Firm Says Bird Songs Can Be Copyrighted, Video Pulled From YouTube

With the advent of small, sophisticated, easy to use, high-quality video cameras, hunters and anglers are increasingly using the medium to record their outdoor activities; everything from fishing trips and hunting trips to dog training sessions to simple walks in the woods.

And, of course, you want to share these experiences with others, so you post your videos to YouTube, right? But you better be careful with what you post, because that meadowlark or bobwhite quail singing in the background? Yeah, that might be “copyrighted material,” at least according to some company called Rumblefish.

From this story on Boingboing:

_Rumblefish, a company notorious for sending copyright takedown notices to YouTube alleging copyright violations in videos’ soundtracks, demanded removal of a video whose audio consists entirely of ambient birdsong recorded during a walk in the woods. When the video’s creator objected, Rumblefish repeated its accusation, and Google added the notation “These content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content: Entity: rumblefish Content Type: Sound Recording.”
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_”I posted a video which is basically just me walking and talking, outdoors, away from any possible source of music…And apparently youtube identified my video as containing copyrighted music from a company called rumblefish. I filed a dispute, and now I’m waiting for said company to respond to it. Is this a freak occurrence? I feel pretty violated by this, a mysterious entity claiming to own my content and apparently profiting from it with ads. There are birds singing in the background in the video, could they own the rights to birdsong?”
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Geez, as if the birds in this country don’t have enough to worry about already, what with all the climate change, habitat loss and increased predation. Now they have to worry about getting slapped with a cease-and-desist order and the threat of a copyright-infringement lawsuit every time they feel like warbling. I’d give my opinion on this case, but I’m afraid that someone already owns the copyright to it, and I can’t legally tell you what I think. So I’ll ask you, instead.