Sissy Panties & Pants video

[Betty]

I got tired of arguing the rights of a couple 300 year old classical songs performed by independent artists on the video. So I deleted the video, edited out the few songs still in dispute, & re-posted it. It's about 5 minutes shorter than the original now.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abWlhdQUfRk" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abWlhdQUfRk</a>

The songs were classical public domain recordings from the Library of Congress. They were performed & recorded by independent artists funded by taxpayer or university money to be intended as public domain material free for everybody.

But there are copyright scammers that literally copy public domain works to put on a CD or distribute for money as an mp3. Then these scammers claim copyrights to the public domain material just because they decided to copy & sell it, when they really have no rights to it. Basically anybody can copy public domain recordings onto a CD or sell mp3s of them at Amazon or other places, but that doesn't automatically give them rights to it. They are actually stealing the material from the public domain, & then claiming ownership or rights to it as a distributor or owner of the recording.

This would be like somebody copying the stories at our story page for their own site, or a book, registering themselves as the owner or publisher or author, then suing us for carrying the stories, or ordering us to remove them (which by the way, has happened a couple of times, & I had to get an attorney).

The battle against these false copyright claims is long & tedious. Even with proof on hand, many of them refuse to back off of their claims, putting my accounts, domains, sites, & job in jeopardy. I find most of the time it's Russian mobsters or other hoodlums that are copying public domain or other material, slapping their own or a fake name on them, then registering a copyright for them. Then everybody who uses that material has to pay them rights, or run ads & credits for their "publisher".

Then on the Temple slideshow, even Time Warner sent me a copyright notice claiming I used a soundtrack they own from a movie. Although the song may have been used in a movie, it was written almost 400 years ago. The recording I used was a performance of the song, performed & recorded locally at the University of Buffalo in the late 1980s. I actually had possession of some of the university concert reel tapes for a while, & we (with WBFO radio) were responsible for converting them to wav & mp3 formats in the late 1990s to preserve them for everyone.

These were always intended to be public domain recordings of the performances, funded by taxpayers & the university for anybody to have or copy for free. Volunteers like me & others copied them to wav & mp3s to preserve them from the deteriorating reels of tapes. The files were then distributed back to local libraries & universities in digital form for everybody to use or copy. We even uploaded copies to the wayback/archive site. Before digital formats, cassettes tapes of them were available at many local libraries & universities to borrow, while the master reel tapes were kept to make new copies.

But it took over a month for Time Warner to back off their claim of rights to the song. Thousands have performed & recorded old classical songs. Just because one records & distributes a performance of an old classical piece hundreds of years old, doesn't give them rights to every performance, recording, & copy of the song. They may own the recording used for the movie, but they don't own other recordings & performances of the very old song.

Anywho, I got 18 music copyright violations & copyright threats for the Panties Slideshow. I fought them all. With 2 remaining, who refused to back down, I decided to edit out the 2 remaining disputed songs by Bach & Mozart rather than fight it anymore or have these crooks continue to make money running their own ads over the video.

[Betty]

So within an hour of reposting the edited version of the video last night, I got over a dozen more copyright claims against the music. Most of which was from the same copyright scammers, & a couple more that I never heard of before. So I disputed the copyrights again. I just now noticed that all those copyright claims have been withdrawn.

So the video is finally in the free & clear.

There still is a couple other vids I posted on google under dispute where the claim still has not been withdrawn, but they haven't answered my dispute about the claim either. If they don't reply to dispute or withdraw their claim within a couple more weeks, by default google will rule their claims invalid, & delete the claims.

Interestingly on those videos where I got fed up with the same fake companies claiming they own everything under fake artist names & titles, & started calling them the Russian-mobster supported scammers that they are, are the ones who did not withdraw their claim, but did not reply to my dispute either. I guess they don't want to reply to someone speaking the truth that they are the ones stealing the music, but can't withdraw their claim to prove that I was right.

The claims where I politely indicated they were "mistaken" & submitted my source of the recordings, they withdrew their claims. But I started getting mad because hours or a day later they'd submit another list of copyright claims against other songs in the same video.

[Robyn Jodie]

Claiming a copyright you don't have is called "copyfraud" and is illegal, but since so many big companies do it, there are, basically, no penalties for doing it.  For instance, it turns out that "Happy Birthday" isn't copyrighted after all, but [is it Sony?] still collects royalties for it.  A couple of years ago someone decided to countersue, alleging copyfraud, but ultimately dropped the case. I don't know if they were paid off or ???

[Betty]

Probably just got tired of fighting it. They're relentless. It's the Russian mobster's & other internet crook's newest scam.

They take a Public Domain song or sounds, record it onto a CD or Mp3, then sell it at a site or something like Amazon, then claim rights to the song anywhere on the net, even if it's not the same performance. Then they "graciously" allow the song to be played on Youtube as long as they can run their ads or adsense ads on them to make money off of them. So the naive utube poster allows it, & the scammer makes lots of money running ads or adsense with the video under the rights that they own the song or sound. It only take 10 seconds of a song out of 3 hours of video for them to claim rights to it & run their ads with your video or content.

Some of these scammers even have the balls to copy copyrighted or private material & claim it as their own. A band I worked with came out with a couple 7" 45 rpm singles in the late 1970s. For kicks, the composer of the song, who was also one of the performers on the record, put it on utube with still photos of the old band last year. He was immediately slapped with a copyright claims against the song including a claim by Sony! These singles were given out freely wherever they played anywhere the N.E. USA & S.E. Canada. They are copyrighted by the composer, who posted the video. The song was free for anybody to use though. The rights were never sold out to any company. We owned our own small recording studio, & had an independent company cut & press copies of the 45s for us.

