The company tacitly acknowledges that 'Steamboat Willie' is in the public domain.

• Disney retracts copyright claim on a YouTuber’s “Steamboat Willie” video, allowing it to be monetizable and shareable worldwide.

• The claim had previously demonetized the video and restricted its visibility and embedding options.

• This move by Disney may signal its recognition of “Steamboat Willie” being in the public domain.

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    550·
    11 months ago

    I’m having a hard time comprehending how this is a “win” when Disney had to voluntarily retract their claim with Youtube.

    The short is in public domain. It is the goddamn motherfucking law. Disney does not have any say in the matter. We should not, and in fact do not, have to rely on them being “nice.” Not anymore. That’s the point.

    Fuck them, in the ear, with an egg beater.

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
      82·
      11 months ago

      If I’m looking at dates correctly, Disney filed the strike AFTER it was in the public domain already. So it was a bullshit strike from the beginning, not just something that was struck before it entered the public domain and was left over.

      The DMCA needs to be updated with fines for clear bullshit claims like this. As it is, there is no penalty for a company to just claim everything. I’d even be okay with platforms like Youtube receiving a portion of that fine for having to be in the middle of the bullshit copyright claims that were overturned because. Give the platforms an incentive to make the process streamlined and straight forward instead of the crap we have now.

      • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.worldEnglish
        39·
        11 months ago

        I’d even be okay with platforms like Youtube receiving a portion of that fine for having to be in the middle of the bullshit copyright claims that were overturned because

        YouTube is legally obligated to take the content down as soon as they receive the DMCA notice or else YouTube will become liable for potential damages. YouTube’s automated copyright claim system is inherently broken, but that’s a symptom of DMCA, not the cause.

      • general_kitten@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        12·
        11 months ago

        From my understanding the big copyright owners basically have a stranglehold on youtube when negotiating how youtube should handle copyright stuff. The current copyright law was not designed to accommodate platforms such as youtube so if they don’t do as the copyright owners say it could result in a long court battle resulting in a decision that youtube itself is the one violating the law for being the one hosting the non-licensed content on their platform.

        Not a lawyer and don’t even live in the US so i might not be the most reliable source on this though.

      • gian @lemmy.grys.itEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        The DMCA needs to be updated with fines for clear bullshit claims like this.

        A fine is useless if the default is that the request is granted, which platforms like YT are more or less forced to do since you can submit thousands of request at no cost. Add a security deposit (and punitive damages in case of bogus requests) for each and every request and maybe you solve the problem.

    • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zipEnglish
      76·
      11 months ago

      I completely agree, but isn’t this the issue with private platforms taking over essential functions of society? If YouTube wants to play ball with the copyright lobby that’s their business. They could ban any video for any reason whatsoever, it’s their platform.

      • blargerer@kbin.social
        47·
        11 months ago

        Youtubes copyright system isn’t really the ‘problem’, the copyright laws are. Youtube gets yelled at by both sides at the same time and generally takes a reasonable middle man position. It’s not youtubes job to arbitrate who owns what.

        • LufyCZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
          46·
          11 months ago

          And they’re pretty much required to take things down, it prevents them from being liable. After that, the uploader can challenge this decision, and if the claimer doesn’t back down, it goes to court.

          Unfortunately, claimers are currently not required to provide any proof, nor are they required to pay for any legal costs (at least not upfront), so it’s just simpler for the uploader to take the L.

          • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            42·
            11 months ago

            This is the key issue; the DMCA provides basically no penalty for making false claims. The natural choice is to claim everything and see who fights you.

            • LufyCZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
              10·
              11 months ago

              Yep, agreed, that’s the worst thing about it. Makes sense more or less otherwise.

            • Rodeo@lemmy.caEnglish
              2·
              11 months ago

              We should start a brigade to issue DMCA takedowns for every Disney video on YouTube.

          • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
            5·
            11 months ago

            They’re only required to take stuff down in response to DMCA claims.

            They have absolutely no obligation for their alternate process to treat claims as valid until proven false.

        • Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          11 months ago

          You’re right, copyright laws were written ages ago when mass media was exclusively owned by big media companies. If there was ever a copyright dispute, the company’s lawyers would meet up with the other company’s lawyers and either settle or go to court, and both parties could easily pay for the legal fees because they were, you know, big media companies.
          But nowadays everyone can simply upload something that can potentially reach billions of people, which is unprecedented in human (or legal) history, and the legal system simply hasn’t caught up to this radical shift in the status quo. This is why Youtube has to compromise between the big media conglomerates with expensive lawyers and, well, the rest of us.

    • LufyCZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
      35·
      11 months ago

      Disney, or anyone for that matter, can copyright claim any video. Youtube just plays ball because that’s the simplest thing to do.

      It’s on them to prove, in court, that it actually is copyrightable and that they own the copyright to the content, which they’d fail to do.

      The win is for the uploader and for the public, since now you can “be sure” that Disney won’t take you to court over it, which would be a costly endeavor for you. Even if Disney would almost surely lose.

      • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        11 months ago

        Maybe the creator was in a SLAPP state and Disney was going to be paying for their lawyers anyway.

          • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
            9·
            11 months ago

            Well, damn it, it should. That’s a prime example of an abusive suit, with media companies holding all the cards and quite willing to toss takedowns over the wall if the recipients are too afraid or poor to fight obviously baseless claims.

      • InputZero@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        I think people misunderstand this and that you explained it well. It wasn’t a court that struck down the video, it was YouTube. I’m not sure though what American law has to say about monolithic platforms like YouTube and hosting public domain content.

        • Instigate@aussie.zoneEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          If it’s public domain, then by definition anyone can upload it, for any purpose, and monetise it however they see fit. YouTube could ban anyone else from uploading Steamboat Willie and only have their own version to watch, or they could let literally millions of people upload versions. They can basically do whatever they want with it now.

    • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      35·
      11 months ago

      The law is only as powerful as people are willing to enforce it.

      Just because it’s a “goddamn motherfucking law” doesn’t mean shit if powerful corporations are willing to spend unholy amounts of money to make you prove it in court.

      The “Happy Birthday” song was believed to be in the public domain for centuries but Warner Brothers was able to convince people to just pay them a license fee in order to prevent going to court. It was only in 2016 that a court ruled that it was in the public domain.

      So yeah…Disney could have been real douches about this. But they are, uncharacteristically, being nice about it.

      • SoleInvictus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        11 months ago

        But they are, uncharacteristically, being nice about it.

        I think it’s indicative of Disney’s character that this worries me more than anything else.

        • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          11 months ago

          I’m actually not too worried about it. A lot of people were watching the whole “Steamboat Willie” copyright sunsetting with great interest since it was what drove Disney to lobby congress to push legislation to protect it.

          So there would have been a pretty large outcry if Disney decided to sue people for it, especially after it had expired. Given the fact that they are already fighting PR battles with DeSantis and the “anti-woke” crowd, they are probably being pragmatic and not fighting a battle that they’d pretty much lose in court as well as in public opinion.

      • tuhriel@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        Yeah our law teacher always stressed that there is a big difference between having a right and getting your right

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      27·
      11 months ago

      Disney does not want to risk being labeled as a vexatious litigant in copyright court. They need to keep an aura of good faith there because of how reliant they are on bending copyright law to their will. Operating in bad faith could get them much harsher rulings on much more valuable IP.

    • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      Since it says Copyright Strike and not DMCA takedown we can assume quite simply that this was the automated system at YouTube doing it’s thing.

      Steamboat Willie is in their system as Disney’s, but its now public domain. As this is the first time that’s happened whatever was in place (or wasn’t if it was forgotten about) to remove the Auto-Detektion failed to start ignoring Steamboat Willie and the video was struck.

      Disney, being a big corporation, took a few days to get that news filtered to whoever can release that kind of thing.

      This story seems like yet another example of YouTubes system being less than ideal, not one of Disney being counts (this time)

      • hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        This makes the most sense.

        When I release music through distributors, there’s always an option to enter it into contentid so YouTube can do claims on my behalf. This is all automated and I don’t assume YouTube takes the copyright lifespan into account.

