[LINK] Copyright Imperialism Blocks Hugo Awards

[Roger Clarke]

[I picked up the reports from Lauren Weinstein's list.  The text is mine.]

The Hugo Awards are longstanding and prestigious prizes for sci-fi lit.

The awards ceremony (overnight, US time) showed clips from the 
episode that won the TV script award, and clips from some other 
nominated episodes.

The live stream over the Internet went blank, and stayed blank.

The streaming service had an automated copyright filter installed, 
which blocked the stream.

The streaming service was provided by Ustream, which offers both a 
gratis service (supported by ads), which was used in this case, and a 
paid, ad-free service.

Ustream had installed a copyright filter provided by Vobile, a 
third-party service that does automated infringement takedowns.

The Vobile filter got it completely wrong:  "The clips had been 
provided by the studios to be shown during the award ceremony.  The 
Hugo Awards had explicit permission to broadcast them.  But even if 
they hadn't, it is absolutely fair use to broadcast clips of 
copyrighted material during an award ceremony.  Unfortunately, the 
digital restriction management (DRM) robots on Ustream had not been 
programmed with these basic contours of copyright law".

To compound the felony, the Vobile 'service' does not require human 
approval - if it's triggered, it simply blocks the stream, i.e. the 
operator asserts that the logic, and the database over which it runs, 
are Truth, and cannot be denied.

And once the stream is stopped, it can't be quickly re-started, i.e. 
human judgement is irrelevant, and once a stream has been deemed to 
contain an instance of copyright-breaching content, it is not just 
that content which is blocked, but the stream itself.

Interestingly, users of Ustream's paid streaming service "are 
automatically white listed to avoid situations like this and receive 
hands-on client support", i.e. the copyright-driven censorship regime 
is only for the impecunious.


Sources:
http://io9.com/5940036/how-copyright-enforcement-robots-killed-the-hugo-awards
http://www.ustream.tv/blog/2012/09/03/hugo-awards-an-apology-and-explanation/


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University