Blogspot and Copyright

Hmmm …

That’s … a bother …

Actually, that’s a serious bother for about 60, 000 people: my fellow bloggers in Turkey.

I’ve just seen a news article on the BBC News pages.

It seems that the Turkish pages of Blogger — the site I use for Nik Nak’s Old Peculiar — is involved in something of a row with one of the country’s broadcasters, Digiturk, over football.

As a result … ?

Blogger has been taken down, temporarily.

Which is a bit of an over-reaction, from where I’m sitting … !

From what I can gather, various Blogger uses in Turkey have done something similar to what I do with various movies and TV shows.

They’ll quite happily post clips — via YouTube and other services — and add them to their posts, about a given game.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this is iffy legal ground, to say the least.

Which is why — over the years — I’ve arrived at my way of handling things.

Whenever I post a clip to YouTube, I always make the point of doing this:

Acknowledging the copyright holders: either in the attached comments or or by inserting a copyright notice on the clip*.

Writing words to the effect of “No violation is intended, as the clip is used for illustrative purpose, only” in the Comments section for the clip.

And, lastly, taking down the clip, if requested.

Now, it’s not perfect, I know.

But I don’t think I’ve had too many complaints.

Companies that do object, usually ask YouTube to disable embedding on the offending clips.

Which is …

Well …

A bit of a bummer, from where I’m sitting, as it’d be nice to have some of them, here.

But those clips are their property, after all.

»»•««

At any rate, the point I’m trying to make … ?

Is that I think I and other Bloggers have a right to good old fashioned Freedom of Speech.

Now, granted, that comes with a few basic responsibilities.

Being polite. Being discreet. Making sure we do no harm.

Acknowledging copyright ownership is in there, somewhere, as is giving credit where credit is due.

It’s a trade off.

Granted, I have to — indeed, should — acknowledge intellectual ownership, as and where necessary.

I want to make sure I can show you a relevant clip, photo or quote to make a point.

That’s polite, if nothing else.

»»•««

Now that’s my end of things.

My end of things, you notice … ?

I also believe that copyright holders have an obligation, here.

If that’s the right word, here … ? Debbi … ?

Hmm maybe obligation is the wrong word.

Obviously, I can understand copyright holders have a right to be protective of their property.

I don’t blame them, especially given the existence of sites like Pirate Bay.

However …

I also believe that, along with protecting their property, copyright holders have an obligation to check things. To make sure that — before they get snotty — of how a given clip is being used.

If a copyright holder has a complaint about my use of a given clip or song, I’d hope they’d at least look at what I’ve done with them, in order to satisfy themselves I’m not — frankly — extracting the proverbial Mickey.

But I also hope that any response a holder may have to my use of their property are proportionate to any violation I may have committed.

This situation, where the whole Turkish end of Blogger has been taken down … ?

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again.

I believe it to be an over-reaction.

* One piece of video editing software I find hand is MPEG Streamclip, by Squared5, allows one to insert brief messages into a clip: very handy for this sort of thing. I can also use iMovie to insert a Keynote slide at the end of a .mov presentation.