Copyright Claim Thwarts North Korean Propaganda 147
ianare writes "A propaganda video from the North Korean authorities has been removed from YouTube following a copyright claim by games maker Activision. It shows a space craft flying around the world and eventually over a city resembling New York. The buildings are then seen crumbling amid fires and missile attacks. However, the dramatic images (video) were soon recognized as having been lifted from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. By Tuesday, the video had been blocked, with a message notifying users of Activision's complaint shown in its place."
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I claim North Korea for the MPAA!
I'm so confused about this. I suppose NK has done more physical harm to other humans than the corporate entities that have been able to abuse the DMCA. So I suppose it's a victory, but it feels like a Pyrrhic one.
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I suppose it's a victory, but it feels like a Pyrrhic one.
True,
If the nut job running that country does manage to lob something our way, or toward Japan or Seoul, we are going to look pretty stupid waving the DMCA at them.
Especially when it has already been seen by the people it was aimed at, (North Korean TV viewers). The sad part is, that Kim family has pretty well made his own country the dunderheads of the far east. Even Vietnam could whip up a better sim than stealing one out of a common game.
Re:First takedown! (Score:5, Funny)
Even Vietnam could whip up a better sim than stealing one out of a common game.
I'm not so sure; North Korea's driving simulation [theregister.co.uk] technology approaches a level of sophistication not seen since the heyday of Pole Position.
Re:First takedown! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah - but have you tried their "Tractor Sim" Awesome!!
http://fotoden.info/sites/default/files/styles/frontpage_photo_landscape/public/42ap120404b187_0.jpg [fotoden.info]
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I suddenly feel compelled to ride one.
Re:First takedown! (Score:5, Funny)
How has "Don't stare at me i'm on duty" not become a meme yet...
Re:video clip of gameplay (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:video clip of gameplay (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree, in that a lot of those videos are indeed fair use. Corporate America has been working to redefine fair use, but recording yourself doing something, such as playing a game, is fair use.
The problem with North Korea's video is that it isn't for "personal use", but for commercial and/or political use. There is a huge difference between private, personal use and political use. A foreign government can't just take your stuff and apply it to their political goals, without permission and or compensation. Not unless they have the political and/or military power to back up that seizure.
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I disagree, in that a lot of those videos are indeed fair use. Corporate America has been working to redefine fair use, but recording yourself doing something, such as playing a game, is fair use.
And you'd be wrong. It's already gone through court, well before Internet video, so it's not even a theoretical. In case you're wondering, it was over unauthorized strategy guides. Legal if they're pure text like on GameFAQs, not so much when they're video tapes showing game play footage.
So any time you see some idiot on YouTube showing how "awesome" he is at Super Mario Bros. or "pwning n00bs" in Call of Honor, it's blatantly illegal. The only reason the videos aren't immediately taken down is that most vi
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I thought political speech was even better protected in the US? Or doesn't it count if it's by a dictator who isn't propped up by the Pentagon?
Anyway these crazy videos are so unbelievable they count as parody in my book.
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I thought political speech was even better protected in the US? Or doesn't it count if it's by a dictator who isn't propped up by the Pentagon?
Thing is, a private company can do whatever they want in the way of censorship. The law and the constitution protect you from the government impinging upon your rights. My guess is that YouTube would have removed this trash anyway eventually, and they are under no obligation to respect "free speech" rights. Moreover, it wasn't the government that requested the takedown, it was Activision. And YouTube did so. I'm all about defending the constitution and everything, but there's really no grist here for t
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Isn't that fair use?
There's no such thing as "fair use" in most of the world. The US is kind of on it's own legally, with it.
Parody, you can do everywhere - use of the original material, not so much.
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There's no such thing as "fair use" in most of the world. The US is kind of on it's own legally, with it.
But the law that applied here was the US law. In fact, under NK law, copyrighted works can be copied without consent as long as they're "performed free of charge", so this question wouldn't even be relevant.
This is very worrying. (Score:5, Funny)
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The South Koreans however, would be all PMSL (Score:2)
Well, given the gaming reputation of the South Koreans, NK isn't really going to fool anyone down South, is it? If that was the target of their propaganda, that is -- SK would enjoy a huge laugh at NK's expense.
Two sides to the coin (Score:5, Funny)
I don't like how easy it is for people to take down other peoples work, and lately we have seen a lot of that.
Though it is nice to see when the evil tool is used for good.
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Re: Two sides to the coin (Score:1)
Of course not, don't be silly. Use of nuclear weapons is clearly a case of patent infringement and will be dealt with through litigation. Duh!
