guinness – Techdirt (original) (raw)

from the ready-fire-aim dept

This is and will keep happening. As complicated a landscape as copyright law is, the idea of automating the policing of copyright infringement without creating all kinds of collateral damage is simply absurd. Our pages are absolutely brimming with example after example of all kinds of entities issuing copyright claims and strikes on all kinds of platforms in error, with the blame always being laid at the feet of the copyright “bots” that screwed up. Apparently the wider world is okay with this kind of collateral damage clown show, since it sure doesn’t appear to be changing.

The most recent example comes to us courtesy of the Guinness World Records company, which hit at least two YouTubers with copyright strikes for having the phrase “World Record” on their videos. The first to note this publicly was a YouTuber going by “Ducky.”

Ducky wasn’t alone.

Ducky wasn’t the only big-name YouTuber to get hit with a copyright strike from the company, either. LazarBeam, one of the most iconic Fortnite content creators on the internet, revealed just a couple of days after Ducky’s tweet that he had also been hit with a copyright strike.

“Guinness world records making the psychopathic decision to strike YouTube videos that mention ‘world record’ or use their logo in thumbnails. Video was 5 years old with 26 million views,” he said.

Now, here’s where I’ll give the Guinness folks some props. The company responded to Ducky fairly quickly and admitted that the strike was issued in error due to, you guessed it, an automated copyright bot. Ducky got the strike removed fairly quickly as well. There hasn’t been public acknowledgement that the company reached out in the same fashion to LazarBeam as well, but I imagine it has or is willing to, given how it handled Ducky.

But this simply isn’t good enough. It isn’t enough that these companies fix their mistakes shortly after the copyright gun goes off. First off, not every company is as responsive and honest about this stuff as the Guinness people. And even if they were, we have pages and pages of real world examples of these bots not working. And we’re doing nothing about it.

We would simply not put up with this kind of knock-on fallout in most other situations in our society. Why are we putting it up with it in the name of copyright?

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, fortnite, world record
Companies: guinness

from the automagic-mistake dept

Even a cursory review of just the headlines on our posts about YouTube’s ContentID will demonstrate a theme. That theme mostly centers around how the automagic copyright detection system that YouTube put in place is mostly useful for creating collateral damage on non-infringing material, often times at the expense of the rightsholders themselves. Whenever this happens, there are usually apologies issued, blame cast on ContentID for the mistake, and then everything continues on with no changes made. Which is absurd. These situations identify a flaw in the ContentID system, or the use of an automated system of any kind, and yet we never do anything about it.

Which is why this sort of thing keeps happening. The most recent example of this concerns tons of Super Mario Bros. speedruns being issued copyright notices because the YouTube channel for the Guinness Book of World Records uploaded a record-holding speedrun itself. From there, ContentID did its thing.

About nine months ago, Guinness put together a video profile on Super Mario Bros speedrunner Kosmic including footage from his record-breaking warpless run. Now, Kosmic’s own video of the record and tons of other SMB speedrunners have had copyright claims made on their similar videos.

Guinness have now released those claims saying “sorry for causing concern, we know how distressing it can be to get these notifications,” signed by Dan. Ta, Dan.

The Guinness people later tweeted out the explanation that ContentID was to blame for sending out the automatic claims. And I believe them. Still, this is again highlighting a flaw within the ContentID system, in that, far too often, legitimate content either gets taken down or issued a copyright notice all because no human being actually has to look at anything before those go out. And, since there are plenty of ways a video could use similar content, or even a copy of some part of some content, without being infringing, the automatic system fails at distinguishing that and sends out the notice anyway.

This is how it always is with these automatic content policing systems. And yet here is another case where the apology is made, the apologizer blames ContentID, and on and on we go. Even when another speedrunner, Karl Jobst, did a video on how his speedrun received a copyright notice, that video received a notice as well.

Funnily enough, even Jobst’s video on the subject initially got slapped with a copyright claim. Thankfully it sounds like Guinness have cooled their trigger finger.

But it’s not funny. It’s just frustrating.

Filed Under: auto claims, contentid, copyright, kosmic, speedruns, super mario bros., takedowns, world records
Companies: guinness, youtube

DailyDirt: If You're Into Weird Beers…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are thousands of different beers in the world, so it would take a while to try all of them. And at some point in a hypothetical exhaustive test taste, you’ll run into the problem of how to define what a beer really is. If you’re not too picky, here are a few kinds of beer-like beverages that you might want to try.

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: alcohol, beer, beverages, corona, drinks, food, lemonade, reinheitsgebot
Companies: guinness, heineken, pat's backcountry beverages, starbucks

DailyDirt: Winners And Record Holders

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are plenty of world records that no one really cares about — but it’s still entertaining to see folks keeping track of some weird records and winning contests that are just a bit bizarre. Here are some real winners, depending on your point of view.

