gif/vine copyright update, clarification sought

jaykay74

Hi!

With regard to the quoted post below from the soccer forum about vines gifs etc.

1/ Is it okay to link to sites that show gifs/vines? For instance today from independent.ie there is a vine on their site (linked below). They don't seem to see this as an issue I guess. Can we link to legitimate sites that feature vines ?

http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/premier-league/vine-this-cant-be-lucky-bird-poops-in-ashley-youngs-mouth-30513065.html

http://balls.ie/football/vine-santi-cazorla-got-face-full-vanishing-spray/

http://www.thescore.ie/spurs-pitch-invader-1623838-Aug2014/

2/ A lot of twitter users post vines/gifs so if you were to say. " you should follow/lookup beautifullyred for some great gifs of todays match". ok or not ?

3/ Gifs, Vines etc of goals. Whats etc ? still shots like jpegs and other screenshots ok ?

This has probably been discussed already and clarified but I can't find it.

Maybe others can come up with other clarifications that would be good to have.


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057270806

Hi all

With the new season starting today we feel it best to remind folks about what can and cannot be put in the forum due to copyright.


Articles from blogs, newpapers, magazines etc cannot be put up in full in the soccer forum. You can provide a link to the article and put up the opening paragraph of the article..


Match streams are not allowed in the forum, as is the requesting for match streams in the open forum or via PM. Some time back the site received an edict stating that we can no longer permit match stream or match stream requests (even via the PM system). There is some flexibility when it comes to letting another poster know that a club has a pay per view system on the offical club site, but a good rule of thimb would be to not post or mention a link if you are unsure if it is against site rules.


Youtube at present is fine as Youtube has revenue sharing arrangements in place with copyright holders and as such polices it's own content.

Most will remember the changes that came in around the time of the below link.


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showt...p?t=2056565895


Now to something that will be kicking in from this season.


Gifs, Vines etc of goals, and match incidents are no longer allowed. The EPL are clamping down on this are are monitoring high volume websites for anything that breaches copyright. This means that no gifs/Vines etc taken from in play games, and it means the same for any old footage from EPL games in gif or Vine form.

We, the mod team, will be trying to apply a common sense approach to the new changes for as long as we can. By that I mean we will not be looking to go in card heavy whilst posters get used to the changes, but we will be carding people who decide to ignore repeated requests to not post gifs/Vines etc of copyrighted material.


Any changes or additions will be added to this thread over time.


Thanks to all in advance for helping with the above .


The Mod team.

Zaph

I've asked the guys in the office to clarify exactly what the position is in relation to Vines, etc., for the Soccer forum mods. Unfortunately the office is closed until Monday, so for the time being I've advised the Soccer mods to take a better safe than sorry approach. Hopefully we'll be able to provide greater clarity on Monday.

Will I Amnt

This is a massive kick in the balls for the soccer forum.

What exactly can the powers that be in English football do other than ask for their removal? Will the likes of Twitter face further action if they don't comply?

Beasty

Will I Amnt wrote: »

This is a massive kick in the balls for the soccer forum.

What exactly can the powers that be in English football do other than ask for their removal? Will the likes of Twitter face further action if they don't comply?

I would guess that once they have gone down the solicitors letter route they start thinking about suing for damages. At this stage as Zaph has said we are adopting a better safe than sorry stance until we get some direction from above.

Dozen Wicked Words

Reason number 1051* to be against modern football's greed.


*make up own reasons for previous one thousand and fifty.

recylingbin

Din't know if this has any bearing on the situation, but thought I'd post it as, apart from it being an american ruling, it appears to be relevant.

http://www.101greatgoals.com/blog/101gg-legal-update-an-american-court-rules-that-embedding-video-is-not-copyright-infringement/

