Speaker 1: A d m c A claim against a startup forced
Speaker 1: the company to remove more than twenty years of interviews
Speaker 1: featuring Donald Trump from their website. What's the story behind
Speaker 1: the controversy? I'm Jonathan Strickland and this was tech stuff
Speaker 1: Daily between. Donald Trump participated in nearly fifteen hours of
Speaker 1: interviews during his various appearances on the Howard Stern Show.
Speaker 1: A website called fact based that's f A C T
Speaker 1: B A dot s E, which is the property of
Speaker 1: a startup company called fact Squared, created an audio archive
Speaker 1: of those appearances and made it available online. The website
Speaker 1: wasn't hosting the audio itself, instead, it was linking from
Speaker 1: sources like YouTube and SoundCloud. The company had begun to
Speaker 1: upload the audio files to a company owned server, but
Speaker 1: was interrupted in the process. On September two, thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: Sirius XM Radio sent a cease and assist letter to
Speaker 1: fact squared and filed a takedown notice under the d
Speaker 1: m c A. YouTube and SoundCloud pulled the audio from
Speaker 1: their services, leaving the archive filled with dead links. D
Speaker 1: m c A stands for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Speaker 1: Under US law, the owner of intellectual property can file
Speaker 1: a claim against others who are using that property without authorization.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you own some form of copyrighted work,
Speaker 1: such as a film or a song, and someone else
Speaker 1: makes use of it without clearing it with you first,
Speaker 1: you can file a claim against that person. Many platforms
Speaker 1: like YouTube will remove or de activate unauthorized copies upon
Speaker 1: receiving such a notice. In the case of someone either
Speaker 1: trying to distribute a work belonging to someone else or
Speaker 1: passing off the media as their own work, it seems
Speaker 1: like a pretty clear cut case. If the material doesn't
Speaker 1: be long to you, you don't have the right to
Speaker 1: do that. But there are other cases that fall into
Speaker 1: more fuzzy categories. Sometimes you may want to make use
Speaker 1: of an existing work in order to comment upon it.
Speaker 1: For example, you may wish to include a film clip
Speaker 1: from a movie you're critiquing, or maybe use it as
Speaker 1: an example to illustrate a particular point. Or you might
Speaker 1: want to include samples when you're talking about the works
Speaker 1: as a matter of news reporting. These cases fall under
Speaker 1: a category called fair use. Fair use allows people to
Speaker 1: include portions of other people's work. You don't have to
Speaker 1: hold the copyright to a novel in order to include
Speaker 1: a passage of that novel for the purposes of commentary.
Speaker 1: Fact Squared could attempt to make the argument that their
Speaker 1: archive of interviews falls under the umbrella of fair use.
Speaker 1: If a court agrees, then fact base can go back
Speaker 1: to hosting the archive. Therein lies the rub. Whether a
Speaker 1: particular instance falls under fair use isn't something you figure
Speaker 1: out ahead of time. It only shakes out in a courtroom.
Speaker 1: The defendants responsibility is to demonstrate that their use of
Speaker 1: the intellectual property meets the criteria for fair use. In
Speaker 1: the United States, those criteria include four factors. The purpose
Speaker 1: and character of how you use that original material is
Speaker 1: the first component. Are you using it to make some
Speaker 1: sort of point? Are you critiquing the original work? Are
Speaker 1: you relying upon it for analysis or illustration? Are you
Speaker 1: parodying the original work and expanding upon its original expression
Speaker 1: and meaning. The second factor is the nature of the
Speaker 1: copyrighted work itself. In general, courts are more lenient about
Speaker 1: fair use if you're taking from nonfiction sources like biographies
Speaker 1: or histories. Then if you lift large portions from works
Speaker 1: of fictions such as novels or movies. The third factor
Speaker 1: is how much of the original material you're actually using.
Speaker 1: Referencing a line or a paragraph from a book is
Speaker 1: different from including six chapters of material. Generally speaking, the
Speaker 1: more of the original work you use, the more challenging
Speaker 1: it is to argue fair use. There is, however, no
Speaker 1: magical minimum amount you can stick to and avoid the
Speaker 1: problem altogether. So if you've heard that you can include
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds or less of any song and that's totally fine,
Speaker 1: that's not actually based on law. The fourth factor is
Speaker 1: the effect of your use of the material upon the
Speaker 1: potential market for that original work. That means, if your
Speaker 1: publication could affect the sales of the original work in
Speaker 1: a negative way, it'll be harder to argue that this
Speaker 1: is a case of fair use. Even if you are
Speaker 1: certain your use of someone else's copyrighted material meets the
Speaker 1: criteria for fair use, the issue won't come up unless
Speaker 1: there's a claim against your example. At that point, the
Speaker 1: issue might move into a court where you could argue
Speaker 1: that your use meets the requirements laid out by the
Speaker 1: fair use definition. It would still be up to the
Speaker 1: court to decide if in fact that was the case.
Speaker 1: Getting back to the Donald Trump interviews, fact Squared might
Speaker 1: have a difficult time defending their archive live. They were
Speaker 1: posting the interviews largely without commentary or analysis, meaning their
Speaker 1: use was not in any way transformative. While they didn't
Speaker 1: include entire episodes of the Howard Sterns Show, they did
Speaker 1: include most of the interviews in their entirety. It may
Speaker 1: turn out that all parties will find an amicable approach
Speaker 1: to archiving the material, which one could argue does have
Speaker 1: historical value. At the very least, it provides a great
Speaker 1: example of how complicated intellectual property and fair use really are.
Speaker 1: To learn more about technology and how it relates to copyright,
Speaker 1: as well as every other tech topic imaginable, check out
Speaker 1: the Tech Stuff podcast. The show publishes twice a week
Speaker 1: and is a long form deep dive on all things tech.
Speaker 1: That's all for me for now, See you next time.