Blog dedicado a la formación en todos sus ámbitos: presencial, online, a distancia
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Una infografía sobre las pesadillas del Community Manager. Vía
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Las pesadillas del Community Manager
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Una infografía sobre Autoestima y Marca personal. Vía
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Autoestima y Marca personal
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Una infografía sobre cómo elaborar una newsletter corporativa. Vía
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Cómo elaborar una newsletter corporativa
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Las 8 reglas del liderazgo de Mandela
Dateline NBC (aka “The Murder Show”) recently aired an episode about a California farm manager who was killed by an explosive device that used a spring-loaded rat trap as part of its triggering system. Thus, the show featured numerous YouTube clips of rat traps doing all sorts of awesome and violent things (no actual killing of rodents, thankfully), but not only failed to give the creator of those videos any credit but also cropped out his logo.
In the above video, YouTube user TAOFLEDERMAUS shows how a number of his popular YouTube clips were used on the NBC show, and how he received no on-screen credit. Additionally, in almost all instances, the video has been cropped so that his identifiable mark is no longer visible in the corner of the screen.
He says that his videos have been used by numerous news outlets in the past but that they have generally sought permission and fully credited him.
We don’t know the ins and outs of this situation, but we did talk to a lawyer who knows an awful lot about fair use and copyright to shed some light on this complicated issue.
So can a news program just take my YouTube clip without asking?
There is no definite answer to that question, explains our legal expert.
“Copyright is not an absolute,” he explains. Section 107 of the Copyright Act permits “fair use” of copyrighted materials “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research.”
For example, Harvard professor and Creative Commons co-founder Lawrence Lessig recently found himself in a protracted battle with YouTube because a lecture he’d posted on the site contained copyrighted songs and a clip of The Daily Show. Interestingly, The Daily Show regularly, and correctly, uses copyrighted content without permission under the umbrella of fair use.
The law doesn’t set out hard and fast rules about how much copyrighted material one can use without crossing the line between fair use and copyright infringement. If a news story quotes a sentence or two from a book that is relevant to the topic of the story, the author of the book would likely have a hard time saying this isn’t fair use. But if that excerpted text grows into multiple paragraphs, it becomes more and more difficult to claim fair use.
Perhaps the easiest way to talk about fair use isn’t in the abstract, but through examples.
Let’s start with the premise of a YouTube user who posted a video about how to build a dining room table.
Example 1:
A news program does a story on “How to Build a Table” and uses the YouTube clip in its entirety with no critical response or editorial addition to the content of the clip. This would be difficult to defend as fair use as there is nothing transformative about the way in which it was presented.
Example 2:
The news program shows the whole video without permission but then has an expert on to criticize or warn viewers that the information presented in the video might be misleading or incorrect. This would be a more defensible fair use claim, as the segment is about alerting consumers to potential hazards, not merely showing the video as standalone content.
Example 3:
Take the same situation as in Example 2, but the news program crops out or otherwise covers up a logo placed on the YouTube video by its original creator. According to our expert, if the news program has a justifiable fair use claim, it’s difficult to argue that cropping out a logo somehow negates that fair use claim. The real problem with cropping is when it’s done in furtherance of violating copyright, which we’ll get to in a few examples.
Example 4:
The news program does a table-building segment and does a montage of quick clips of how-to videos, talking briefly about how DIY videos are now all the rage, before then showing its own tips on making a table. This would likely hold up to a fair use claim because the clips are being used to demonstrate the trend and they are brief.
Additionally, it’s hard to argue that the copyright holder is harmed, as the short clip does not provide viewers with any significant amount of the information that could be learned from watching the whole table-making video.
Example 5:
The news program is doing a story on a class-action lawsuit against the manufacturers of the type of table saw used in the YouTube clip. The news shows a long segment of the YouTube clip to illustrate something relevant to the lawsuit; perhaps that it goes against claims made by the plaintiffs. This is another example in which it would hard for the copyright holder to fight a fair use claim.
Example 6:
The news program has a YouTube channel that it uses to upload things that didn’t make it on air, like extended interviews or behind-the-scenes footage. It decides to upload the table-making video wholesale and covers up the original author’s watermark with its own mark. This is hard to defend as fair use, as the news program is not only using the full-length clip, but is also arguably trying to pass it off as content that it created.
The CFPB announced three lawsuits against foreclosure relief companies and their operators that collected more than $25 million in illegal advance fees for services that falsely promised to prevent foreclosures or renegotiated troubled mortgages.
The suits seek compensation for victims, civil fines and injunctions against the alleged scammers.
