Cool screen savers

****UPDATE*****
We have made a cool set of screensavers from some of the favorites from Haint Retro.
We call it Haint Darkness. They are dark so that they save energy too!

that are available for download here
from haint.info

Since we are using our big screen TV as a monitor, having a good screensaver is necessary.
We like the 'hot corners' on our Mac screensaver options. It makes it easy to just move the mouse to a corner and automatically go into screensaver mode.


There are many things that we do for screen savers. Since we often listen to music on the computer with iTunes, we often use the visualizer in full screen mode as a screen saver. This is a far out visualizer on the 'jelly' option, (it does not have 'hot corners').

There are many sites that offer things like '60 free wallpapers/screensavers'. They are okay, we even found one we liked. But watch the quality, there are often just a few cool ones in the batch.
We also get nice pictures from places like APOD, National Park Service, NOAA,
(it's nice to get something nice from the government for a change -haint) and National Geographic.
Another thing that we have done is to take a 'snapshot' of a video with VLC (meda player reviewed in earlier post). This seems like it should be an okay use for stills(snapshots) from your own videos for use on your own computer, it would probably not be okay to copy and distribute these stills. It seems that the copyright issues on that sort of thing is a big hassle right now and we don't want to do anything illegal or encourage anyone else to either.
Keep it cool 'til next time
peace and love
haint and littia

Rumblefish Resolved - No Content Id match

Hi ya'll,

Sorry we haven't posted anything in a while. Like the weekend that this whole Rumblefish trip started going down, we were both coming down with the flu. (Don't know if it wa the HiNi but it laid us oldsters both up for about a week and a half. )So by the time that the TechDirt article came out, we didn't even feel like getting on line.

But we are all better now.

And we did want to give Rumblefish a chance to be cool about it if they were going to.
They were cool.
We mean- they emailed us as soon as the article came out. We didn't contact them.
And they asked us to call them.
We weren't up to talking on the phone - so we emailed them back and asked that they take the notice down.
They emailed back and asked for the url to the page of the video.
So, we got that back to them and they removed the Content ID match.
They apologized and that was cool.

Are we all friends and made up now?
Well, we're just not on the same trip.
As artists, we just see something really wrong with twisting the copyright law that was originally meant to protect artists into something oppresses them and leeches off of them.
A lot of people have said, 'Well so, they are just tapping into a revenue stream that you aren't using and those fractions of pennies from monetization isn't something you could benefit from."
So, does it really matter if it's fractions of pennies (from thousands of videos)?

We guess that it's just a Matter of Principle for us - the Capitalist Principle

A principle that says that those who have more deserve more - even if it means taking it from those who have less.

And we have a different principle - that we are free to have the creative work that we have produced used only in the ways that we intend.
We believe we have that freedom.
It's not that we disagree with others profiting off our art. But that we believe that we should be the ones that make that choice.

Haint has an arrangement with a dealer that sells his folk art - Rising Fawn Folk Art Gallery. But the arrangement and the terms are ones that he chose and agreed to, this is quite different from what Rumblefish wanted to do.

That's all folks.
We've have our say and perhaps we part with philosophical differences about art and capitalism.
That's what freedom is all about
Letting our FREEK flag fly.
Peace and love
Haint and Littia

Updates on Content ID match

Hi folks,

This is a review and update on the YouTube bummer. A screenshot of the notice is above.
To clear up confusion, the notice is not a DMCA takedown notice -it is a content ID match.
Rumblefish is a music reseller and that is fine. But there are other situations where the content in their catalog was matched with content that was legally obtained through another source.
One is from Dec of last year and was resolved in February
http://help.youtube.com/group/youtube-howto/browse_thread/thread/af23f2c256702ec1
eastvillagepodcasts had bought music from StockMusic.net - a Rumblefish reseller
They were flagged with a content ID match because Rumblefish did not realize that the material was already legally licensed. And as you can see from the posts eastvillagepodcasts went through several months of headache (and was talked to like a criminal by the YT community) for the error.

In our case it appears to be public domain content that was content ID matched with public domain in Rumblefish's catalogue

This is a post I Googled with advice on how to handle it:
http://forums.whyweprotest.net/186-youtube-vimeo-problems/rumblefish-dmca-content-id-claim-fix-w-o-namefaging-self-42732/T

But the vast majority of artists are unaware of this error and simply let the content be monetized - falsely believing they are the ones in the wrong.

There is also a third way that this error can occur. If Rumblefish was licensed (though not exclusively) to sell content for an artist, but that artist also gave permission for the content to be used by another party in their work.
We made a video working directly with another band Sonanaut. Their content is licensed though Groovera and iTunes. But we obtained their music and permission to use it directly from Sonanaut - the kind of sharing that the internet is supposed to be all about. Does this mean that Groovera or iTunes have any claim over the video that we made using Sonanaut's music? Does this mean that if Sonanaut was in Rumblefish's catalogue that Rumblefish would have a claim over it? (these are rhetorical questions and not requests for legal assistance)


This whole trip with the rumblefish/youtube thing is getting just a bit too heavy.
I'm just an artist - and an outside artist at that. Not a businessman, or a lawyer. What we do is make creative stuff and the people we know make creative stuff. And sometimes we do creative stuff together.

