As reported on Tuesday, we received an email that morning from a nice lady at Sveriges Television (SVT), the Swedish state broadcaster, requesting that we take down the video embedded in a Gates of Vienna post from last April entitled “A Loss of Faith in Sweden as a Democracy”. I explained to her that the video did not belong to us, that we did not upload it, and that therefore we could not take it down.
Evidently there is some confusion at SVT about the difference between uploading a video to one’s own channel, as opposed to simply embedding it using publicly provided embedding code. Today we received a second email from another nice lady, this one a lawyer at SVT:
To Gates of Vienna.
On behalf of Pia Bernhardson at SVT - the Swedish public service broadcasting company - I hereby request that you immediately delete the video belonging to SVT that you illegally publish under the headline: A Loss of Faith in Sweden as a Democracy on your web site:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.se/2012/04/loss-of-faith-in-sweden-as-democracy.html.The copyright to this video belongs to SVT and to publish this video, whit out consent from the copyright holder, is a breach to the copyright law, both in Europe and in the United States. It is also a breach to the copyright law to make changes in the material by adding subtitles to the video whit out SVT’s permission and by adding an unfamiliar logotype to the video.
The copyright law is clear on the issues above.
The breaches makes SVT entitled to economic reparation and if the video is not deleted immediately SVT will consider to take legal action.
Kind regards,
Frida Persson
Bolagsjurist/LawyerSVT Juridik
105 10 Stockholm
+46 (0)8-78 480 59
+46 (0)70-843 14 55
frida.persson@svt.se
I wrote Ms. Persson back and explained that I did not own the video, and therefore could not take it down. However, I seem to be having trouble making myself understood.
Our Swedish readers are invited to write to this estimable lady and repeat to her in her native language what I have explained here in English. Since she is almost certainly fluent in Danish and Norwegian, native speakers of those languages may also want to drop her a note and help her out.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The image at the top of this post is a derivative of “En Svensk Tiger”, which was featured on Tuesday’s post.
“En Svensk Stör” means “A Swedish Sturgeon”, and the fish painted with Swedish-colored stripes is indeed a sturgeon. However, the phrase is also a pun, and has an alternative reading: “A Swede Interferes”.
’Nuff said.
21 comments:
They're trying yo bluff you by using the usual, well-honed Liberal bully tactics.
Don't allow them to push you around!
Your faithful friend in NJ
In my humble opinion,Pia is impious, see the oxymoron, and ugly inside.
A cursory web search led me to the notion of 'contributory copyright infringment'. I'm not an attorney, but it seems prudent to me to remove the link.
Loss of faith in Democracy in Sweden.I would say Democracy has just died in Sweden and just been confirmed then.
LOL Thanks for the chance for a review :)
An advise for SD.
Your local members have to use the same tactic as the socialists use during 60`and 70`. You have to gain top posts in your union and hide your true colour until you have the majority.
Anon @ 1:36 pm --
U.S. precedent says otherwise. Check out this article posted at Geekosystem last summer (and kindly linked by a commenter on the earlier post):
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that a site that embeds copyrighted videos from another site is not committing copyright infringement. The court case between Flava Works, Inc. and myVidster.com came to a close after this ruling was passed in favor of the defendant, myVidster. The court also ruled that watching an infringing video does not constitute copyright infringement.
This case began back in 2010, when the adult video production company, Flava Works, sued a video bookmarking website, myVidster, for copyright infringement. The Court f0r the Northern District of Illinois issued myVidster a preliminary injunction in July 2011 where it was then appealed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
The court ruled Thursday that embedding a video that infringes on copyrighted material is not a violation of copyright law. For example, if I found an episode of The Simpsons on YouTube that I thought was really nifty and I embedded it in my blog, I wouldn’t be violating any copyright laws even if the person who uploaded the video to YouTube ripped it straight from The Simpsons’ season 3 DVD. It would be the person who put the video on YouTube who was breaking the law, not me.
The court’s decision also afforded protect to those who watch illegally uploaded copyrighted videos.
There is certainly a malaise throughout the Scandinavian countries that is hard to understand without concluding at its root is socialism. Eventually the pernicious poison that socialism exudes begins to destroy the host on which it lives. Unfortunately, this condition is prevalent in all first world countries.
I feel it is important to point out that lawyers (the vast majority of which are parasites) need controversy for them to become engaged and make money. They serve any master and the more controversy the more money they make. It is not in their best interest to settle as that limits their action. They need a protracted issue to maximise time expended as they typically charge by the hour. I studied law with the idealistic perception that lawyers protected society and most importantly protected JUSTICE. Naïve me. Most lawyers are psychopaths. After one year working for a large law factory I took my skills in a different direction. Here’s a book worth reading. “Snakes in Suits, when psychopaths go to work”. http://goo.gl/H0eLl
Max
The unfamiliar logotype could be an issue--seeming to claim the video material as emanating from another source--but you didn't put it there, and you only link. If they want to attack anyone, it shouldn't be you . . . (But why should they want to attack anyone for disseminating their excellent reporting?)
