H.I. No. 2: Copyright Not Intended

"Copyright Not Intended"
Hello Internet episode
{{#widget:YouTube|id=qv4PUlVS0V4|height=188|width=336}} Episode 2 on the podcast YouTube channel
Episode no.	2
Presented by	CGP Grey Brady Haran
Original release date	February 7, 2014 (2014-02-07)
Running time	58:38
Sponsors	Audible

"H.I. #2: Copyright Not Intended" is the second episode of Hello Internet, released on February 7, 2014.

Official Description

Grey & Brady talk about copyright.

Show Notes

• Suggest future topics for H.I.
• Why does The Economist call itself a newspaper?
• CGP Grey copyright video
• Everything is a Remix
• TextExpander
• Brady's video inside the Bank of England's Gold Bullion Vault
• Clueless
• BBC's Sherlock
• John Siracusa
• Star Wars Despecialized Edition
• The People Vs. George Lucas
• The Zapruder film
• Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion's free culture

Fan Art

Flowchart

Summary

0:00:00: Grey discusses his mistake of calling the Economist a magazine instead of a newspaper in the previous episode, as well the history behind why the Economist is called a newspaper. 0:02:56: Audible.com ad by Grey recommending Steven King's "On Writing". 0:05:26: They discuss Grey's copyright video, and Brady is not sure whether or not creators should be allowed to add on to stories that have already been made. 0:10:20: Grey discusses patents, and how inventions can only be created with the help of previous technology. He says that if patents lasted as long as copyright, technology would progress much slower. 0:15:32: Grey compares copyright to patents, saying that just as inventors use previous technology to create new technology, creators take elements from other stories to create new stories. 0:17:10: Grey argues that because no works are completely original, creators must eventually give their works to society, just as inventors can only keep patents to their technology for twenty years. 0:19:04: Grey says that if there were no copyright, then less large scale works would be created, as creators would not be able to protect the distribution of their creations. He says both copyright being too long and it not existing altogether would have detrimental effects on the rate of content creation. 0:22:24: Brady asks Grey why he decided to make his copyright video. Grey says that part of the reason he made it was himself being unable to use images that were nearly a century old, due to them still being under copyright protection. 0:23:54: They discuss their perspectives on copyright as creators. Grey discusses his frustrations with people reuploading his content, who often use the phrase "Copyright not intended" to admit that they have not made what they uploaded. He talks about how he handles reuploads of his content, and how his reaction to reuploads has changed over time. 0:30:32: Brady says that he sometimes tries to get videos of his uploaded on other channels taken down, however that it gets tedious as he has uploaded thousands of videos. He discusses how people claim that they are using his content under fair use to reupload it, and how under most cases his content is not used under fair use. 0:34:14: Grey discusses the meaning of fair use in the United States, and how using content commercially and whether or not the new content competes with the borrowed content determines whether or not content is being used under fair use. 0:37:15: They discusses how newspapers use content from YouTube without the permission of creators and put it into their own videos players to commercially exploit it. 0:40:23: Brady discusses how a newspaper made a picture gallery of one of his videos on their website after he refused to let them reupload his video in their own player instead of the YouTube player. 0:41:32: Grey discusses how letting copyright expire allows creators to make new versions of previous works, set in new settings with different characters and added themes. He discusses how letting people recreate previous works can allow even greater works to be created, and can inspire others to create their own, separate works. 0:45:44: Brady argues that allowing people to use previous works in their own allows creators to exploit the fame of previous works to gain a wider audience for their own works. They discuss how people prefer books and movies that are already famous to those that are not. 0:47:22: Grey argues that it is worth having some bad sequels or recreations of previous works in order to have good ones. 0:49:07: Grey says that the benefit of having a sixty year copyright would be the ability for people alive today to be able to watch a remade version of the original Star Wars movies. He also discusses how the control over the distribution of a movie allows George Lucas to disallow the viewing of the original versions of the Star Wars movies. 0:51:27: Brady discusses how the Star Wars prequels have tainted the original Star Wars movies, while Grey discusses how some people cannot distinguish between the prequels and the originals. 0:52:41: Grey discusses how allowing creators of content a nearly infinite copyright timeframe can cause the original versions of works to disappear or become distorted. He talks about the Star Wars despecialized editions, which are versions of the original Star Wars movies that have been edited to remove things added in the George Lucas Special editions. 0:54:36: Brady mentions the film "The People Vs. George Lucas", and mentions the copyright issues behind "The Zapruder film". He also asks Grey what he would do differently if he were to remake his copyright video. Grey says that he is not sure whether or not he could fully explain his thoughts about copyright in a video. 0:57:05: Grey discusses a TED Talk which talked about the fact that there is no copyright on fashion in the United States. Grey agrees with the point made in the video that no copyright is good for the fashion world, however believes that copyright is necessary for other fields of creativity.

