REAL LIFE NEWS: HOW COPYRIGHT BOTS RUINED THE HUGO AWARD BROADCAST
by Hazed
Speaking of copyright issues...
Automated copyright bots are guilty of wrecking the live streaming of the Hugo awards at last week’s science fiction convention in Chicago.
The Hugos are the prestigious awards for sci fi books, films and TV. They are voted on by fans and given out every year at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon). Winning a Hugo is a big deal. Those who couldn’t attend Worldcon this year were able to watch the award ceremony live via video streaming service Ustream, enjoying the announcements of winners and the often witty acceptance speeches.
At least they were until the feed suddenly got cut off. By robots.
No, this wasn’t the robot uprising taking over and preparing to enslave humankind. It was enforcement bots that patrol the net searching out content that infringes somebody’s copyright.
So Neil Gaiman was giving his acceptance speech for the award he had just won for his Doctor Who script, “The Doctor’s Wife”, when suddenly he was replaced by a notice: “Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement.”
The reason this happened was that the Hugo Awards ceremony had shown clips from the winning Doctor Who episode, as well as clips of other shows that had been nominated. These clips had been provided by the studios (who owned the copyright) and the awards therefore had permission to broadcast them. Even if that wasn’t the case, showing short clips of programmes during an awards ceremony falls under fair use so there should have been no problem.
But the robots didn’t know that. Ustream’s digital restriction management bots were programmed to kill any broadcast that contained copyrighted material. No exceptions. No leeway. No judgement calls. No way to get the ruling overturned (at least, not in time to resume the broadcast).
Welcome to the future.
Source: http://io9.com/5940036/how-copyright-enforcement-robots-killed-the-hugo-awards
A more detailed look at the issue: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/streaming-videos-robotic-overlords-algorithmic-copyright-cops/all/
Stop Press: The Hugos will be broadcast again tonight! Let’s hope this time the robots have been turned off.
