Intellectual Property: Copyright Filtering Shuts Down Science Fiction Awards

Another example of automated copyright protection gone wrong resulted in the shut down of a Hugo Awards webcast this week.

According to MediaPost:

The stream cut out just as Neil Gaiman was accepting an award for writing an episode of “Doctor Who.” In place of the Webcast was the notice, “Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement.”

…

io9 reports that the awards ceremony included clips of the episode Gaiman wrote. That material — which, not surprisingly, is copyrighted — was flagged as infringing by Vobile, an enforcement company used by Ustream. As a result, the Webcast was stopped.

I discussed the pitfalls of automated copyright infringement detectors earlier this summer when documentary filmmaker Steven Rosenbaum had one of his TEDX presentation videos taken down from YouTube because he had included a fair use, snippet of one of his earlier documentaries.

Taking the human element out of something that may impact the property rights of others is simply a bad idea.