Good (Score:2)
So what exactly was the good which happened by taking down the video?
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130206/10392021893/north-korea-threatens-to-nuke-us-with-copied-video-game-footage.shtml
Cough.
Re: Two sides to the coin (Score:2)
You don't think that this is something American citizens deserve to see. Yes there's copyright infringement but I'd strongly argue its in the public interest to know about the kinds of threats being made.
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I too can quote myself.
--canadiannomad
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That isn't to say I disagree with you...
Dadblastit (Score:2)
Yeah! Silly North Koreans! Make your own darned cgi video of NY blowing up!
I wonder something... (Score:1)
Can North Korea demand that YouTube take down any video clips of Kim Jung Il singing "I'm so Ronery" from Team America, as that is clearly an unauthorised reproduction of the Dear leader singing?
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Can North Korea demand that YouTube take down any video clips of Kim Jung Il singing "I'm so Ronery" from Team America, as that is clearly an unauthorised reproduction of the Dear leader singing?
No. The real Kim Jung Il never actually sang "I'm so Ronrey." He used to sing:
"Your Little Body's Slowly Breaking Down" from "Evita"
"I Kissed a Girl"
"Walk Like an Egyptian"
"Easy To Be Hard"
and
"America" from "West Side Story"
Marines (Score:3)
I have a friend who's a marine and we had a good laugh about the mock fighter jet the Iranians put out last week. I bet I'll have them on the floor when I show them this...
The media portrays Iran as this menacing threat. People in our military however tend to look at them as that kid who kicks sand in everyone's faces. Harmless, but annoying.
Re:Marines (Score:4, Insightful)
Iraq was a lot more "harmless" than Iran, but I'm sure the 5000 dead and 30,000 wounded US soldiers would dispute that description.
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Iraq was a lot more "harmless" than Iran, but I'm sure the 5000 dead and 30,000 wounded US soldiers would dispute that description.
I'm sure the dead are the ones who wouldn't dispute anything.
Re:Marines (Score:4, Insightful)
This.
girlintraining, ask your marine friend about how many people died, and how they died in Iraq. Laugh over coffee.
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Well, harmless as long as you didn't invade and occupy it for ten years.
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Well, harmless as long as you didn't invade and occupy it for ten years.
Yes, brilliant point, in which case Russia and China must have even more harmless militaries since they have not been invaded and occupied for almost 70 years!
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I don't know if the Iraqi soldiers were "harmless" as much as "had no loyalty to Saddam Hussein and his family".
I'd imagine a fair number of Iranian soldiers feel the same way about the Ayatollah, but it's hard to say when it's a matter of loyalty to a religious leader vs a secular dictator.
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I'd imagine a fair number of Iranian soldiers feel the same way about the Ayatollah, but it's hard to say when it's a matter of loyalty to a religious leader vs a secular dictator.
I doubt any Iranian soldiers are on /. to comment on this, but since the Ayatollahs have established a "revolutionary guard" as a parallel military with its own command structure, logistic chain, etc. it seems they don't trust their professional army.
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That's a good point. 125,000 well equipped loyal soldiers (give or take) would be a hell of a lot worse than a few thousand insurgents in Iraq. I hate to Godwin the discussion but there are parallels, of course...
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Absolutely, I'm sure those 30K / 1M = 1 out of 30 soldiers who were wounded feel much better about those statistics, not including all of those with PTSD, etc.
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And you could say that about even one person who was wounded or became afflicted with PTSD. It is valid to point out the actual proportions of those involved to those who actually became casualties as a measure of success of an operation.
While it would be nice to have *no* casualties, that isn't usually an option when it becomes a military operation.
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I think you should go reread how this thread started and then look up the definition of "harmless".
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Well, it is probably at least a little silly to call a country like Iran or Iraq "harmless", but in comparison to the looming threats of both past and present, they certainly are fairly harmless. And I think the thread starter was mostly talking about their equipment, as opposed to their ability to kill people, which even then, is only possible because we walked up to their house. Short of their ability to kill people via terrorism and possibly shutting down the Persian Gulf for the brief time it would ta
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True. But if they do launch a high altitude nuke and detonate it way up there, the resulting EMP (sand) could blind us for a very very long time. Not so funny now is it round eye?