Transcript

Brady: You're not very good at that are you? Grey: I can normally do it, it's just that you're looking. [HI theme plays] Grey: No, wait, before- we can't, we can't start with the main topic. We have to start with some follow-up. Brady Ah, really? Grey: Yes. Brady: What did we do previously? I've already forgotten. Grey: [chuckles] Well, well last time we were- we were talking about being wrong on the internet. Brady: Being wrong on the internet. Grey: Yeah, that was- that was last time. Now, at the time we're recording this, the podcasts have not gone live, so we- we haven't had any listener feedback. Brady: It's like a secret still, isn't it? Grey: Yes it is- it is a secret. Brady: O- only you and I know about this. Grey: That's true, it is just the two of us. Um,- Brady: Okay. Grey: -when I was editing the previous podcast, I heard myself say something that I just- I had to correct in this one, so I made a note for follow up that is coming from me about last- last week's episode. Brady: So you're responding to feedback from yourself. Grey: Yes that's right, I am responding to feedback from myself. Brady: Because you did something wrong in our video about being wrong. Grey: That's right, and this is sort of delightful as a first up- uh, as a first, uh, follow-up section, is that I- I called "The Economist" "The Economist Magazine". Brady: Right. Grey: Right,- Brady: That's bad, is it? Grey: It is, because "The Economist" makes a- makes a very strong point about always calling themselves a newspaper. And, so when they write opinion pieces they always say "this newspaper thinks..." you know, whatever it is, uh, and they're very- they're very pernickety about this, uh, and so they- they always like to be referred to as a newspaper, and so I would- I have to say that as a first piece of follow-up, I would apologize to "The Economist" for saying "The Economist Magazine"; I should have said the Economist newspaper. Brady: It does look more like a magazine though, doesn't it? Grey: Yeah, if you ever get your hands on one, it looks totally like a magazine, which is why- this is- this is- I think going to be the problem with podcasts for us in the future, you know, in this- in this little series is that, I know that they call themselves a newspaper, but it looks so much like a magazine, even though I know the correct thing, right? I said the wrong thing, I'm sure that's going to happen lots. Um, and I went to look it up, and it originally was a- a newspaper and so I actually- I saw an original copy of the original Economist (my library has one) from 1843, and it looks like a real big New York Timesy kind of newspaper. Um, so it- it apparently started as a newspaper and then, uh, on their website they have a little thing about how they slowly transitioned into magazine form, but they're still calling themselves a newspaper, so,- Brady: Wow, that was good man. That's uh... yeah, I don't know what to say to that, but I do find interesting we've spent this long dealing with corrections and feedback from a podcast that no one's heard. Grey: Yes. [chuckles] Brady: Heaven help us when people actually start hearing these things. Grey: Well- well yes, that's why I- I- I- um, it- it would not surprise me if the later episodes of this little run are basically entirely feedback. That- that would not surprise me if that ends up being the case. [advertisement intro] Grey: "Today's sponsor is "Audible dot com", a leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment. Listen to audiobooks whenever and wherever you want." That's the official part they want me to read, and now this is just me. I want you, the listener, to know that I actually reached out to "Audible dot com" on purpose, because they're a product that I use every day. Audiobooks are a huge part of my personal life, and my working life, and I feel like my entire life has just been enriched by their existence, and I've been an Audible user for many years. As I'm recording this right now, I'm about to go into a long weekend of animating my next video, which is incredibly tedious work, and it is exactly the kind of thing that I just could not get through without something to listen to, so, I'm going to be in the market for a new audiobook to find for myself. Now, I want to recommend something to you, and that is one of my all-time favourite audiobooks, Stephen King's On Writing. The book is sort of half a memoir, and half Stephen King's advice on writing, but even if your not a huge Stephen King fan, it's a very interesting book, 'cause Stephen King has lived... an unusual life. And, I also want to have this be my first Audible recommendation because I think it's a great example of how audiobooks can be better than... just the regular book. I first read the paper version of On Writing many years ago, I think when it first came out, and it was good and I enjoyed it, but, um, the version on Audible is actually narrated by Stephen King himself, and I have to say, it adds so much to the book. He really puts a lot of emphasis on parts of the book which I didn't really notice the first time going through, but then by listening to his voice, it's obvious that "this is hugely important to him", or "this is a thing that really irritates him", and he's a great narrator. So, On Writing is just a perfect example of how the audiobook has way more to offer than the dead-tree edition, so, I highly recommend it, and because Audible are awesome, you can listen to that for free. You can get a free audiobook, and a thirty-day trial by signing up at "Audible dot com slash Hello Internet", all one word. Using that URL is how Audible knows that you came from this podcast, and so, not only do you get yourself a free book, but you help make this podcast experiment a successful one. So once again, that is "Audible-dot-com slash Hello Internet". There will be a link in the description of this podcast if you just want to click it, but otherwise just type in "Audible dot com slash Hello Internet" and get your free audiobook and thirty-day trial. Okay, that's enough from "me in future", and now we're going to go back to the conversation about copyright. [advertisement outro] Brady: today we're talking about copyright yes I think that's as we've settled on for today's topic this is really interesting for me this is really interesting because this is this is a front I feel like I'm attacked on from both sides because as someone who creates content and therefore has to use you know use material I can sort of tread into the copyright field in that way but then someone who actually creates content that I own I can kind of be on the other end the receiving end of problems with copyright so it's a it's going to be interesting to see it to hear what positions we may or may not have on this yeah I'm actually I'm actually very curious to hear where you stand on this issue yourself because I think you you might deal with it much more directly than I do hmm so I'm not I'm not exactly sure where to start I think we should say a good point to start is the people who may not know your position is quite well known on this I guess because you have made a video on it and before we before we had this chat I admitted to you that I hadn't watched the video and then so I went to have a quick look at it and it turns out I had watched the video so I've watched the video twice once about a year ago and once again today and you make a lot of different points and it's perhaps not best for me to encapsulate them do you want to encapsulate the essence of your argument in in that famous video ok well now there's gonna have to be embarrassing because I watched my own video this morning because I couldn't I couldn't remember the video very well to be honest I was thinking one you know what did I say I remember complaining about some stuff I thought I have