How copyright enforcement robots killed the Hugo Awards

If you are a Science Fiction reader; you have likely heard of the prestigious HUGO Awards which have been awarded since 1955 by the World Science Fiction Society.

During the live stream broadcast of the awards:

Last night, robots shut down the live broadcast of one of science fiction's most prestigious award ceremonies. No, you're not reading a science fiction story. In the middle of the annual Hugo Awards event at Worldcon, which thousands of people tuned into via video streaming service Ustream, the feed cut off — just as Neil Gaiman was giving an acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script, "The Doctor's Wife." Where Gaiman's face had been were the words, "Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement." What the hell?

As it turns out the contracted service (Ustream) which was responsible for streaming the event has an excuse: as offered by their spokesperson

Very unfortunately at 7:43 p.m. Pacific time, the channel was automatically banned in the middle of an acceptance speech by author Neil Gaiman due to "copyright infringement." This occurred because our 3rd party automated infringement system, Vobile, detected content in the stream that it deemed to be copyrighted. Vobile is a system that rights holders upload their content for review on many video sites around the web. The video clips shown prior to Neil's speech automatically triggered the 3rd party system at the behest of the copyright holder.

So the producers dared to use clips from the science fictions shows they happened to be awarding... and the VOBILE system killed the stream (apparently irrevocably) ON THE SPOT!

This is the future.. all content being scanned and analyzed and action being taken unilaterally by a machine... in whose world the words "fair use" have no meaning... because "fair use" is evidently some kind of anarcho-communist poison.

No "inquire first" and review... simply "kill it."

This is precisely what people warned the public about the one-sided, profit-model only legislation which established the regulations that make the public "supplicants" whenever they dare consider "fair use" as an option....

Does this seem like a rant? I wonder? More here.

YouTube does the same thing and automatically removes videos that trigger the bot.

Not as detrimental as to happen to a live broadcast of course.

It's messed up that some algorithm can wipe you out with no due process.

That crap needs to stop pronto.

I wonder if the government has their own "unpatriotic content" or "dissent detecting" bot?

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


Oh, I bet they do.

They may not silence "unpatriotic or radical" words, but I'm sure somewhere in some office there is a stream of "content" that meets their "persons of interest" criteria ... but they would never admit it anyway. If they did admit such a thing, and it was discovered that they "let certain people get away with saying some things" that others were persecuted for.. well... that wouldn't go over too well.

This kind of thing is the reason VPN use is growing so quickly. My personal feeling about this kind of crap is that darknet services are going to explode and as demand increases so will speed. I predict a youtube.onion in the next 24 months.

Yeah well it might actualy have something to do with this, they pretty much risk loosing a lot of business on account of it, but it may well be a big up yours to Gaiman. He has a lot of pretty solid opinions concerning the nonsense that is copyright protection and a very big advocate on the freedom of information.



reply to post by Magnivea


Time to fill your shed with a VPN server, going to be good business in that shortly.

This is horrible news. I've never heard of this bot, and to have it activated during a major award ceremony is censorship hovering near its worst. And fair use is an accepted legal term, so for a bot to be programmed but not to consider fair use in the program is, again, "the worst". They should replay the entire Hugo awards without the censorship - and now I'm interested in seeing that Dr. Who episode that Gaiman wrote, is it on-line anywhere?

reply to post by Tuttle

Thanks for the Gaiman vid on copyright and privacy, he gives a very concise report of his own experience and thoughts on the subject. Now, with the censorship, hopefully he may even become more of an active advocate of web freedom.

reply to post by Aleister


You would maybe enjoy reading a lot of Neil Stephensons Sci Fi work, pretty visionary guy when it comes to online frontiers, coined the term "avatar" over 20 years ago. Has won the Hugo award a few times I think, quite into his programming as well. Good stuff.

Originally posted by Tuttle
reply to post by Aleister

 

You would maybe enjoy reading a lot of Neil Stephensons Sci Fi work, pretty visionary guy when it comes to online frontiers, coined the term "avatar" over 20 years ago. Has won the Hugo award a few times I think, quite into his programming as well. Good stuff.

I loved 'American Gods' and one or two of his others. Never got into the graphic or children's novels. Does he plan to (or has he) do an epic book again, akin to 'American Gods'? (I met him once at a book signing, and at that time I didn't know who he was and asked people in line, which is how I got directed to AGods).

Back on topic, when did this bot began to be used, and is it a new concept or the "best" of a series of censorship bots?

reply to post by Aleister


reply to post by Aleister


Not sure about his upcoming books planned, mostly read his graphic novels the Sandman, they were awesome but HBO are going to turn American Gods into a mini series, that will defiantly be worth a watch, interesting to see whos in it.

Bit vague about censorship bots histories, they just seem to be modified web spiders.