        If we extrapolate this to Disney’s use case, they would have had to actively locate it in their contentid entries to YouTube and then remove it that day and hope YouTube refreshes their contentid system timely enough. It’s not very far fetched that someone messed up in this chain. So I would honestly give Disney the benefit of the doubt on this one.

        Don’t get me wrong, they have an awful relationship with the copyright but let’s make damn sure we criticise them for the right things, otherwise they will only learn that they will get shit on either way and stop thinking about being assholes.

    • Altima NEO@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      Because this is about YouTube and not the actual law itself.

      You could take this to court and defend your use if it. But in this case, it’s just YouTube and it’s own systems being abused by Disney.

  • Smacks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    135·
    11 months ago

    I actually didn’t expect Disney to respect public domain. Everyone 100% has the right to absolutely shit on them for strangling copyright law all these years, though.

    • Gestrid@lemmy.caEnglish
      38·
      11 months ago

      I’m honestly pretty shocked they even let it go public domain at all.

      • ShepherdPie@midwest.socialEnglish
        18·
        11 months ago

        They’ve already had the rules changed to extend their copyright multiple times. I think they ran out of excuses at this point like your coworker who’s missed work due to their grandma dying for the fourth time this year.

        • TheMurphy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          11 months ago

          Also because the Congress that approved the extension were majority of Republicans both at senate and house.

          Who would have guessed they would favor the multi billion corp rather than the public.

    • LufyCZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
      32·
      11 months ago

      It does change the fact that people don’t have to be afraid to use any of it.

      Even though Disney would lose in court, you really don’t want to ever be in the same room as Disney’s lawyers.

      • Hexarei@programming.devEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        On the one hand, I was tempted to disagree with you out of principle - Since being on the winning side is almost always favorable.

        … But on the other hand, I rarely want to be in the same room as any lawyers, much less Disney’s. So yeah, I’d rather just avoid being in a situation where I have to be on either side - winning or otherwise =]

  • trackcharlie@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    16·
    11 months ago

    Now all disney needs to do is backdown from ruining every single major movie release and franchise and stop firing all of their most experienced animators and maybe we’ll get decent entertainment from this god awful company again!

  • nutsack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    11 months ago

    damn I can’t believe they have to give up the mountains of cash that have been rolling in all these years from this video I think capitalism must be super difficult

  • tomasz@lemmy.sieprawski.plEnglish
    5·
    11 months ago

    Since more and more works arrive into public domain, are there aggregate sites/torrents with fresh “releases”?

  • randomaccount43543@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    11 months ago

    Since it says “worldwide”, I want to point out that Steamboat Willie is in the public domain in the United States, but that doesn’t mean that it is elsewhere. For example, in Europe the law sets a copyright term of author death + 70 years so Steamboat Willie won’t be in the public domain there until 2036. So Disney is free to copyright strike Steamboat Willie outside the US however they want.

    • psud@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      11 months ago

      Many jurisdictions have exceptions that if a work is out of copyright in it’s original jurisdiction, it is out of copyright

      It is called the principle of the lesser term

    • brsrklf@jlai.luEnglish
      28·
      11 months ago

      What? No. They tried to do something that’s outright illegal and only stopped because enough people called them out on it.

      • Ech@lemm.eeEnglish
        5·
        11 months ago

        It’s not illegal to file a false copyright claim, unfortunately.

        • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          It’s not illegal in the way it’s not illegal to violate a copyright

          You can sue them for it though, or you could if there wasn’t such a huge power imbalance

          • Ech@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            11 months ago

            Sue them for what? Disney can make as many copyright claims with Youtube as they want. There are no laws regulating that. That is purely a Youtube decision.

            • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
              1·
              11 months ago

              Damages first and foremost, if you miss out on money because of false claims, there you go. If you lost money and they did something wrong, you can sue for compensation and/or to make them stop

              Additionally, if you can prove they’re doing it maliciously and knowingly in an effort to stop you from doing business, tortuous interference.

              Legal eagle has a video on it not too long ago, it was about a YouTuber making copyright claims against another YouTuber criticizing them, I think the whole thing was related to elden ring?

              He goes into way more detail and different situations, but the takeaway is that there is a theoretical path to do this