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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

When I was picking between a PS4 and an XBox One (I'm a casual gamer at most), Sony's actions like this over the years are what swayed me to get the XBox; I just couldn't in good faith support Sony. No, it's not lost on me that the XBox is made by Microsoft: I think that says alot about my opinion of Sony.

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...And Microsoft's actions are better then Sony?

I doubt Sony even took this down themselves but was youtube's automated fingerprint scanner.

Interesting. What do you think would have triggered it?

If you look at the tweet, it says the Youtube video was matched to a Sony video that had Sintel in the name.

So Sony submitted a Sintel video to Youtube saying "this belongs to us, take down anything that matches it."

This happens all the time on YouTube with all sorts of video. For instance, any time something happens with space, news channels end up flagging public domain NASA footage as their own.

Remember that we're talking about digital video/audio fingerprints here, so it's not just a case of "someone uploaded a video with Sintel in the name".

The question is why Sony would be uploading a copy (or a content ID fingerprint) of an open-source work to YouTube and claiming it as their own.

YouTube's ContentID would appear to be Working As Designed. The problem is that Sony would appear to have falsely claimed title to a work that is not theirs. It's for Sony to work it out, and for the uploader to quickly and immediately hit the 'dispute' button, which effectively then moves the situation back to Sony to "put up or shut up".

I'm not sure that the best way to deal with this situation - which is clearly an error and nothing more - is to run directly onto twitter and start screaming about there being no better reason to support open movies and urging everyone to "donate now" though.

I understand the sentiment, but I think it's a mistake to think as Sony as one entity. I don't mean this is in the "there's scumbags and there's good people too" rosy way, Sony is really not one corporation but a constellation of indepedantly acting entities.

The Xbox business unit and the Windows unit are in the same organisation. Sony's playstation unit and movie business are not even the same company.

Corporations are often made up of more than a hundred thousand people, divided between thousands of things. I highly doubt anyone that has anything to do with SCEI had anything to do with anyone in Sony Corporation.

I don't understand how people have opinions on a fucking corporation. I don't think Jack Tretton is yelling at the legal department of another company. Besides, the consoles basically act as brand identity tools for Microsoft and Sony. Microsoft's gaming divisions only posted a small profit for 5 years and Sony only posted a profit during the height of the PS2.

Next time buy a Steam box ;-)

I'm not sure Sony's actually worse than Microsoft, which says enough about both.

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