to after he watch this thing and I had the unusual the unusual effect of watching this and I thought I don't think that guy is very convincing you know I'm not sure that this was this was the best possible video to be made about copyright and so I look at that and I'm actually when I was watching it today I thought I'm not sure what conclusion other people would draw after having watched this I having seen it I feel like I'm I I now think that I made much of a less clear point in that video than the I think two years ago now me thought that I was making oh do you want to hear what I took from that well that that's how I'm trying to lead up to this is what what do you think you could just ask you could just ask me okay what do you what do you think I was saying of that I mean you made you made a lot of points as you do you made a lot of points in a short space of time the two main things I took from them one of which I quite agreed with and the other one I wouldn't say I disagreed with but it didn't sit very comfortably with me the first point and the one that I completely agreed with was that the argument for copyright and this increasingly this increasing amount of protection for the creators of the content to have this release you know rigorous copyright protection their argument is spurious their argument that it encourages the creation of more content is not a particularly valid argument mm-hmm and I think you make that argument quite well and I can see that and I'm sure we might discuss it in a minute but the other thing I took from it was use I think it came across that you had this attitude that anyone should be allowed to create anything from other people's creations you use the example of Star Wars quite alone in your arm in your video and that it almost came across that you felt that anyone should be able to create their own stories their own backstories their own future their own modifications of the characters and the Star Wars universe would a you know expand even more than it already has and I followed your argument for it but it just didn't sit that comfortably with me I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm open to hear you talk about some more but that part of your argument didn't sit that comfortably with me and I actually sat there thinking why should everyone just be able to take the Star Wars universe or take someone else's stories and make up their own stories I don't think that's encouraging creativity necessarily isn't that it discouraging it and just saying well let's just keep modifying the same old stories yeah so you picked up on the exact part that I was watching and I thought currently is not super convinced by previous Me's argument on that on that part of it as well because I was aware that I was talking about you know telling stories in the Star Wars universe of telling stories in the Harry Potter universe and I thought the same thing like I'm not convinced by this this was this this could have been better um you know if I were to redo it is it still your position so okay before before I say my explicit position I think I want to I want to just lay out a couple of things that we're going to talk about okay so so copyright is a kind of intellectual property and just four terms for the rest of the conversation right there are three main kinds of intellectual property right intellectual property there's copyrights patents and trademarks yeah alright so a trademark is like coca-cola right you can't sell soda and call it coca-cola that's a trademark nobody really has a problem with trademarks it doesn't really come up in a debate if the least contentious of the three yeah there's patents which I don't want to get derailed in but for just you know briefly the vague idea is that you invent something and in the United States you get that's about twenty years depending on what kind of thing you get a 20 year protection on your invention yeah and then there's copyright which is for creative works alright so not things like technology but you write a story and and then you have the copyright for that story yeah um so those are the three kinds of things and I think here here is how I get to this position and I think what I was if I was going to remake that video what I might try to mold into a more concise argument is that I think there's a real analogy between patents expiring and copyright expiring and I think about it this way so the Apple corporation invented the iPhone in 2007 right what what didn't happen is that you know they they didn't like Steve Jobs didn't wander into the forest as a pure human with no tools or anything and like carved from stone and nothing and iPhone right and some paper would believe that but yeah yeah right like he didn't bring it down from on the mountain you know just like wrought by his own greatness yeah um and iPhone can only exist if you live in a world that has a certain amount of technology that has already progressed to this point so this is kind of standing on the shoulders of giants type argument that's exactly right it's standing on the shoulders of giants and and in the original keynote he actually has a little line where he's talking about multi-touch you know like touching the screen in multiple places and and he said I literally said something like this is the iPhone and you know yes we sure have patented the heck out of it yeah now the thing is with I think that the comparison to think about is that we as a society have decided that patents only last 20 years and so yeah it is going to expire and the reason is because you didn't make it all of yourself you owe this kind of debt to everyone who came before you and the the limited nature of a patent means that at some point the work that you have done will be available for people in the future to build on as well okay and I think it's it's really it's obvious if you talk about patents if you imagine a world where you know whatever the patents are for the iPhone or for the lightbulb or for anything if you think about a world where they lasted as long as copyright lasts yeah which I think at the time of this recording I think in the United States its lifetime of the Creator plus 70 years I think it sometime it's a very long time right you can immediately see how that would just destroy technological progress yeah right if Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone we're here you know 150 years later and still only the Bell corporation can produce all of the telephones in America yeah I sort of you sort of said a moment ago that the the reason for the expiration of the patents was to kind of you know it's it's the debt you pay back to those that came before you I see it more as preventing a whole bunch of dead ends everywhere you know it kick it stop sir you know it stops progress being completely choked right right that's that's another that's other good point right that's it this is this is yet this is something which is important to society and you apply the same thing to inventing Darth Vader right yeah so right this that that's great right because I think the reason that copyrights are such a contentious issue at least in in the world of the Internet right this is a thing that comes up all the time argument over copyright law and it's because I think that creative works are similar to something like patents it's kind of similar to a like a technological progress but it's it's not quite the same and so what my general thought is this is that no artistic work a book or a movie or anything exists independent from the society in which it was created so there's a there's a great great great series of videos on YouTube called everything as a remix by this guy Kirby Ferguson I think is his last name have you seen it I haven't no it's a business it's really worth watching yeah and he just he goes through a couple