First, they need to have a nuke to launch, and their nuclear scientists have an odd habit of exploding, dying in car accidents, or taking vacations to the United States that they never return from. And then there was that unfortunate problem with all their centrifuges self-destructing. Couple that with their apparent inability to construct anything high-tech like, say, a fighter jet, without it having basic design flaws like, say, the afterburner melting the aircraft and setting fire to the pilot, and I'll
Headline Trollops (Score:5, Insightful)
Cardassian class nation (Score:5, Informative)
North Korea has morphed into a Kardashian class nation
It already was [wikipedia.org]: "Cardassian society is often depicted as being Orwellian, with strict government control over information and violent force. Denizens are shown as having unquestioning obedience to authority due to the general lack of human rights, which provides a contrast to the personal protections of the Federation."
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Re:Cardassian class nation (Score:5, Funny)
Mixing up Trek with Kardashians?
I wouldn't be the only one [tshirtbordello.com].
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Hopefully you dont know that the celebrity and the race are two very distinct things and the grand parent was not talking about that some alien race, but one who wants to be on the tabloid grocery market isle.
But the point is that the cardassians were supposed to be nazis. Bajor was obviously isreal, klingons germans, romulans russians, etc.
North korea on the other hand are the ones with the spaceship that "wont go" and needs geordi to fix them, only to have his good will taken advantage of by malevolent im
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North Korea is the Ferengi, without the lobes for business.
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klingons germans, romulans russians, etc.
I believe the Klingons and Romulans were crudely based on the USSR and Communistic China respectively. Keep in mind that China in the 60s was pretty much as isolated from the West as North Korea is now, which is a better match for the secretive and xenophobic Romulans than the Soviet Russians who tended to have schemes brewing everywhere and had a far more interventionist approach (which fits the Klingons much better).
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I believe the Klingons and Romulans were crudely based on the USSR and Communistic China respectively. Keep in mind that China in the 60s was pretty much as isolated from the West as North Korea is now, which is a better match for the secretive and xenophobic Romulans than the Soviet Russians who tended to have schemes brewing everywhere and had a far more interventionist approach (which fits the Klingons much better).
Interesting. If we assume the analogues were deliberate, it makes me wonder about the Vulcans. My first guess would be Japan - an ancient society that turned away from its violent past in pursuit of logic and knowledge. I'm by no means an expert on international relations back in the '60s - not sure how good a fit this is. Particularly since the Vulcan's violent period is ancient history in all the Trek cannon, whereas it was still very fresh in the middle-aged WW2 vets back in the '60s.
Gotta say, stuff
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But the Roman empire was not at all isolationist (except when it came to repelling "barbarians" at the frontiers). I think one needs to look to communist China for what inspired that choice.
I see from Wikipedia that while the Romulans preceded the Klingons, both races were introduced in the first season (the Klingons
Peter Griffin (Score:2)
When I see NK doing testing with rockets I just get reminded of the family guy episode where Peter crashes the petercopter then the hindenpeter into Joe's front yard.
"How can you afford these things?!"
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It was hard to get a time scheduled to shut down Rush Hour traffic so that 80% of New York City could be lit on fire.
Of course, they could have just used Detroit, but then people wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between the damage from the depicted attack and what Detroit usually looks like on a normal day.
How convenient. (Score:1)
Censoring by copyright, the law is working well for the masters.
However, not that one should like the North Korean proganda makers, but that is besides the point here.
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This is exactly what copyright is for, or what it should be for. Moral and ethical issues about where the product you have produced are much much much more important than financial ones. I don't quite know where you are coming from with this.
Copyright is by it's very nature censorship. That's its point. Unless you disavow it altogether, you support censorship.
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Let's avoid the confusion of terms.
Copyright is not censorship, it is a licensing scheme for the use of written and recorded works to induce authors/publishers to produce works, not to discourage them.
Censorship is government action to stop speech or publication based on the content of the speech, without regard to the "ownership" of the content.
The reality that copyright can seem like censorship in some facets of enforcement does not make it censorship, because in the end, the government does not enforce b
We are the World (Score:4, Funny)
WTF? Really We are the World that crappy 80's song so we give money to the starving people of Africa.
Oh I get it DPRK is starving and that's their way of saying please help us.
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That's actually what it is... except that the government wants the help without compromising on their complete and absolute power.
They are poking at us because they know we won't attack them. They also know that if they launched a nuke at the US, North Korea would be a smoking crater 30 minutes later, and there would be nowhere in the world that the Kim family could hide, even if they survived the retaliatory strike.
The point of the exercise is to rile us up enough that politically there becomes pressure t
Transformative Use? (Score:2)
North Korean strikes first loser North Korean (Score:1)
North Korean strikes first loser North Korean
We are the world? (Score:2)
Anyone notice the theme music in the video? A strangely sappy song to have playing for the nuking of New York.
