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Comment by blindm | Hacker News Reader

The DMCA takedowns have their nets cast too wide. Uncopyrighted works get taken down all the time.

Are you implying he owns the copyright?

I think they are implying that public domain works are attacked globally because a company thinks they own it in one country. Take Happy Birthday, for example: in the UK it is considered a traditional song and is therefore public domain, but in the US there are no such protections against copyright and therefore Time Warner thinks they own it.

> in the US there are no such protections against copyright and therefore Time Warner thinks they own it.

I don't think even they think that anymore:

> On June 28, 2016, the final settlement was officially granted and the court declared that the song was in the public domain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Copyrigh...

Looks like the rest of the band participates in the channel too..

Yes

The problem is that Universal is the owner of the copyrights (including the lyrical and syncronisation copyrights), and this is DMCA we're talking about. This would end up differently in Europe or UK (the original authors are irrevocably entitled to some percentage of the revenue, typically 5%) but DMCA is based on American laws (which do not have these protections).

Right but surely his recording contract with Universal would allow him to perform his songs.

Probably live performances, but not on video recording

Genuine question: where’s the line? Because he’s still playing it live (live streaming). Is it just the act of being recorded?

In a commercial context?

Maybe even in a commercial context. In fact it's quite likely that concerts get treated specially. The issue is, these automated censorship tools don't encode the nuanced clauses of such contracts. They err on the side of banning, even if it's perfectly legitimate.

Also IMO in the digital age it's so stupid that teachers can't even read a book to children via Zoom without a license...

Concerts are commercial contexts.

Aren't they signed to Universal?

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