of fields he does music and he does movies and something else it's a three part series and he shows for example he takes Star Wars as an example and shows how those famous like opening crawls that go at an angle the opening introduction which is so iconic Lee Star Wars it was not first done in Star Wars it was done in these other space movies from earlier times and he just chose how everything that you can you can find is built on stuff that came before it and in fairs of George Lucas who has taken a beating from you when he made the Star Wars movies and the Indiana Jones movies he was always very open about how much they drew upon oh yeah those serials and things like that yeah yeah this is something that's that I think is is really interesting is that people in the field are totally aware of this but directors definitely mention this where you can find tons of interviews where people are saying they're recreating scenes shot-for-shot from old movies right you're building on on the past and I almost take a pride in it now you like it sir yeah yeah and so to me there's a there's a similar kind of almost like a societal debt the same way with patents right you couldn't just have made Star Wars all on your own right or you know people who write books like the the world of literature depends on what has come before it doesn't just exist in isolation so it's almost like a text is it almost like you know the the price you pay from society enriching you enough to create Harry Potter is that one day they get Harry Potter back why I really don't like the freezing of attacks but it's lightly emotive I'll give you that yeah no but see that's that's why you're good at asking questions right um I do not I do not like that that phrasing because I will try to argue against it right here's the thing that I think is easy to forget is that copyright is a is a constructed thing right we don't have to live in a world where copyright exists it is copyright is a temporary monopoly over the distribution of a of a creative work enforced by the government wherever you happen to live yeah all right so it is a thing that is legally created and I think once you start talking about incentives on a governmental level you have to start thinking about what are they for I think without a doubt more artistic works are created because copyright exists ROM which might not be the impression that everybody gets from my videos based on the comments definitely definitely not that brightly run slightly against the the feeling of that video right and so people watch that video and they think that I am a I'm a copyright abolitionist is yes the usual term but I want to get rid of all copyrights and that is that is actually not my position at all right I think that if there if there were no copyrights there would still be artistic works created right people would still paint and write books and things like this but I don't think that there would be as many large-scale expensive projects brought to bear like a Star Wars right which I love Star Wars and I'm glad Star Wars exists and I'm pretty sure that nobody no no studio would have invested the amount of money to root to make something like that if there wasn't any kind of copyright protection even back in 1977 when the technology of distribution was horrific compared to how it is today it still wouldn't have made financial sense to make it if theaters could have just you know taken reels from each other and displayed it everywhere so I am Pro copyrights the problem that I have is with the functionally infinite position that copyright has now that basically copyright lasts forever that every time it's come up where something might start entering the public domain copyright has been extended another 10 20 years you know whatever it is depending on the particular law so that that is the problem that I have with it as I think we should have a limited copyright but I would definitely not be in favor of removing copyright entirely I think that that would have a detrimental effect do you have a number in mind here or you just saw vaguely saying that the balance of power is inadequate maybe what I'm saying yeah when can I take your UK video and upload it to my own channel right right right um I don't I don't I'm not necessarily interested in arguing where the boundaries should be yeah because I feel like any numbers that I would come up with would be just semi arbitrary right I'll see ya I don't have any idea what what the optimal number would be and I also think it's a weird situation because the optimal number for someone like myself who depends on copyright for a living on YouTube might be very different from a multi-million dollar multi-year film project like to get off of Star Wars like the Lord of the Rings right God knows how much those movies cost to make and you know if you ask the studio executives it may turn out that they're actually counting on a ten-year return on their money for considering a project like that I don't know I so I guess my intuitive feeling is that anything less than five years I would feel like oh that that seems very small and anything more than a hundred years would feel like gosh that's a long time that's crazy right right but between between those two boundaries like I'm I'm much more interested in just copyright being limited than I am in exactly where those boundaries are if the United States tomorrow said we're just setting copyright at a hundred years I would consider that a huge victory I would think that would be great if they if there was an actual cutoff point for when things entered the public domain what inspired you to make that copyright video you did make like was it was a frustration you were having trying to source material for your own videos was it were you wanting to write your own Star Wars comic or what what what fired you up about it fudge about didn't it yeah we it was a it was the secret Star Wars fan fiction that I wanted to write right no no that was that was not the reason um I had to look back at the exact timeline but that was around the point when I was beginning to take making videos more seriously and so I was running into copyright problems more often um in the sense of limitations of things that just can't be used sometimes that were just seemingly absurdly old stuff that still couldn't be used a recently so some image you might want to use in a video or something like that yeah the images is something that I come across the most often wear it you know even trying to track down the person who took this image would be a daunting task but since I like to play it relatively safe you know I'll find some image from you know 1936 you know and you can't use that even though the photographer is almost certainly not around anymore because that still falls under you know the copyright length in the United States so I think that that can be partly a partly a frustration are you ever a victim like we're sort of talking about you know these big corporations they think these big bad is like you create content and presumably it gets appropriated sometimes inappropriately I do you find yourself ever being a protected by this oh yeah all the time I mean in in my own in my own work I am I am like the big baddie in the scenario much much more than I am the victim right so I I am really cautious about using anything under fair use rules um I got me on fair use got me in a minute and I might ask you in a minute on that yeah I am I am let's just say I am I am NOT a lawyer I am NOT giving legal advice but I I rely on the fair use doctrine as little as humanly possible the risks of being on the end of some kind of copyright problem are are large right but so on the flip side though I and I was just doing this today right so this happened today and this happens very often which is someone you it's easiest