There was a time when a multitude of cities rose up in peaceful demonstration. Civilian organizations took root to make clear cases for ways and means of reforms, both on the local and national scale. These local coordination committees were most publicly visible by foreigners on the net, being prolific in uploading of media, mainly during Friday protests after prayer. These local orgs, mainly teens, found sites like bambuser.com and youtube.com highly effective for disseminating and spreading word of solidarity for towns spread miles apart, those miles just may as well be worlds apart much like how it is in the US and other nations.
Well I helped disseminate these events, my favorite were those broadcast live on bambuser as it gave viewers a much more personal feeling for those demonstrating on the other end. Much respect to Hans Eriksson[1] who used his position at bambuser in a positive way, embracing these broadcasts and himself helping disseminate the broadcasts to the world.
These weekly mass demonstrations took a bloody turn, and while many stopped looking the coordination committees kept witness, services like bambuser kept showing live feeds even though they were turning increasing violent as Assad's forces began publicly gunning down crowds.
Ever see the GPS trail of someone fleeing with a crowd of his neighbors during a live broadcast, while they were being shot at? I have. Here is a profile of a martyr who fought with his camera to show the world his life[2].
What does this have to do with copyright? Well those early days of mass demonstrations are valuable evidence of the true origins of the Syrian civil war, peaceful defiance met with violence.
During my monitoring and dissemination of other people's hard fought media, I began processing some into panorama as the narrow field of view provided by handheld cams reduced much of the true impact of what the recorder meant to show to others. I made stitched images from video showing tanks awaiting a push into so-called 'infected' cities[3]. I made images of the days during the fraudulent elections, of BMPs chasing unarmed civilians through the streets[4]. Later, I've stitched together images of war crimes that I can never remove from my thoughts. After doing this for many images I had video of which I also processed and began uploading those of potential interest, video of Assad's troops hurling IEDs onto residential neighborhoods from helicopters for instance[5].
But the video that involves this discussion of copyright, is one held dear to many of the early activists. Held dear to many of those now deceased. It was a song sung by someone who himself, was killed in those early days of mass demonstrations.
Ibrahim Qashoush, a fireman and a poet from Hama Syria[6].
Ibrahim coined a song that became popular during these mass demonstrations in Hama, singing them in a multitude of breathtaking shows filled the entire town square (remember when towns had those?) with the families that lived there. Time passed, and after becoming depressed at the daily slaughter I decided to go back and make a stitched image[7] of that night in Hama, when Ibrahim sung before his throat was slit[8] for daring to sing.
After uploading the video to Youtube, marking the video as not copyrighted, then the image to imgur as usual I received a copyright complaint from CDBaby[9]. Apparently they thought that due to an artist of theirs including a sample of the protest audio, they retroactively owned the original protest song themselves.
I lodged a rebuttal saying that the video was clearly not theirs, and Youtube agreed. Attempts to contact CDBaby were futile. Having the copyright claim removed I was somewhat happy with the vindication that this dead man's song was indeed not CDBaby's, but infuriated that this company made ABSOLUTELY NO DUE DILIGENCE AS TO THEIR CLAIMS. Most of the time people, if they notice, can contact them saying a company like CDBaby was in the wrong. But in this case the man they wronged had his throat slit for the media CDBaby was now claiming as their own. Cue the rage.
Youtube removed the claim from my copy of the video[10] but when linking the original copy that I processed I noticed that CDBaby's claim was still on their video. Looking further I found _ALL_ copies of this dead man's voice claimed by CDBaby.
This is around the time I started making a stink on Twitter making sure to include CDBaby's handle while pummeling them for stealing a murdered man's voice.
Of course after this I finally had CDBaby contact me.
The response from their support 'manager' said simply that my upload has had the claim removed, she was completely unaware or ignorant of what I was referencing since I never said my video was the problem. The fact they were blanket claiming without due diligence or occasional follow-ups to check the accuracy of their claims was the problem.
Only after displaying their absolute pathetic avoiding of the topic of legal ramifications for false claims online did I receive a simple follow-up from CDBaby support 'management':
"All claims have been removed," and indeed they were, for now.
My position on copyright shifted in those months of shouting into the copyright void that is the Youtube/CDBaby scheme.
I will break every copyright possible without care.
Not just for those who died bravely singing songs for others to be motivated by, but because for-profit entities display far less due diligence in their corporate position than a marijuana smoker does in his hobby.
Now I sometimes listen to Ibrahims song, thinking of how many of those people in Hama in the crowd no longer are alive. I think of CDBaby profiting off it and who knows how many others, think of Google's complicity in the mess, think of the lawyers who profit off it keeping the situation rolling. I think of the militant US government who is coming closer and closer to making copyrights worse than violent crime, and I get really depressed.
That is one of my fights with copyrights.
[1] https://twitter.com/HansEriksson
[2] http://bambuser.com/channel/syriapioneer
[3] http://i.imgur.com/pyegah.jpg
[4] http://i.imgur.com/prkBmh.jpg
[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZNy7V4Dz60
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Qashoush
[7] http://imgur.com/gallery/R0hnb
[8] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/world/middleeast/22poet.ht...