Oh, and I'll bet they didn't get permission for the song either as well as the Activision video. Wait until the RIAA bills Dear Leader for eleventy billion dollars for lost revenue. That'll fix 'em.
Fair Use (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it covered by 'Fair Use'?
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In what way? In checking the four considerations for Fair Use in the US, I'm not seeing how any of them (other than perhaps the point about affecting the market value of the work) favor the idea that they were engaging in Fair Use. The fact that the clip is fictional, was used for their own profit, and that it made up a major piece of their video (i.e. that they didn't contribute much, at least, based on the descriptions I've read, since I can't find the original clip) all work against them in this case.
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"The fact that the clip is fictional, was used for their own profit, and that it made up a major piece of their video (i.e. that they didn't contribute much, at least, based on the descriptions I've read"
Profit? These guys are old-line Commies, so profit is probably the least of their motives, unless they've become so bankrupt they need to cash in on their YouTube hits. As for "fictional", I'd say much of what politicians claim during election season falls under that same broad category.
While I suspect the
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Profit? These guys are old-line Commies, so profit is probably the least of their motives
Oh come off it, the whole commie thing is just an excuse for the fat cats at the top to live it up with hookers and blow while the rest of the population languishes in a human hell.
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No it is not. Glorious Leader should sue those thieving imperialist talentless hacks at Activision for stealing his footage which he made himself by typing out the binary.
Plenty more out there (Score:2)
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Ok... that video was interesting, thanks for posting it.
I also found this [youtube.com], which is slogans of North Korean posters... I was laughing for about 10 minutes, literally. Crap... perhaps it's my sense of humour... I'm crying watching it again.
ps. it's _very_ anti-American - if you're offended by things like that, don't watch. It's not funny because it's anti-American though.
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I'm not sure why, but there's something inherently funny about "Isn't this a concrete fence?"
Phase 2 (Score:1)
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In other news: (Score:2)
NK's Glorious Leader has changed his name to Duke Nukem.
Berne convention (Score:5, Interesting)
This is madness! (Score:4, Funny)
Kim Jong-Un wrote Call of Duty himself, in an evening. Activision is the thief here, and they will feel the wrath of the Supreme Leader.
And to see the video banned from Youtube (Score:5, Funny)
we are directed to a copy of the video... on YouTube??
where? (Score:1)
Copyright abuse? (Score:2)
Not being familiar with the game: was the video included as such with the game? As a cutscene, introduction or whatever?
Or was the video a recorded sequence of gameplay? If this is the case, is it right for the games company to have copyright on what I consider user-generated content? Does Notch now have a precedent to take down Youtube videos of Minecraft constructs?
It's easy to be all neener, neener in this particular case, but IMO we're seeing an abuse of the law here.
But are lawyers cheaper than battleships? ;-) (Score:2)
My first thought was - great - we can save money and remove North Korea as a threat to world peace by employing lawyers to shut them down and save lots of money by reducing military forces.... but then... I got wondering... perhaps the lawyers cost more than battle fleets and jet planes and nuclear missiles? ;-)
I smell bullshit (Score:1)
It's all bad (Score:1)
This is bad news for two reasons:
Boy, never thought I'd see myself defending North Korea about anything. Looks like in the North Korea vs. MPAA evilness matchup, MPAA wins . . .
Bulldust (Score:1)
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While I certainly find NK despicable, I don't like how they are using copyrights, trying to make them seem more acceptable to us, by showing how they can attack someone we all don't like
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Youtube is a US company, using US laws. Sorry... I feel no sympathy for plagiarism (which is completely different from copyright infringement, btw).
No one is stopping them from producing their own content, and publishing it on a major US website. They can publish whatever they like.
Re: Chilling Effects (Score:1)
It's at war with South Korea, which has a massive US military presence for support, so yes.
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Actually, the US is at war with North Korea and *everybody* knows.
The Korean War never ended officially, there was only an Armistice signed, not a Peace Treaty. We are *still* at war with North Korea and have been since the 1950's. The fact that the current situation simulates an actual peace hides the technical reality of the situation.
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Well you know, all NK needed to do was not use footage from someone else's game, and they could very easily have not become affected.
And presumably, they can render their own scene of New York burning, substitute it in, and post the very same video, and Activision couldn't say anything. So, this isn't some sort of blanket power of censorship, it is simply a statement that if you want to shout from a soapbox, maybe you should get your own.