Austrian publisher automatically generated Kindle books from Youtube comments

[Doitsu]

Austrian publisher Traumawien flooded the Kindle bookstore with automatically generated books for four days until Amazon pulled the plug. For more information see this article.

[HarryT]

This sounds like rather blatant copyright infringement to me. You can't republish someone's comments without their permission.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by HarryT

This sounds like rather blatant copyright infringement to me. You can't republish someone's comments without their permission.

Actually, the initiators claimed that this is one of the issues that they wanted to raise:

The project wants to raise questions like: who do YouTube videos/comments belong to? Where does authorship start and end? To what extent does the e-book format have to be reconsidered with regard to the traditional book form, and what are its most innovative opportunities? How could we act and work on it?

I'm surprised that Youtube/Google didn't file copyright infringement lawsuits against the publisher on behalf of their "content providers."

I worry that this will encourage other "artists" to publish dadaist books on Amazon. It's only a matter of time before someone adapts SCIgen or similar tools for ebooks and publishes convincing looking science books.

[taustin]

Such short writings may not qualify for copyright protection. From http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ34.pdf:

"Copyright law does not protect names, titles, or short phrases or expressions. Even
if a name, title, or short phrase is novel or distinctive or lends itself to a play on
words, it cannot be protected by copyright."

Nobody, not even Google, is interested in filing lawsuits that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars with an iffy outcome when there's a far easier way to handle it. In this case, just notify Amazon, who will kick the account for violating their terms of service, which is most likely what happenedhere.

[CommonReader]

Sounds like an interesting arts project. Automatically generated generic art. I sometimes believe that certain bestseller authors have pioneered that art form already, though. Did they offer the books for free?

[piperclassique]

Uh huh
Life is probably too short to read this

[carpetmojo]

Wouldn't this mean that any artist using collage etc.. from media, could be sued as well ?

Or is that "fair use" ?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

Wouldn't this mean that any artist using collage etc.. from media, could be sued as well ?

Or is that "fair use" ?

It's probably fair use because it's not being published. It's the publishing that's the issue.

[Lynx-lynx]

Well, now the testings been done and a 'bot' did it (well so it seems) let's see IF further action can be taken and what.

My guess is that all that will happen is that more protocols will be written and used to 'block' this type of free form behaviour event from occurring.

We can't forget that the internet is still an evolving form and there are lots of opportunities for lots of creative (and other acts) yet to happen.

I usually just wonder how come it took someone this long for this or that to happen .... there's a sense of creative inevitability about the internet. However, I do use the term 'creative' loosely, I don't adorn it with either positive or negative labels.

[elemenoP]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's probably fair use because it's not being published. It's the publishing that's the issue.

how about hanging in a gallery? How about selling prints? There are other things besides publishing in a book. And yes, there are standards for how much you need to change visual images to make them your own. See, for example, Shephard Fairey's "Obama Hope" poster, where the AP sued Fairey because the image was too much like the source photograph, which was copyrighted by the AP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_...Hope%22_poster

eP

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by taustin

"Copyright law does not protect names, titles, or short phrases or expressions...."

1) This isn't a copyright issue. It's basically a bunch of bored haxx0rs who think it's clever to generate automated and scraped text. (They openly admit what they're doing, so it's unlikely they are just out for a quick buck.)


2) Copyright law would not protect someone who scraped website comments for a book.

It would cover phrases or expressions like "Go ahead, make my day" or "where's the beef," not writings culled from another website's comments section.

I don't know if anyone would actually bother to sue over this, but that's not really relevant.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

how about hanging in a gallery? How about selling prints?

Yep, that's infringement.

There are some standards -- e.g. the more commercial your use, and the less you change the original work, the weaker your fair use claim.

A typical example: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/artic...Gagosian/23387

[Andrew H.]

I can't think of anything I'd like to read less than a bunch of internet comments.

Present forum excepted, of course. :-)

[Doitsu]

Here's a screenshot of one of the books (courtesy of technologyreview.com):

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

bunch of bored haxx0rs who think it's clever to generate automated and scraped text. (They openly admit what they're doing, so it's unlikely they are just out for a quick buck.)

That was also my impression.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

2) Copyright law would not protect someone who scraped website comments for a book.

Of course not, but what about the Youtube commentators? It's hard to imagine that someone would actually buy a book with a title like "Alot was been hard," but wouldn't the original commentators theoretically be entitled to royalties if someone actually bought one of these masterpieces?

[elemenoP]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Of course not, but what about the Youtube commentators? It's hard to imagine that someone would actually buy a book with a title like "Alot was been hard," but wouldn't the original commentators theoretically be entitled to royalties if someone actually bought one of these masterpieces?

I think you guys are missing the point. The books were not created to make money for the people who created them, it's an art project, just to try it and see what happens. They don't care if one person actually pays for a book. And why assume that the original commentators could be entitled to royalties, when they freely gave their own content to YouTube? They gave it away, now YouTube (probably) owns it. Can YouTube sue for this? I don't know. This is the discussion that the art project is meant to engender. Do you know if you own the comment that you just posted here on MobileRead? How do you own it if you just gave it away, for free? Does MobileRead own it? Does anybody own it? Can anybody do anything they like with it?

eP