what happens on YouTube but someone somewhere uploads my video to their own channel yeah alright the end that happens fairly often and very often they upload it with ads turned on as well right so now the video that I have made is on someone else's channel and they're running ads on top of it to try and make money your creation yeah I am yes let's let's just say yes I'm not even entirely sure that that's always the explicit goal but that if that is what is happening anyway people reupload the video go ahead um and one of the things that that frustrates me to no end is ice this phrase that I see all the time on the Internet which i think is really interesting and it is copyright not intended you know and so some someone will upload the video and then below in the description they will say copyright not intended no this video I didn't make it it's by CGP grey yeah and maybe if you know it's a good day there's a link to my actual channel but very very rarely there yet all right it's especially hilarious if I find like a full feature-length film uploaded somewhere yeah so it's like I'm browsing on YouTube and I'll see like oh Lord of the Rings Return of the King uploaded by jock dude 76 right and in the description it says no copyright intended you know this this was made by Universal Pictures or whatever if I don't code this podcast copyright no intended I'm gonna be very disappointed in you okay I think I think that will be the title um and I I think this is very interesting because I'm sure I'm going to take these people at their word and that people think that copyright is a kind of attribution system right oh yeah yeah like so I'm not taking the glory for me right but I'm not taking the glory for making Return of the King I just want to be clear I didn't make this laughing and uh blankies judge 877 price per minute there I thought you were awesome yeah um like that's amazing why don't you make more oh yeah and yeah so I think that that's how people think of of copyright you know whereas from from my perspective and of course from studio perspectives the power of copyright is really the control over distribution yes right that is really what it is and so this is where like I was saying before that monopoly power from the government comes from I am able to limit the distribution of my videos to YouTube and I do that because YouTube has the best kind of agreement with advertising and so that is how I'm able to make money yeah that's how I make my living and that's that's where the power of copyright comes from so what do you do when you have a copyright not intended do you you know do you send in the hounds yeah I mean the thing is I do I do flag it right I will flag those for copyright you know and and and it's it's such a it's a complicated issue because I used to try to much more than I do now I still do sometimes but I used to try to contact people and and give them the benefit of the doubt and say you know hey I'm not sure if you're aware but I you know I would like you to take down the video but it's it's reached a point where that is just not practically possible trying to keep track of who have I contacted how long has it been since I've heard from them yeah and so this is where I do feel kind of like a jerk especially when it's obvious that it's on unlike not a scammy channel right it's on just some some persons channel I feel kinda bad about some some high school kid or someone who you know is a fan or something yeah I do feel kind of bad about that but the problem is that this the reason I do take those things down is because they do represent a kind of threat to my ability to make a living and it's that yeah I have had videos of mine that are not on my channel that do go viral yeah right and that is just awful so I've had I've had videos of mine that were uploaded to other places that literally ended up getting hundreds of thousands of views on another location that's why at this point if I come across it like I will flag those things you know especially if it's clearly a commercial operation but I just I do I do feel kind of like a jerk doing that even though like that is the purpose of copyright is to limit the distribution so that content creators can earn a living at this difficult situation especially for people who make sort of the cover kind of educational content that let people at you in you and me mate because it's people will say well you should just be glad that a hundred thousand people have saved the video you're all about spreading the knowledge and the love and the emotion but you know you've got a you've got to eat and pay the rent and and those things and I think people people forget that and you know it's it's hard because like you say you end up looking like bit of a jerk but I don't know if I think people realize that what do you what do you do under that circumstance if you if that comes up with you well I sort of sometimes will flare get order to be honest though the procedure that YouTube put you through to complain about someone reuploading your video unless you know something I don't know is actually quite laborious and I don't always really fancy filling out all the forms and I do know something you don't know no okay is it something that something we should discuss later is this too much minutiae for the for the average listener but maybe I'll ask you about that later no I can just I can say very quickly I use a program called text expander which allows you to fill out forms like that automatically every time so I have it all plugged in so I just have to hit a keyboard command and it basically fills out the whole form for me automatically you are like the most efficient man in the universe well when you start when you start having to do a lot of these things you find a way to do it faster then we should do that as a podcast one day Grey's efficiencies because you've told me about other ones in the past that you do that I completely love so we must make a note of that but anyway I imagine that will either be the most awesome or the most boring episode ever but yeah we'll see we'll see all right we'll get to that that's a so you see you generally flag it i i will flag it sometimes but sometimes i mean i I mean I've uploaded nearly 2,000 video see youtube across my channels and it is it does get to the point where it's difficult but I will I will do it you know sometimes someone will email me and say are you aware they've done this and I'll do it but I do have issues with fair use as well because the other thing that people seem to be quite keen on these days along with copyright not intended is to say I'm using this under fair use ah yeah as though those words themselves are just the magic incantation that makes it fair use yeah exactly and also you know a word like fair means it must be fair right I think I think that is something people are really exploiting in an unfair way and it's and again I don't think you know I think fair use has become the new way of saying well I couldn't possibly have made this myself or I couldn't have shot this myself or obtained this myself and therefore once I reach the point where I can't do it myself it is fair for me to take it from someone else yeah and I don't think that's what fair use means or the other thing I think people started doing is because you know some of us are in a position where we've managed to create a piece of footage or something that is nice or exceptional people think gee I'd love to use that in one of my videos that would that would help make me successful I will build my video around that and then call the right fair use you know this is obviously the case for you know people like Destin and and myself to an extent when we when you start using high-speed cameras oh yeah yeah some of some of the stuff that you guys have made I mean that it that's some serious