Youtube even went so far as to link to Brad Templeton’s Downfall parody as an example of fair use – something of a public apology, perhaps. But their statement still leaves some questions to be answered as to the level of control media companies have in using their ‘Content ID’ services, and whether dispute forms are sufficiently user-friendly for a layman to follow, without fear of the threats and repercussions that one commenter on the Youtube blog noted.

Others commented that Youtube is dead… I’ll certainly be looking out for an increase in Vimeo use following this attempt to stifle fair use and contemporary internet culture.

Constantin Film AG should also by now realise that many have bought or rented this video as a direct result of seeing the Hitler parodies on Youtube. I am one of those who rented the movie not only because I enjoyed the parodies, but because I thought that the film looked like an excellent production, and indeed it is.

Brad Templeton, board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, created his own Hitler parody satirising the situation. Due to Youtube’s use of ‘Content ID’ fingerprinting to identify copies of a movie, it was swiftly removed. Templeton then filed a dispute claiming that his video constituted fair use, and soon enough, the clip was restored.

Others have not been as fortunate, but in the meantime, Youtube’s loss is Vimeo’s gain, as Templeton and others begin to move their films to Vimeo. To quote Templeton’s blog:

The fair use exemption to copyright infringement claims was created, in large part, to assure that copyright holders didn’t use copyright law to censor free speech. If you want to criticise content or a content creator — an important free speech right — often the best way to do that will make use of the content in question. But the lawmakers knew you would rarely get permission to use copyrighted works to make fun of them, and wanted to make sure critical views were not stifled.

These were the very reasons that I curated the Madonna Remix Project – as a demonstration against the more extreme measures of the DMCA, EUCD and similar copyright laws, and the destructive introduction of Digital Rights Management technology. Fortunately, as Templeton satirises in his video, DRM appears to have failed in recent years, and even Apple’s iTunes has begun to offer DRM free music as customers are turned away by its curtailment of their ability to play their own legitimate purchases.

Finally, an excellent essay by Benjamin J. Robertson of the University of Colorado – ‘Mashing-up the Past, Critiquing the Present, Wrecking the Future: The Kleptones’ A Night at the Hip-Hopera’ examines the degree to which the record industry is stifling the creation of contemporary art due to the excessive cost of licensed sampling. Robertson asserts:

Cease and desist orders served to artists who mine the archive of cultural objects to remix, mashup, appropriate, or otherwise make use of cultural history for the purpose of engendering new cultural forms, objects, and enunciations, represent attempts to exert control over said archives with regard to production.

Hear hear. Speaking of hearing – the Kleptones “A Night at the Hip-Hopera” and their latest album Uptime/Downtime are well worth a listen. My favourite track has to be ‘Welcome Back’… Guns & Roses vs The Chemical Brothers ftw.

Just occasionally I come across a story that turns my world view upside down. We’ve become accustomed to the horror stories of large corporations using and misusing software patents to swallow up small business and buy out rights to alleged infringing programs.

Australian entrepreneur Ray Richardson’s story is different. ABC’s The Big Deal featured a story on his Uniloc system, which ties a software license to the machine on which it is installed. He later found that Microsoft had taken the idea and used it in a wide range of their products. Had he not filed a patent at the time of inventing the software, he would never have been able to claim infringement.

His story goes to show that not everything is so cut and dried in this world. It’s all very well to campaign for free software – and I’ll continue to do so – but the software patenting system, while heavily flawed (and, I still believe, is not the right way to protect the rights of an inventor), just occasionally serves the purpose for which it was originally intended.

I’m still firmly Free Software/Creative Commons, and hurrah for ‘Open Source’ (aka GPL 2.0′d) MoveableType. I’ve tried out a number of blog/web2.0/CMS type applications and would have to say this and Squiz’s MySource Matrix probably take the cake for the friendliest interfaces so far.

Matrix wins hands down for me as far as seriously flexible content presentation & ease of use; I’ve also spent a fair bit of time of late working with Microsoft’s MOSS (Sharepoint 2007) which I’d describe as just plain weird in that Microsoft way we all love to hate, but a useful exercise in XML/XSLT. I’m not overly fond of proprietary software but clients find it easy to use and its popularity is growing, so for anyone working with CMS’s in an Office environment it tends to be a necessary evil.