Like we did with the Psalters and Sonanaut.

But, hey - we aren't in it for the bread or for the fame. I do art whether anybody buys it or not. And we don't think that the Psalters are into it for the cash either. The song that we used was an Iraq war protest song and the piece of artwork shown being made in the video was a protest piece as well. Neither one of us expected to be a YouTube star - it is free speech and free- as in no $$ speech that is the point here.

This won't really have any effect on me doing my art - maybe besides inspiring a few new pieces.
But what it does have an effect on is all of you who value creativity as a natural part of human progress. As the internet becomes a place where all creative content is increasingly viewed in terms of monetization, traffic flow, ad potential, copyright bullying and other commercial concerns, the real creative people will just go back to doing what they did before

And that was -

doing our own thing

- and the number of folks that have an opportunity to share in that is less than it would be with access to the internet - but it does not make our art any less rich and fulfilling - it just makes the internet a poorer place to be.

It calls into question the claim that the internet can be the last bastion of freedom that we were promised it would be.

Peace and Love
Haint and Littia

Updates

Today we searched the YouTube community and help forum pages. There are two references to the Rumblefish problems.
One is from Dec of last year and was resolved in February
http://help.youtube.com/group/youtube-howto/browse_thread/thread/af23f2c256702ec1

The other is from someone who doesn't speak English -so they didn't get anywhere

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/thread?tid=46371b3c44cd539a&hl=en

We will keep you posted on the latest.

Peace and love,

Haint and littia

Rumblefish and the Public Domain

Greetings all,

We haven't posted here in a few months. We got used to the internet and new gadgets and haven't had much to post about here for a while.

This is the first post about our adventures with YouTube, Rumblefish, the Psalters and the public domain.

The scene:

We made a YouTube video of Haint's art.
(Posted in Jan '09)

We used a song by the Psalters as background music.
(2004 - Us Vs US - with their permission)

Rumblefish issued a content ID violation on the audio content of the video.
(Let us be clear that this is Rumblefish.com and NOT Rumblefish the band)

The audio was created by the Psalters with public domain content.
(This audio content is mixed with their live musical performance.)

Rumblefish has a lot of public domain content in their catalog and it will be flagged as a content ID match in YouTube and Vimeo.

The Bummer:


The Public Domain is supposed to be a safe place for artists to get content without fear of copyright infringement.

This permits Rumblefish advertising rights and control over public domain and the content of independent artists.
(We are the only ones we know of - but we are sure that we are not the only ones)


This is a violation of our rights as artists.


On Monday we will call a phone number that we found on a forum.
http://forums.whyweprotest.net/186-youtube-vimeo-problems/rumblefish-dmca-content-id-claim-fix-w-o-namefaging-self-42732/
This is supposed to be a contact for Rumblefish that will remove the content ID violation, to make sure they have a chance to fix this without dispute.

The other option open to us is disputing their claim - but this is a dangerous move for a little guy without a lot of money or clout. (we will make a post about content ID disputes later) If they had issued a DCMA takedown notice instead we would have had the ability to issue a counter notice. As it is right now, we either take the risky step of disputing the content ID match, or let them use our content for advertising, or hope that the phone call works.

BUT - even if they do rescind the content ID match this is not the end of the story. Because we had the time and resources to spend 12 hours trying to protect our rights as artists. A lot of artists are not that technical or web savvy and they are the ones that will get taken advantage of by this sort of error.

See ya on Monday.

Peace and love

Haint and Littia

This post was originally published on Oct 24, 2009 on the blog Haint's Stuff. We have moved it over to this blog so that you can follow the story from the beginning - and so Haint can get back to using his blog for his work.

Goodmorning folks,

After about 12 hours of blogging, searching and emailing yesterday we have some new updates on the Rumblefish- YouTube situation:

The song by the Psalters that was flagged as a violation on our video used public domain content in the audio collage part of their track.

Rumblefish has a great deal of public domain content in their catalogue.

So when the computers do automatic content ID match searches, this public domain content gets flagged as a violation. (we don't know whether the computers that do the flagging belong to YouTube or Rumblefish)

At the end of the day, literally, we found a post on a forum that explains this and gives a phone number and contact person at Rumblefish. It was after business hours in their time zone and all we got was voicemail. So we will give them a call during business hours during the business week to make sure they have a chance to fix this without dispute.

The other option open to us is disputing their claim - but this is a dangerous move for a little guy without a lot of money or clout. If they had issued a DCMA takedown notice instead we would have had the ability to issue a counter notice. As it is right now, we either take the risky step of disputing the content ID match, let them use our content for advertising, or hope that the phone call works.