equipment to get those shots yeah they don't just they don't just happen yeah and but then someone will just take this and say well I'm using this under fair use when clear they're just using it because you know they think it's in their interest to have something exceptional in their video and you know this is I think people are being really naughty with fair use these days and you know I'm not a lawyer either and I certainly don't want to get into an argument with the sort of people who hide behind fair use because they tend to be quite difficult people from my experience but but I do think this fair use thing spic is being a bit silly you know I mean I have used things under fair use and I think there's a way to do it and a way not to do it and some people are I doubt in the way not to do it yeah I mean I'm I just I just pulled up the sort of the guidelines for fair use the United States you know and there's there's a bunch of things again not a lawyer but the the the ones that I think are the most relevant here or is you know whether or not the person who's using your material is doing it commercially that's a that's an immediate count against it possibly being fair use right yeah are you running ads on your channel using somebody else's stuff well guess what you're gonna have a way harder time proving that that's fair use but the one that I think is really relevant is again this is for the US courts is whether or not the other person's use affects the market for the original material hmm and so I think that this example is yeah like what happens to me where sometimes I see organizations use a section of my video yeah right and maybe a couple you know seconds of my video would be totally fair use but if you take the core explanation part and play that I'd that's an argument for saying like you have just appropriated the reason people would watch the thing in the first place yeah or they're like with some of those slow-motion videos that are amazing right the bitty the video that you made is built around that slow-motion part and so if somebody else uses that that sounds a whole lot like it doesn't matter if it's only a two second clip if it's the heart of what the original thing was that strongly counts against it possibly being fair use yeah so I you know I try to when I use stuff I try really hard to keep those guidelines in mind and it's like in that copyright video I have a a single note you know the opening note from Star Wars yeah and I look through the guidelines and it's like okay I am using it for commercial which counts against me but there is there is no there is no Court in the United States he was ever going to argue that somebody watched my copyright video and didn't feel the need to watch Star Wars because the opening note was in it yeah right I have not replaced or stolen the value from Star Wars by using that opening note but even still like i-i've I thought even very long and hard about even doing that but yeah it's ultimately with the fair use stuff what makes it so hard is that there there isn't a solid guideline that you can use like the the ultimate arbiters is a court a court of law and that's that's just uncomfortable for everybody yeah and and oh yeah and you know and who wants to get lawyers involved I mean yeah it's pretty easy stealing stuff from YouTube isn't it because you know we haven't got much money we don't we can't be employing lawyers I don't often see them stealing like you know Game seven of the World Series and putting that up on YouTube is fair use right I know they're going to get it in the neck but they grow they'll pinch it from people who they know won't take them on yeah I will straighten yeah it hit his face just frustrating yeah I was just going to say very quickly that the the worst I will not name specific names for various reasons but the worst worst I have found at stealing my stuff are newspapers by far so the online editions of newspapers yeah are that are the the most shameless takers of YouTube contents like I cannot believe how shameless they are available I've got a nice little set of tricks they used to like every time yeah like the whole I love one of my favorites is they'll take the video like put it into their own player so they can commercially exploit it put up on their newspaper and you know and you know within that 24 hours that you contact them and say what the heck are you doing mm-hmm you know at the very least could you embed the YouTube my YouTube video so that at least that you know if you want to showcase the video you don't need to put on your play and they'll be like ah sorry sorry it was a mixup they always say as a mixer it's a mix of every time every time it I've got like it's happened dozens of times yeah it's always a mix-up we meant to put the embed embedded Udrih video in we'll replace it now so they take out their version in the player and replace it with your Youtube version but of course by then it's no longer on the front page of the of the website and all the impressions have happened and all the traffic has gone away yeah that's exactly they know the first 24 hours are the ones that are the valuable ones and so they'll just delay and delay until they can see the traffic has dropped off and you know then then the place it if you're lucky but yeah news newspapers are by far the worst and my guess here's my guess about this is that I think they're under just tremendous financial constraints because of changing technology yeah but they also don't have the same kind of oversight that a TV news organization would have right I think a TV news organization would have enough infrastructure to say listen guys let's not risk this you know we're in the video industry world this is a bigger problem and so I think newspapers are at this interesting crux where they're just they're under a lot of pressure and maybe don't have the same kind of oversight as video news would but anyway that's just I always like to complain about the news if I possibly can and newspapers you know it's not exactly they're not earning my love with a baby tree another youtuber who's a who we both know who I won't name but he's had that happen to him a lot as well and he um he's starting to get a bit more hard about it and then writing to the papers and saying yeah okay buddy thanks replacing it but that's not good enough you need to pay me a fee for what you just did and he's had some success with that and they've started to say okay so I think they kind of maybe they're realizing but it's scandalous and the lies and anyway I'm not going to say on I mean I used to work for a tabloid newspaper you know I'm I'm not going to sit here in whinge about newspapers no we're well eventually we'll talk we will yeah we were led to it and then we can let it all pour out it all pour out there very naughty very naughty there very naughty about her and they're very sparing in their giving of you know links or credit as well you know I had one I had one video that was oh I could say what video was it was the one where I went into the the Bank of England gold bullion vault and obviously that was that's not an thing you see every day so a few people wanted to use and I had one newspaper contact me and say can we use the video in an article and we want to put it in our own player and I said well no can you please use the YouTube player so that if people watch surely no they're going to watch the same video anyway and they were like okay we'll think about it and because I forget he specifically told them they couldn't put it in their player and it was in a conversation so they couldn't back on that and instead I think they must have taken 1015 screengrabs mm-hmm and just made a huge picture gallery of all the pictures from it's like yeah goodness sake so naughty anyway okay so what while we've been complaining about all