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: big macs, contests, illusions, rube goldberg
Companies: guinness, mcdonald's

How Does Guinness Figure Out The World's Most Prolific Blogger?

from the does-this-mean-I-have-a-record...-or-a-problem? dept

If you’ve ever read the Guinness Book of World Records, at some point, you’ve got to wonder how they go about verifying some of this stuff. I mean, how do they figure out who has the longest fingernails? I do remember the rather lengthy section of the (absolutely fantastic) book Road Fever, in which the author of the book, Tim Cahill, describes the process he and his driving partner had to go through to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest drive from the southernmost tip of South America to the top of North America. He makes it clear that the Guinness people take these things seriously, though I’d never put much thought into the specifics until recently.

You see, the other day, I saw Karl Bode mention on Twitter that the folks at the Guinness Book of World Records apparently awarded the record for the “most prolific professional blogger,” to a guy named Darren Murph who writes for Engadget. The award was apparently given out sometime last fall, though Bode just noticed it. The “record” was for 17,212 blog posts. Bode checked on his own work for BroadbandReports, and realized he had a few hundred more blog posts. I was pretty sure I’d done a bit more than that, so I checked. Turns out that I’ve written nearly 38,000 blog posts (it’ll be there within a week or two). In other words, it appears I’ve written more than twice the number of blog posts as the supposed world record holder.

My first thought: Neat — I beat the world record! My second thought: Perhaps I blog too much. And, finally, my third thought: just how do the Guinness folks go about fact checking these sorts of awards, anyway? On the whole, though, I’m somewhat amused. Of course, if they missed me, I’ve got to assume they missed a bunch of others as well, including (almost certainly) others who are more prolific than I am. So, can we do some crowdsourcing and see if we can help out the good folks at Guinness and figure out who else might be among the most prolific professional bloggers out there? Because, for something I had never even thought about a few days ago… suddenly, I’m curious.

Filed Under: blogging, records
Companies: guinness

What's The Guinness World Record For Morons In A Hurry Sending Bogus Takedowns?

from the just-wondering... dept

I think we’ve set a new world record for any particular story being submitted to us here at Techdirt. I’d actually ask the folks at the Guinness Book of World Records to verify that… but I don’t think they really want to have much to do with this story. You see, there’s a wonderful blog out there called the Fail Blog. If you don’t read it regularly, it’s like you’re not really online at all. It’s quite amusing. It usually involves pictures of random (hilarious) “failures” of some kind or another. Last week, it had a great one. It involved the website of the Guinness World Record book, where it had an entry on the “most individuals killed in a terrorist attack.” What was the failure? Well… it appears that the Guinness records’ web template includes a link on each record for “break this record.” Not quite the sort of thing you would think that GWR folks wanted to encourage when it comes to the most people killed in a terrorist attack.

So how does Guinness respond? Certainly not by fixing the screwed up template. And, apparently not by taking some time to think it over while drinking a tall glass of Guinness. Instead, it released the legal hounds on the Fail Blog and threatened the site with a totally bogus trademark infringement claim, saying that because the screenshot included the Guinness World Record logo, it was a trademark violation. Of course, that’s preposterous. Still, Fail Blog complied, took down the original, but posted Guinness’ letter, its own rather direct response, and a new version of the screenshot with the Guinness World Record logo pixelated. Nobody will ever figure it out now:

Oh, and it looks like the Guinness folks have finally taken down the original world record page…

Filed Under: blogs, screenshots, trademark, world records
Companies: guinness

Guy Sues Guinness For Naming Him The Most Litigious Person In The World

from the just-to-prove-the-point... dept

If you spend much time online reading about weird and wacky news, you’re probably already quite familiar with Jonathan Lee Riches, a guy who’s in prison for wire fraud, but whose real claim to fame is filing a ton of wacky pro se lawsuits. In fact, via Mathew Ingram, we find out that the Guinness Book of World Records has given JLR the world record for “most lawsuits filed,” which he celebrated by promptly filling a lawsuit against Guinness. He’s claiming that they’re going to print false info about the number of lawsuits he’s filed, though in the lawsuit itself, he seems quite proud of all the lawsuits he’s filed, stating:

“I’ve filed so many lawsuits with my pen and right hand that I got arthritis in my fingers, numbness in my wrists, crooked fingers… I flush out more lawsuits than a sewer.”

So you would think he’d be proud of getting the world record…

Filed Under: guinness book of world records, jonathan lee riches, most litigious
Companies: guinness