BUT - even if they do rescind the content ID match this is not the end of the story. Because we had the time and resources to spend 12 hours trying to protect our rights as artists. A lot of artists are not that technical or web savvy and they are the ones that will get taken advantage of by this sort of error.

This will be the last post on this blog about the Rumblefish-Youtube incident. We use this Haint's Stuff bloblog for nice happy stuff about art.
We are moving this discussion to http://cybertrips.blogspot.com/ This is an old blog that told about our experiences on the internet when we were first getting started. We havent posted to it in months, but it seems like a better place for this issue than here.

Back to work. We will be back tomorrow posting pictures of the latest wip - made with repurposed matchboxes.

Peace and love

Haint

CORRECTION: In yesterday's post I said that the viewcount for that video had reached 300. That was an error - it had reached 150 - I misread the stats for a similar video on the analysis report - Littia

The above appeared on Oct 24, 2009 in the blog Haint's Stuff.

The link for the information about Rumblefish and the Public Domain content is:
http://forums.whyweprotest.net/186-youtube-vimeo-problems/rumblefish-dmca-content-id-claim-fix-w-o-namefaging-self-42732/

The following is a copy of the original post made to Haint's Stuff on Oct 23, 2009. We have moved it over here so people can follow the story from the beginning - and we can free-up Haint's art blog for his work.

Hi people,

There will be no artwork posted on this blog today - somebody thinks I need to Rumble with them instead.

Last week, someone suggested that we blog about the positive experiences that we have had working with other artists in the open sharing of content. We have used music from a couple of artists - Sonanaut and the Psalters - with their permission and attribution on our videos that show Haint making his art. The artists are happy to share with us and we are happy to share with them.
So this would have been just a nice little piece about the artists and the musicians. But I was waiting until I finished the series of posts on Circle Full of Circles. Before I got to make the post about music- crass commercial greed and profiteering raised it's ugly head.

We received a copyright violation notice from YouTube today Oct 23, 2009 on one of the first videos we put up in January 2009. The video was about my piece Superfluous and had just reached 300 views. We don't know if this 'magic 300' was significant in the violation notice or not - but it is a nice round number. Also note the part that says that the video may stay up and be seen with ads beside them.

The alleged owner in this notice is Rumblefish. We checked them out they are a place that wants to sell people music to put in their YouTube videos - no hassle. (Handy - just what I need after being shut down!)

We looked at their list of artists on their website - the Psalters were not on it.

We emailed the Psalters. We have known them for years and have two of their CD's both open source/fair share with attribution.
Reply from Psalters:

yeah--all that stuff is bullshit to us man. you use whatever you want from our music.
i have never even heard of rumble fish.

we thank you for using our music. i am excited that it gets to partner with your great art!
that is an honor to us.

I guess that the song in question may be considered questionable because it does contain a mix of media - audio clips, live music by the Psalters and recordings are mixed. It is 'Us versus US' from their CD of the same name issued in 2004.
I am under the understanding, especially given the length of time that this recording has been publicly available (2004), that this audio was the unchallenged property of the Psalters.
If the music was owned by one of Rumblefish's artists or made using music owned by one of Rumblefish's artists then they need to deal with the Psalters. The Psalters are clearly identified on the video as the ones responsible for the music.

And let us also say that we definitely don't think that the Psalters are responsible in this either. Even unwittingly.

Maybe we don't understand a lot of the new digital media stuff - the track in question seems like an audio collage to us- with bits and pieces from a lot of sources. Looking at it from a visual artists viewpoint, especially a folk artist - we use other people's content all the time. We never heard of National Geographic going after the guy who uses their magazines in a collage. The late Howard Finster (friend and fellow folk artist known for Talking Head and REM album covers) also painted Coke bottles and depicted them in paintings as have many folk artists. Coke isn't all in their business about unlicensed depictions or when a guy makes a vest out of bottle caps. So we don't quite understand how audio collage is any different.
We have to stand behind the Psalters at this time for their creative rights as outsider/folk musicians as well.
Given that the video has been posted since January without complaint and was only flagged as a violation after it had reached 300 viewers also calls the motive of the plaintiff into question - as does the clause about the advertisements.

No, we are not ready for Rumblefish. (The previous statement is meant as a pun and not a copyright violation.) We just want to go on doing on our thing and sharing with peace and love.

If there is anyone out there reading this who has any input, suggestions, or corrections, please leave them in the comments form or email haint@haint.info. We welcome assistance in resolving this. We have more information, emails and screenshots that we didn't post.
We are looking into posting the video on another site so people can see it and make their own determination. (I don't think I can directly embed the video in Blogger - I may be able to get the audio to play on this blog and if I figure it out I will update - L).

This is a far cry from sitting down and making art, but it has the same significance. I express messages in my art and these messages are about the way I see the world and the changes I would like to see. The piece Superfluous from the video is one such piece - an ornate machine that pumps out upside down American flag pins. And this is a real life experience of that.

We'll keep you posted on how this works out.
Peace and love
Haint (and Littia)


This post was originally posted in Haint's Stuff on October 23, 2009