As long-standing readers of this site will be well aware, 101 Great Goals has received a series of legal threats throughout the course of its existence.Whether threatened by Uefa or the Premier League, 101 Great Goals has been attacked and bullied by a large and wealthy football organisations who claim that the activities of the website are in violation of copyright infringement laws – a charge which has always been refuted.
Now, however, a court in the United States delivered a significant blow to the interests of such organistions in a landmark copyright infringement case with far-reaching implications.
As reported by Mashable:
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that a site that embeds copyrighted videos from another site is not committing copyright infringement.
Flava Works, Inc. v. Gunter came to a close after the ruling was passed in favor of the defendant, Marques Gunter, the sole proprietor of myVidster.com. The court also ruled that watching an infringing video does not constitute copyright infringement.
The case began in 2010 when the adult video production company, Flava Works, sued video bookmarking website myVidster,for copyright infringement. The Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued myVidster a preliminary injunction in July 2011. It was then appealed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
The court ruled Thursday that embedding a video that infringes on copyrighted material is not a violation of copyright law. For example, if you found an episode of The Simpsons on YouTube and embedded it in your blog, you would not be violating any copyright laws. That holds true even if the person who uploaded the video ripped it straight from The Simpsons season 3 DVD. However, the person who uploaded the video is in violation of the law.
The court’s decision also protects those who watch illegally uploaded copyrighted videos. Judge Richard Posner wrote in Thursday’s ruling:
“…As long as the visitor makes no copy of the copyrighted video that he is watching, he is not violating the copyright owner’s exclusive right … His bypassing Flava’s pay wall by viewing the uploaded copy is equivalent to stealing a copyrighted book from a bookstore and reading it. That is a bad thing to do (in either case) but it is not copyright infringement.”
As stated repeatedly on this website, no one at 101 Great Goals, nor anyone connected with this site, has ever uploaded football videos on the internet. 101 Great Goals does not host or broadcast any such video on our servers. All we do is locate already existing videos and embed them on our site.
Such activities have now received a triumphant fully-legal stamp, although it would be foolish to start thinking that this issue has been put to bed once and for all.
Many are waiting to see to outcome of the case against TV-Shack – a website that hosted uploaded copyrighted television shows and films, but did not host the material itself. It’s owner, 23-year-old Richard O’Dwyer, is facing extradition charges from the United Kingdom, and the conclusion of those legal proceedings will also undoubtedly impact on the law in this area.
That said, we are over the moon with the courts judgement in America, and we urge you to Like, Retweet and Share this article in order to amplify the impact of historic Flava Works, Inc. v. Gunter ruling.

GLaDOS

Are gifs/vines etc of incidents outside the EPL allowed? LOI, La Liga etc.

Beasty

ScienceNerd wrote: »

Are gifs/vines etc of incidents outside the EPL allowed? LOI, La Liga etc.

If it is confirmed there is a risk of the EPL taking legal action, then I would imagine the LOI, La Liga and other leagues would have the same legal rights

TheTownie

Apologies if this is too simplified a view of things.

I would really appreciate it if someone clearly and concisely explained why Boards.ie could be held accountable for content stored on Twitter/Vine servers.

Also what part of the Premier League statement cajoled Boards.ie into action. From what I read they asked users of Vine and Twitter to stop uploading Premier League content and that they're working with Twitter to combat such infringement. Seems to me like it has nothing to do with Boards.ie.

Just like it's Youtube's responsibility to moderate videos stored on their servers, it's Twitter's responsibility to moderate videos stored on Twitter/Vine servers.

.ak

Interesting. As far as I understand if you link a pic, rather than embed it then it isn't a CW infringement, i.e: boards.ie isn't hosting the image.

I could be completely wrong though, will be interesting to see what Dav et al make of it.

Darkglasses

TheTownie wrote: »

Apologies if this is too simplified a view of things.

I would really appreciate it if someone clearly and concisely explained why Boards.ie could be held accountable for content stored on Twitter/Vine servers.

Also what part of the Premier League statement cajoled Boards.ie into action. From what I read they asked users of Vine and Twitter to stop uploading Premier League content and that they're working with Twitter to combat such infringement. Seems to me like it has nothing to do with Boards.ie.

Just like it's Youtube's responsibility to moderate videos stored on their servers, it's Twitter's responsibility to moderate videos stored on Twitter/Vine servers.

Not a legal expert at all, but my limited understanding is that the problem originates with the extremely vague wording of the SOPA law signed in by Sean Sherlock. By hosting links to things like illegal streams, are we providing a facility which might be used to infringe copyright? Will the site owners then be held responsible? I don't know, I'm not sure anybody knows 100%, because the law is so vaguely written. But Boards is risk-averse, not having the fortunes of a massive site like Youtube or Twitter.

This is my limited understanding of the situation, nothing else, I could be completely wrong about any of this.

titan18

.ak wrote: »

Interesting. As far as I understand if you link a pic, rather than embed it then it isn't a CW infringement, i.e: boards.ie isn't hosting the image.

I could be completely wrong though, will be interesting to see what Dav et al make of it.

Yup, would have thought that linking to something would have been fine. Fair enough not being able to embed or anything, but don't see anything wrong with linking to a Twitter post that contains the Vine.

GLaDOS

Hypothetically, could we set up a free hosted forum, embed vines and gifs there, and just link to that on boards :pac:

TheTownie

Darkglasses wrote: »

Not a legal expert at all, but my limited understanding is that the problem originates with the extremely vague wording of the SOPA law signed in by Sean Sherlock. By hosting links to things like illegal streams, are we providing a facility which might be used to infringe copyright? Will the site owners then be held responsible? I don't know, I'm not sure anybody knows 100%, because the law is so vaguely written. But Boards is risk-averse, not having the fortunes of a massive site like Youtube or Twitter.

This is my limited understanding of the situation, nothing else, I could be completely wrong about any of this.

IMO (I appreciate the law supersedes my opinion :P) that bill was worded as such to enable the blocking of torrent search engines as they provide 'links that facilitate' downloading something that by its very nature is distributed and not contained within any one server.

