Why We Can’t Trust Robots to Protect our Copyright
I’m a writer. Copyright matters to me. I need to sell books and make money. Like a lot of authors I don’t spend a ton of effort going after pirates; but I do have my works registered and I take reasonable steps.
However, a lot of copyright enforcement has been turned over to the robots. Bots scour the internet looking for violating material. They filter livestreams and kill them if they see something they don’t like. Back in 2012, Ustream’s copyright enforcement bot pounced on the Hugo awards because they were showing short clips from Doctor Who. The bot didn’t know (or care) that they had permission and there turned out to be no human override. Ustream stopped using the service concerned, but most streaming services still use copyright bots.
When Fair Use, Isn’t
So, there are essentially three problems with bots.
The first is that if nobody tells the bot permission has been given, the bot assumes it hasn’t.
The second is that the bots can’t navigate the complex and sometimes subjective landscape of fair use. It is, in fact, legal to show a short clip from a movie if your…