Somehow over the years, Sony got a hold of the song & lists the composer as some Russian sounding name with a band from the Ukraine. But the recording, was ours, but even for sale at Amazon under the Russian name. It took him almost a year of constant fighting them to get his proper rights to it back. Ironically he would have never known somebody stole his copyrighted material & was selling it at Amazon under the Sony music label if a claim wouldn't have been made against it when he posted it.

You'd think Sony would have noticed something odd about a band singing perfect USA English submitted to them from a Russian in the Ukraine. But even when it was brought to attention, they would fight or ignore him for a long time rather that agree that they made a mistake & release the song. So it was a Russian scammer.  But it's also Sony's greed, for not realizing or agreeing there's something wrong when it was very obvious, & give him back the rights to a song the was rightfully his. It makes me wonder how many other thousands or millions of sounds are illegally being copyrighted, & people just go along with it.

The Sissy Panties video was in the clear for a few hours. But I just noticed there's almost a dozen more new claims against it on the video today from strange named copyright holders. One Bach violin piece, Warner Bros. claim is actually "Brenda's Love Song" by Hulland Gervowicz (or something like that) in Czechoslovakia, recorded in 2013. I looked it up. It is the Bach piece, but not even the same performance or recording. The version I used was a Public Domain recording from the Library of Congress. The public domain version I used say's it was recorded in a church in a small town in Pennsylvania, in the late 1960s.

Apparently Bach is the worst. Posting anything Bach, or that sounds a little like Bach, even if you played & recorded it yourself will get you slapped with dozens of illegal copyright claims.

I just read an article where a guy posted a video of the birds outside his window with them chirping. He got slapped with dozens of copyright claims, because there are birds chirping on their copyrighted material. Sorry Ruskies & Sony, nobody owns the rights to birds tweeting. You'd think by now google would step in & stop at least the most ridiculous claims, like those against animal sounds, motor noises, raining, & laughing. Just because somebody laughs or a cat meows on a video, doesn't mean they're stealing somebody's song. And 150 different companies cannot own the same Bach piece written hundreds of years ago performed by me or a friend.

I noticed watching utube videos with laughing on them (and no music) regularly advertise the same song with the video as a song they own in the video... the same song advertised on many videos with laughing. I listen to the video carefully & don't hear any music. When I go to listen to the song advertised on so many videos with laughing, it turns out there's some laughing in the song. So they're claiming the sound on the video is theirs because it has laughing on it. Meanwhile the kids who post this stuff with those copyrighter's  ads on or beside their videos, let it go on, not realizing these crooks are illegally making lots of money on these videos just because there's laughing on it, that they claim they own. Then they usually don't dispute the claim. They think the copyright holder is doing them a favor by graciously allowing them to run ads with their video, even if they feel the claim is wrong. They either don't want to bother to dispute it, or if they have & won, they find by the next hour or day, someone else puts a copyright claim on the same stuff. So eventually they just give up.

I just converted a very old video of me playing a Bach piece on a pipe organ in a small town south of Syracuse to mp4 last night. It wasn't very good but I posted it on another utube account as a copyright test. 13 hours later it already has 8 claims against it from companies I never heard of. This video, & the sound has never been copied or posted anywhere (because it wasn't that good). Originally on VHS tape, converted to VCD in the 90s, & just last night converted to mp4. Interestingly, a couple of the claims once again say it's a title of a love song of sorts recorded in eastern Europe, by some Russian sounding name. I filed a dispute with all of them claiming it's a Bach piece performed by me personally decades ago. Let's see what happens.

[Betty]

Holy Shit!

The claims against the old Bach organ test piece performed by me decades ago have been withdrawn, except the one from the Russian "Artist" claiming it as his "Lisa's Love Song". I googled the title & the artist, & came up with a listing by the "artist" on Amazon, showing hundreds of old & Classical songs of all sorts, claimed to be performed or owned by him or his company. Scrolling along the "artist's" MP3s for sale for 89 cents at Amazon, I find "Lisa'a Song" by him. Similar to the title "Lisa's Love Song", so I click on an audio preview of it.

Holy Shit!!! It's an audio copy of the video of my performance that I just posted at utube last night!!! It never has been anywhere other than in a box at home until I converted & posted it last night. The release date shows January 28, 2015! These guys scanned my utube video, copied the audio, & put it for sale as an MP3 in less than 24 hours, & then put in a claim that they own it!

WTF!!!

He also has a lot of titles claiming to be a "Love Song" of sorts, or stuff like Anna's song, Helda's song, Mary's song, Linda's song, Brenda's song etc. I'll bet they're all stolen from somewhere else & then re-titled. The ones I clicked on to preview are mostly classical pieces, & is not their true title.

These guys are copying the sounds off utube videos, & then filing them as their own, then putting copyright claims against the video they stole them from! Some of them are very poor sound quality too. So my guess is they're stealing audio from anywhere they can find it, then slapping thier own name on it.

I sent a nasty letter to Amazon. As a long time  Amazon associates member, my complaint will have more weight than just another customer complaint. I don't just want the piece removed, but I want him & his company removed from Amazon. As a google adsense member, I also sent a nasty letter to google about it, & about their claim against the video. He'll loose is adsense/advertising account, & the privilege to post claims against stuff. Of course, he could probably just create a new account, name, & copyright company within hours. But at least if he figures out he has to create new accounts every time he bothers me, he'll leave me & my account alone.

It's one thing to share a song that you bought, or to play it as a DJ or publically. But to take somebody else's material, slap you own name or company name on it then try to forbid anybody to use it without buying it from them, paying rights to them, or granting them advertising rights to material is low.