bowie’s 1985 first Brass Fantasy album. Hear it on YouTube.