To extend that to a scenario like Twitter is just following the letter of a very vague law (that hopefully someday will be clarified with a landmark case, not involving Boards.ie :P).

If Boards.ie do think links to Twitter is facilitating copyright infringement then surely they must ban all Twitter links since its a copyright infringing website? Naturally same goes for all Vine website links.

TheTownie

titan18 wrote: »

Yup, would have thought that linking to something would have been fine. Fair enough not being able to embed or anything, but don't see anything wrong with linking to a Twitter post that contains the Vine.

Embedding a tweet or Vine on a website does not involve hosting the content. The content is retrieved from the exact same location whether you provide a hyperlink or embed it (which Boards.ie has been enabling recently).

So if you ban embedding, you have to ban a hyperlink and vice versa.

Dav

Hey folks, this is a messy one. We're trying to work out what's best internally ourselves but it might be tomorrow before we've been able to talk to all the relevant people. I just wanted to let you all know that we're working on it though.

Dav

OK folks, we've been discussing this and we have a decision.

The site allows for material from third parties such as Youtube, Vine, Instagram and Soundcloud to be embedded in its pages. While we obviously have no control over the material that is hosted on third party platforms, we will remove any links to material that infringes copyright as soon as we are alerted to its presence. In the specific case of the English Premier League, we know that they are now actively seeking out people who infringe their copyright so we must now ask you all to stop posting it on the site and further more, we would ask that if you see this sort of content (linked or embedded), please report it. If you want to post a link to a site that has this sort of content, that's ok because simply put, that's between the copyright holder and the other site.

I don't know how other organisations plan on dealing with this issue or if they're proactively going after services like Vine or YouTube who have clips of key incidents in a game - be that a goal in soccer or a high tackle in rugby or a safe call at home plate in baseball. Some organisations and teams understand that sharing of these things are simply the means that a modern sports fan follows their game and team of choice and they don't see it as anything other than "fair use" (which there is still no provision for in Irish law by the way).

I would have thought that any organisation with a lick of common sense would simply offer an official channel for sharing their news and events via social media (and should an official FA or Sky account start sharing this sort of content for the Premiership etc, then that would be more than ok to link or embed). So before the cries of "what about this sport or that league?" I would simply ask that if they're on record as saying they don't want people sharing these things, we must include them in this ban too.

I'm sorry folks, as I said above, I know it's messy and that no one who posts these sorts of things has any intention to damage or ignore the rights of any copyright holder - they just wanna be fans and talk about that goal or that penalty decision etc.

To any copyrights holders who wish to get in touch directly with us to discuss these things, please do, we would love to hear from you and will be more than happy to work with you: http://www.boards.ie/contact

jaykay74

Dav wrote: »

So before the cries of "what about this sport or that league?" I would simply ask that if they're on record as saying they don't want people sharing these things, we must include them in this ban too.

To my knowledge so far its only the PL that have raised this as an issue so going by what you say vines/gifs for other european leagues, lower level in England, Cup competitions etc would be fine. All non EPL games.

Unless its shown somewhere that a particular organisation has a problem with it I guess.

Dav

jaykay74 wrote: »

Unless its shown somewhere that a particular organisation has a problem with it I guess.

Essentially, this is the crux of the matter, yes.

P_1

So does this mean that posting a link to the vine/gif is ok but embedding the vine/gif isn't or am I reading you wrong?

Diabhal Beag

P_1 wrote: »

So does this mean that posting a link to the vine/gif is ok but embedding the vine/gif isn't or am I reading you wrong?

Would like to know myself as for gifs an app for the browser like Hover Zoom shows the gif juts from hovering over the link.

Orion

Dav wrote: »

If you want to post a link to a site that has this sort of content, that's ok because simply put, that's between the copyright holder and the other site.

How does that fit in with Sherlock's folly? And the likes of the IT saying you can't link to their site as it's copyright?

jaykay74

P_1 wrote: »

So does this mean that posting a link to the vine/gif is ok but embedding the vine/gif isn't or am I reading you wrong?

Diabhal Beag wrote: »

Would like to know myself as for gifs an app for the browser like Hover Zoom shows the gif juts from hovering over the link.

DAV: If you want to post a link to a site that has this sort of content, that's ok because simply put, that's between the copyright holder and the other site.

My reading of it is for example:

website.com/story.html
This story.html contains vines/gifs whatever this is ok.

For example:

http://www.thescore.ie/spurs-pitch-invader-1623838-Aug2014/

http://balls.ie/football/vine-santi-cazorla-got-face-full-vanishing-spray/

http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/premier-league/vine-this-cant-be-lucky-bird-poops-in-ashley-youngs-mouth-30513065.html


BUT website.com/epl.gif
No. Either linked, embedded or whatever.

I think...

Black Swan

Not everyone reads Feedback. Just wondering if there should be a simplified, short worded site wide announcement for all members of boards? Also an entry addressing this in FAQ?

GLaDOS

The soccer forum needs to be updated anyway