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Copyright now a one-way street?

22 July 2016

Copyright is an interesting subject and one that has had a tumultuous time since the arrival of the internet.

The ability to shift bit-perfect copies of creative works around the world in the blink of an eye and to create an unlimited number of replicas of copyrighted works at zero cost has caused great angst amongst the ranks of content creators and copyright holders.

Organisations such as the RIAA and MPAA have lashed out against individuals and groups who would violate their copyrights and thus, we are told, "steal" them.

Whilst it might be hard, at times, to have sympathy for large corporations who exploit the true creators of such works (example), it's not just the corporations who are suffering loses -- in fact these very same corporations are often ignoring copyright and stealing other people's works without permission or payment.

Here is just one example of how a corporation stole an individual's copyrighted material for their own use, without permission and without compensation. Oh the irony, that this music was used as part of an anti-piracy video which appeared on a large number of DVDs.

But wait, it gets worse!

Now the DailyMail, that virtual cesspit of tabloid "journalism" has shown that as far as it is concerned, copyright is a one-way street that it will ignore when it choses to.

When YouTube channel Taofledermaus found that the DM had included one of his videos in one of its "news" stories the owner of the channel was not best-pleased and posted this video in response.

Now you might think "what's he grizzling about?" after all, surely he's going to earn a pretty penny from all those views on his YouTube video.

Well if the DM had embedded the video from its YouTube source then that might be true. However, DM didn't simply embed or link to the video, they downloaded it and republished it, complete with their own pre-roll ads.

Yes, they STOLE his video, without permission and without payment of any kind.

You only have to check the comments on that DM story to see that this is creating a bit of a stink and that Taofledermaus isn't the only channel which has had its content pilfered by the DM.

Given the extent to which the DM freely and openly violates the copyrights of online content producers such as YouTube channels for commercial gain, one can only assume that it considers copyright to be an unimportant concept.

I wonder therefore, whether I should start republishing DM stories here, without their ads but with my own adds attached. Do you think they could possibly complain?

In fact, I would challenge someone to start a whole new website which simply mirror's the DM content without the ads.

Let he who lives by the sword (of ignoring copyright) die by the sword I say!

What do readers think?

Is the DM relying solely on the fact that individuals won't have the financial resources needed to assert the rights that their copyright bestows?

Why hasn't Google gone in to bat for the increasing number of YouTube channels who've had their content pilfered and their earnings affected by this unlawful copying and reproduction on the part of DM?

Is this proof that copyright is now solely for the benefit of the larger corporations and of no real value to the small content creators it was originally designed to protect?

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