of these these things okay we are a couple of grumpy admin right now we might never be stuff right now we are if anyone is still survived listening through the complaints of youtubers right first world youtuber problems thank you happy right issues yeah I would just go I would go back to one of the little notes that I wanted to make is the advantage of allowing copyright to expire and you know you talked about why should people be able to build on on george lucas's stuff yeah you know as an example and I think what some examples of this which is very interesting it like you can retell stories in much more interesting ways and I have I have two examples that I really like okay the first one this might be slightly embarrassing but we could admit it anyway is the I think is 1996 movie called clueless starring Silverstone yeah not that film um which is one of those movies when I first saw it I know I thought this was just the dumbest movie ever made and for anyone who hasn't seen it I highly recommend that you do watch it but it is on the surface it is basically a movie about the dumbest California Valley Girls you've ever seen yeah and and the exploits of their life however later on I came to find out that the that clueless is a remake of Jane Austen's Emma right that it it is the exact plot of Emma just moved to this different setting and once you know that I think the movie clueless becomes kind of brilliant um I think it's they're so sloppy though isn't it that's like oh I wasn't willing to admit I liked this film until I realized was based on something old well Amos yes III will totally admit that that that does sound terrible cuz I've often heard it said anyway the sort of jane austen stuff was considered reasonably not that highbrow at its time as well so yeah I've heard that kind of stuff um Mercy's fallacies yeah I don't I don't know either but um I've heard similar things and of course you know thing things gain respect through time you know just because it's old it's it's sort of awesome um don't get me started on on Shakespeare um but so I but so this is an example where I think clueless is the kind of movie that could be made right because the copyright on Emma had expired yeah and you can do interesting things with that story by moving it to a different setting and I think that there there is cultural value in being able to do new things with iconic characters right that I think at a certain point very successful films and very successful books they become part of the culture and and that is also why I'm kind of very much for some eventual limit on copyright that so them so that more can be done with these things in the future I'm a second example that I have which I only recently discovered and then I had one of these binge watching sessions is the BBC's remake of Sherlock the Sherlock Holmes series how good if I have you said you seen them oh they they're awesome so I think actually as we are talking the season 3 finale is airing on the BBC right now which I'm looking forward to yeah but I basically only discovered these about a month ago yeah and I watched the first one and as and I was like I I can't stop watching how right I have to keep watching this and I and I've just binge watched the first two and a half seasons available at that point and it was great and I think that this is another example of like Sherlock Holmes is so much more than the original author ever intended him to be right he's like he is such a part art of the like the Anglosphere culture at this point that I think that it is fair enough to say that that his character belongs in the public domain and other people can do things with this kind of story I mean Sherlock might not be the best example because I know there's lots of clever nuanced - nods to the Conan Doyle books but is this not just a case again I know sure that's not the best example but I'll run with it is this not a case of someone you know some clever story tellers and good actors and good directors making a brilliant piece of film something that's compelling but then just appropriating a famous name and brand that has worked its way into culture to help sell their product I mean you could you could make a bunch of rip-roaring detective films just like that about you know a guy and his assistant hmm that would that would on the surface be just as good but less people would watch it because it hasn't got an iconic name like Sherlock and things like that so in some ways I see what you're saying they've built your building on things and you're building on things in culture in other ways I think they're just being there being a bit lazy they're making something good but then they're appealing to our culture which doesn't like anything and this is already famous and stamping that honour in much the same way when you make a science documentary on the BBC no matter what the topic is you're like well we can't do this unless it's someone who's already famous presenting it there is stamping Fame on things because our culture is so obsessed with Fame I I think I think that's getting off into a different argument slightly about about Fame right yeah and also I think the you know there's some great there's some great charts about the number of sequels right that have been made in movies recently and and this similar kind of idea right that people want to buy what they already know yeah and my my opinion on the bad sequels thing is like I don't care how many bad sequels are made I only care about the good sequels because I don't have to watch the bad sequels yeah and my opinion is that yeah there's a bunch of stuff that's made that people watch it because it's Sherlock Holmes and now I have another great Sherlock Holmes example which is the Robert Downey jr. Sherlock Holmes movie right which I watched only because it was a Sherlock Holmes movie yeah I started to watch it for that reason I had to stop after about yeah minutes but yeah there's no reason I would have watched that movie if it was not a Sherlock Holmes movie as like I found it moderately enjoyable but they would have not gotten my money if it was not for a Sherlock Holmes name on it right because I've read the Sherlock Holmes stories like and I'm interested in this and so I wanted to see that interpretation which like yeah it's okay but you know I didn't watch the second one um but to me the the BBC Sherlock is is like the shining example of what you can do and I think that those those stories are great they're made better because it's Sherlock Holmes because you can see like what changes have they made to these characters or what have they kept the same you know what's different now that they've moved it into a modern setting that's a fair point I think it gains value from contrasts with the originals that it wouldn't have if it was a standalone piece yeah and so that's why I think it's it's great that people can do this and although it will it would never happen I would love it if there was um you know if I say the copyright limit was 60 years that when I was older I could watch somebody redo the original Star Wars movies III think that like there is room for them to be redone in an awesome way but with current copyright lasting forever that will never happen you know and and that that will never be able to occur yeah so we just have to put up with how George Lucas himself matey's new films yeah and again that this is why George Lucas is always like the easy one to pick on right because he made new Star Wars movies and they have been generally they have been generally panned and here's the thing right like generally pay that was a very yeah diplomatic stayin job but but here's the things like I I don't hold any grudges against him and and here's one of the other things with going back to like what allows us to make our living the control over the distribution