The CFPB alleges that the companies and individuals took part in a number of illegal practices including:
Clausen & Cobb Management Company, Inc. and Siringoringo Law Firm
According to the CFPB complaint [PDF], Clausen & Cobb Management and owners Alfred Clausen and Joshua Cobb, as well as Stephen Siringoringo and his Siringoringo Law Firm, charged illegal advance fees for mortgage loan modifications to thousands of California homeowners. The operation charged an initial fee ranging from $1,995 to $3,500, as well as monthly fees of $495.
The Mortgage Law Group and the Consumer First Legal Group
The CFPB charges [PDF] that the Mortgage Law Group, LLP, the Consumer First Legal Group, LLC, and attorneys Thomas Macey, Jeffrey Aleman, Jason Searns, and Harold Stafford, allegedly took in more than $19.2 million in fees from over 10,000 distressed homeowners nationwide. According to the compaliny, most of the money came from illegal advance fees for so-called loan modification services.
Hoffman Law Group
In a lawsuit [PDF] filed jointly with the Florida Attorney General, the CFPB alleges that the Hoffman Law Group (HLG), its operators, Michael Harper, Benn Wilcox, and attorney Marc Hoffman, and its affiliated companies, Nationwide Management Solutions, Legal Intake Solutions, File Intake Solutions, and BM Marketing Group accepted more than $5 million in illegal upfront fees from homeowners.
The operation allegedly sold consumers the chance to join mass lawsuits as plaintiffs on the false promise that the suit would help them get mortgage loan modifications or foreclosure relief. HLG typically charged an upfront fee of $6,000 plus a months maintenance fee of $495.
In similiar action Wednesday, the FTC filed six lawsuits against mortgage relief companies that allegedly preyed on distressed homeowners by misrepresenting that they typically could lower homeowners’ mortgage payments and interest rates or prevent foreclosure, and illegally charging advance fees.
Danielson Law Group
The FTC alleges that the Utah-based operation touted a success rate that exceeded 90% in order to entice consumers to pay fees ranging from $500 to $3,900 to negotiate loan modifications on behalf of distressed homeowners. The operation falsely promising that attorneys would negotiate loan modifications with substantially reduced mortgage payments using their special relationships with lenders or mortgage analysis reports produced by a proprietary software program.
FMC Counseling Services, Inc.
The FTC has alleged that from at least February 2011, this Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based operation made false claims that it was affiliated with the federal government’s Making Home Affordable assistance program, and that it would renegotiate consumers’ mortgages, reducing them by several hundred dollars.
The company collected more than $600,000 in payments from hundreds of consumers.
Lanier Law
Since at least 2011, this Jacksonville, FL-based operation told consumers they would get a loan modification or that their changes of getting one was 85% to 100%.
The defendants typically collected an upfront fee of $1,000 to $4,000, or an ongoing monthly fee of $500 or more. In some cases, according to the FTC, they also told consumers not to pay their mortgages while their supposed loan modifications were pending, and that they would conduct an audit of consumers’ mortgage documents to find errors or fraud committed by the lender.
Mortgage Relief Advocates
According to the FTC complaint, from at least April 2010 the California-based operation sold fraudulent mortgage assistance services on its website and through telemarketing. The operation charged up-front fee of $1,000 to $3,200, the defendants are alleged to have rarely provided the promised mortgage relief.
Home Relief Foundation
The FTC alleges that from October 2010 to December 2013 the Austin, Texas-based operation made false promises that because of their affiliation with attorneys, their affiliation with a government program, their knowledge of the industry, and their relationships with mortgage lenders, Home Relief Foundation would be able to lower consumers’ interest rates and monthly mortgage payments by charging fees ranging from $500 to $4,000,
CD Capital Investments
The FTC has alleged since mid-2011, this Southern California-based operation collected more than $1 million in revenues by often promising consumers would receive mortgage relief services within two to four months, and often claimed affiliation with the Obama Administration’s “Making Home Affordable Program.”
In addition to announcing the lawsuits today, the CFPB and the FTC released resources to help consumers better understand and recognize mortgage modification scammers.
“These companies pocketed illegal fees—taking millions of hard-earned dollars from distressed consumers, and then left those consumers worse off than they began,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray says in a prepared statement about the lawsuits. “These practices are not only illegal, they are reprehensible.”
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Una infografía sobre etapas de un proyecto. Vía
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Etapas de un proyecto
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Una infografía sobre Tendencias en Formación. Vía
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Tendencias en Formación