This little scuffle reminds me a bit of the displacement and lawless action in the Tommy Robinson Affair: an Englishman incarcerated by the English for breaking a American law on American soil. Is this how it's going to be from now on? These are normal activities of communists, dictators, mafiosi... not of free countries whose people are required to follow the letter of the law.
You must be doing something right – they clearly are unhappy.
Pat yourself on the back have a beer – and get back to work.
Make them squeal like a pig.
Bob Smith
I agree with all the other comments this week, that the real motive here is clearly not one of copyright.
It is an attempt to silence a point of view that SVT does not approve of.
A few observations that may already have been covered:
1) Blogs of all shades and persuasions routinely embed video from a variety of sources
2) Providing there is no attempt to "pass off" the material of someone else as one's own and there is reasonable reference to the source of the material, I cannot see an IP issue if the use is modest and within the bounds of "fair use"
3) I don't really see the media involved as particularly relevant e.g. quoting a few paragraphs from the Wall Street Journal seems little different in substance from embedding a few minutes of video from SVT, CNN, BBC etc
4) You are clearly making no material gain from this posting and you are simply using the material as support for a line of argument or political perspective.
I am no lawyer but I don't see how SVT could bring a case in the US on these very flimsy grounds. That said, the threat of legal action can be a stress in itself. Also SVT undoubtedly have much deeper Swedish taxpayer-funder pockets than you. Is there any value in setting up a trust/charity/corporation or other relevant entity to "own" GoV and give some distance between a legal action and your personal assets ? A lawyer would be better placed to say if there is any merit in this.
Other options- just post a URL link to Youtube rather than Embed ?
How tedious if everyone is going to "lawyer-up".
Good luck Baron
to john in cheshire - with winter here spring cannot be far behind...
What are SVT going to do? Take you to a court? In which case... a US one, or EU one? Could be an interesting case. A landmark one in fact, generating interest far beyond the Counterjihad... with perhaps other websites and net users siding with GoV - even those writing about GoV being a "hate site"? :)
If anyone else requests that you take a specific article down, you usually do so. I don't see why you wouldn't in this instance too.
You've got to choose your battles & why fight this one, over some obscure, long-forgotten clip from Swedish TV?
If they've been trawling through the GoV archives, and that's all they can come up with, well it's nothing to get your knickers in a twist about, I'd say.
Anon @ 10:56 pm --
You don't seem to understand the issue any better than the legal department at SVT -- that isn't my video channel, and I didn't violate copyright by embedding it here. Did you not read the 7th Circuit decision?
The entire document is embedded here.
It says explicitly that embedding a video does not violate anyone's copyright.
This was a decision handed down in August 2012 in a federal court in the United States of America. I am a U.S. citizen living in Virginia, so the law is applicable to me and to this blog.
Case closed.
Technically the act of embedding a video does not create a copy. It creates a mere url reference to the material such that the viewer of the page can follow that reference to the originally published source.
Indeed the whole point of the WWW is hyper linking.
The courts finding is consistent with that technical reality.
When North Korea collapses, Sweden is the last Stalinist country in the world.
They don't understand the difference between a private blog page and a public news page.
They don't understand that the video in question does not reside on your server/page, but was simply linked from some other source.
They need to go after the source of the video if they want, not attack the places it is linked to.
And they don't understand the private free-speech regulations we have. In Sweden they could just turn off your blog for whatever reason they wanted (claiming some obscure politically correct regulation). Can't just do that here.
SAMME SVENSK STÖR IGEN - SAME SWEDISH STURGEON INTERFERES ONCE MORE
One question I did not ask earlier: deserve at all a nation like 'NewSweden' any respect or to be taken seriously?
A nation that in all earnestness allows itself to inaugurate such a flagrant linguistic misstake and logical stupidity as ALLAS LIKA VÄRDE = everybody's equal value into its basic lawtext, the Constitution (Grundlag), should until a pervasive change has been made be ashamed without limit.
And not only that - based on and partly motivated by the stupidity referred to here, an all-embracing massimmigration-industrial-komplex has been built up, the ultimate goal of which is an exchange of populations. The indigenous Swedish population has to yield an make way for mostly moslem immigrants from mainly MENA and south of Sahara.
It is no excuse, only a partial explanation, that the responsible figure to the current constitution was both corrupt and criminal. The Social Democratic Attorney General Lennart Geijer (1909-1999) was an avid buyer and consumer of sexuel services from minors, something that the undeservedly almost canonized Prime Minister Olof Palme in those days had a tough job of trying to conceal.
This the refrain from Oh Holy Night in Swedish:
Folk, fall du neder, och halsa glatt din frihet:
O helga natt, du fralsning at oss gav
O helga natt, du fralsning at oss gav
This means, people on your knees and embrace with gladness your freedom, o holy night which gave us our salvation ( literally set us free )
Let's hope that Christmas Eve really does give the Swedes their freedom but only if they get down on their knees and remember their Christian heritage and refuse to be cowed by the Marxists running their country now.
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