this Star Wars comes up for a very particular reason copyright debates and it's it's partly because the power of the control of the distribution is what has allowed George Lucas to basically prevent showings of the original Star Wars movies as they first aired yes right and this this again is like could not be a more first world kind of problem yeah but if you are a person who kind of cares about the cultural history of the world you know if you're looking at movies for example Star Wars is undoubtedly a moment in that cultural history yeah but you cannot get the original versions of those Star Wars very naughty it's very naughty of amuse enough yeah and I think that's where a lot of the resentment comes from is people saying you know nobody begrudges making those new movies is like oh god you know or I think nobody writes a grudge a little bit I I would say I hold no I hold no ill will in my heart for the making of those movies like he this is the same thing they just they in my mind just fall into the category of the bad things I don't have to watch the bad things I saw them once I will never see them again but what I know I've been watching but it but if you see them once I'm sorry I know this isn't about Star Wars I've been watching the originals again lately because they're on telly and I love them so I watched them and things that happen in the originals now kept giving me flashbacks to those subsequent prequels and it was tainting the originals for me because I was thinking uh they just they just don't exist um okay anyway go on yeah so I was just also not related but one of my podcasting heroes a guy called John siracusa who I adore he is a huge Star Wars nerd and he has kids and what I love is that he has simply deny the existence of the original three movies within his household so how fun were they well he knows that they will but his strategy apparently is to have his kids exist long enough without ever having seen them that they will be able to distinguish between the good originals and the terrible prequels because I ran across this in my students enough work where kids who saw them in similar time frames we're not necessarily able to distinguish ones from the other which is horrifying to me yeah um but anyway we're getting derailed so what I would say is is like that that is one of the problems is that this power of the control of distribution in this one particular case has has led to some cultural problems yeah and and that's that is that is the reason why I picked George Lucas as an example in my video is because this is such a fundamental problem it's like if there were limited copyright there would be hope of the original format of the movies entering back into into the world and this is one of the reasons why Congress has extended copyright protections is because their argument is it gives the creators encouragement to preserve their original works for longer and there's some interesting data that says that's not actually the case that what happens is the original works just get lost over longer periods of time but in this particular case with George Lucas it's also very obvious that the original work gets distorted and you know it is increasingly hard to try and find as it aired in 1977 versions of the original movie I personally have never seen this thing but I have heard that on the Internet you might be able to find somewhere a thing called Star Wars despecialized edition x' where superfans have taken the current Star Wars movies and tried to make them as close as possible to the original cinematic releases as they happen again I would not know of where to acquire such a thing because it would obviously be copyright infringement um and it would be frowned upon that as creators esos as I created myself I could never condone such an action for such an incredibly important historical thing that I personally love you know so I will I will take the high road here but I'm just like throwing it out there that there exists this thing called the Star Wars despecialized edition I'll tell you something else yeah I mean obviously I'm imagining you've seen people versus George Lucas the film I actually have not well I highly highly recommend that it's on my list as I'm not so during what we just discussed I can't recommend that highly enough but also for people out there who are probably like grey and I and spend way too much time reading Wikipedia articles reading it the story of the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassinated it comes to you know copyright and ownership of material and things like that's a really interesting story well I'm sure we won't go into it now but if if I after this podcast people wouldn't go and read something that's a good read as well yeah let me ask you a final question because obviously we've been going for over here if you were going to make another copyright video then or remake your original one of course you would preserve the original for the archives but I don't know I worry differently is there anything you'd say differently or do you do you think you pretty much have the same position I I was thinking about that earlier today and I don't know that the argument that I want to be made can be made within the context of the of the kinds of videos I put on YouTube a coherent argument for limited copyright is hard to make because I I think that it is or it is a real gray area of law it requires a large amount of time and it's also a topic that there is no clearly correct answer and as a as a little example I just want to throw into to put that point there's a thought process that I learned what I was doing physics back at University and it's this question of in certain situations take the problem to infinity and take the problem to zero and so say you know what would a world be like if we had infinite copyright if Congress just said oh the heck with these extensions we're just literally going to make it forever yeah you know or we have a world where Congress says you know no copyright at all zero and when I think of those two worlds if I had to pick I pick the world with the infinite copyright right I think there would be there would be problems with that but I think that is preferable to a world with zero copyright protection and so that that that is kind of one of the ways that gets me to this I am for limited copyright protection I am NOT for no copyright protection but I'll put a link in the blog post for this episode but there is a very very interesting TED talk by a woman talking about the fashion industry and how in the United States at least fashion designs do not have copyright protection at all so the fashion industry is a world where there is ZERO copyright hmm and she makes a very convincing argument that this is nothing but beneficial to the fashion world because it encourages tremendous turnover of styles right that if one company comes out with a particular style of dress there's a delay in time before other companies can come out with it too simply because of ramping up manufacturing capabilities yeah but it means that everybody has to keep generating new things much more quickly and this is this leads into my like well it's hard to have a definitive opinion because I am convinced that the fashion industry is better off without having copyright protection and I think there's some very specific reasons why that's the case but I don't I don't think that same argument applies in other creative fields so it's a it's a very complicated very complicated issue I think if nothing else we have shown that it is complicated yes as always it has been a pleasure all right I will lik start yeah catch you next time all right we got to forget a few things to discuss for next time we're ready I'm making some notes let's go go do you Mac catch you look good all right take care man bye