Copyright Claims vs. Hatsune Miku Youtube Videos

As you may know, I am a member of the German pirate party. An important reason for joining was that I disapprove a system where the mere claim (without the need for providing any evidence) that certain content infringes copyright is sufficient for its takedown. Not only does this approach collide with my view that guilty until proven guilty should be a universal principle not just for penal codes, it also makes the abusive use of false claims way to easy.

In the case of YouTube’s automated system things are even worse. Not only can false claims be made – they can made by anybody, not just by persons who are authorized by the copyright holder to do so. I am a huge fan of vocaloids in general and Hatsune Miku in particular and while I have an account at nicovideo (the site where most vocaloid music is uploaded), I prefer accessing them on youtube because there you can build a virtually infinite number of playlists.

I now learned that there seems to be a concerted action to have high-ranked Hatsune Miku videos removed from youtube by making false claims of copyright infringement which not only results in those videos being removed but also in accounts being closed due to such claims and the three strikes rule.

The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku from YouTube

This is incident is sad in may ways including:

• A means created for a just cause is abused for a hidous one (first and foremost copyright is not about making money but about empowering creators of content so that they have a say in how it is used – this is so central that German law does not even allow you to give up this right).
• Damage is done to the community because many Hatsune Miku songs usually are happy ones that brighten your day.
• As vocaloids allow every hobby composer to use vocals without having to paying quite a lot of money on a singer or having to find people willing to sing without payment, they allow talents that would otherwise have been lost to give a world-wide audience delight.

For more please visit Recent Copyright Claims Affecting Miku Youtube Videos at Vocaloidism. Please help spread the word about this attack on wonderful music created for what likely is the oldest reason to make music: the fun of making it and listening to it.

Fittingly, the song that you hear as BGM for the above video is The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku.

I wonder if the incident may have to do with the top position at Singers You'd Like to Perform at the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremonies

Google Maps: From The Shire to Mordor

This is what happens if you as Google Maps how to walk from The Shire to Mordor.

From The Shire to Mordor

Notice that you do not only get the iconic “One does not simply walk into Mordor.” but also the hint that the given route has tolls.

Youtube Videos: Navigation by Numbers

You can use the number keys 0 through 9 to move to certain locations in a youtube video:

key	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
position	beginning	10%	20%	30%	40%	50%	60%	70%	80%	90%

Allow me to use Big Buck Bunny as an illustration:

Skipping through Big Buck Bunny

OptimizeGoogle

OptimizeGoogle enhances Google search results and removes ads and spam.

GReader Panel

GReader Panel displays mobile Google Reader in a panel. Quite useful if you just want to take a quick look at the most recent news.

No restart required.

GoogleReaderPlus

GoogleReaderPlus adds useful tools to your Google reader.

Google Documents Viewer

Google Documents Viewer allows you to open documents in Google Docs Viewer with a simple right click. View PDF, DOCX, XLSX and much more online with Google Docs Viewer. Supported Document Types are:

• Microsoft Word (.DOC and .DOCX)
• Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.PPT and .PPTX)
• Adobe Portable Document Format (.PDF)
• Apple Pages (.PAGES)
• Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
• Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
• Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF)
• Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
• Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
• PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
• TrueType (.TTF)
• XML Paper Specification (.XPS)
• Archive file types (.ZIP and .RAR)

No restart required.

Google Contacts

Google Contacts is a Thunderbird add-on which allows you to access your Google contacts and synchronize them with Thunderbird address books. It detects gmail accounts which have already set up and creates address books for each of them.

Cards in the address books are synchronized with Google contacts; they represent the current Google contacts contents and Google contacts will be modified when you modify the cards. TB's mailing lists and Google's contacts groups are synchronized in the same manner.

Provider for Google Calendar

Provider for Google Calendar allows Sunbird and Lightning to read and write events to a Google Calendar. You may also wish to take a look at my earlier Google Calendar with Thunderbird or Seamonkey post.

Google Shortcuts - All Google Services at a glance

Google Shortcuts - All Google Services at a glance allows you to display all Google services as buttons or as a space-saving dropdown menu next to your address bar. Reach services like Google+, Gmail, Google reader, Google maps, Google calendar, and many more in a single click from your browser.

Google Calendar with Thunderbird or Seamonkey

Regardless whether you are using Thunderbird or SeaMonkey, chances are you want to integrate a Google calendar.

Mozilla Thunderbird 5.0 on GNU/Linux
screen shot from Wikipedia

SeaMonkey 2.5 on GNU/Linux
own screen shot, mail client window

The integration is quite simple. The first step is obtaining and installing Lightning, available for both Thunderbird (from this location, shown left) and SeaMonkey (from this location, shown right).

Obtaining lightning

For how to install Add-Ons in Thunderbird see this page; adding them to SeaMonkey is easier, here you just click on them.

While plain Lightning already is a nice calendar it ships with no support for Google Calendar. For this you also need Provider for Google Calendar, again available for both Thunderbird (from this location, shown left) and SeaMonkey (from this location, shown right).

Obtaining provider for Google Calendar

For an explanation on how to configure Lightning to access your Google Calendar, allow me to point you to make use of's “How To: Integrate Google Calendar Into Thunderbird”. Note that while the article explicitly mentions Thunderbird it also applies to SeaMonkey.

Strange Google+ sharing behavior

I only add people to my circles who already are on Google+. You can surely understand my surprise when while being about to share a link I was presented the option

☑ Also email 1 person not yet using Google+

1 person not yet using Google+

I beg your pardon? The person in question is not in my mail address book and supposedly is not yet using Google+ so one has to ask what has happened.

My first hypothesis was that Google messed up th message and that the option in fact should read

☑ Also email 1 person currently not using Google+

The obvious next step is verifying someone originally using Google+ has stopped doing so. Said, done.

Elvis has left the buidling

Initial hypothesis turned out to be right. I guess a tactical facepalm is appropriate.

YouTube meets German history, fails miserably

Believe it or not: YouTube recommended SS (Nazi) March songs because I have been listening to the national anthem of the strongly antifascist German Democratic Republic. Now this clearly is an epic fail.

Are you kidding, YouTube?

If you wonder about the brown area in the thumbnail: After consulting the German penal code I covered the SS logo that originally was present because it would have been legally too risky for me to leave them unaltered.

Youtube Videos on Blogger

Suppose you want to add http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XkmLj33Md0 – 「【鏡音リン】ココロ【手書きPV】」 – to a Blogger post. You are then presented the following three methods to do so:

Upload a file from your computer

Search a video on YouTube, then add it

Chose one of your YouTube videos

For legal reasons you can rule out the first and last option. So what remains is option 2: you need to search for the video by its Japanese description.

Even if you overcome the initial hurdle and manage to enter (or copy and paste) the title you are still in trouble: in this particular case you are presented with a lot videos that match the search term, all carrying descriptions in Japanese:

あなた(anata)は(wa)日本語(nihongo)が(ga)わかりますか(wakarimasuka)？
Do you understand Japanese?

Fortunately there IS a simple solution to this problem that a) works without non-ASCII characters and b) results in precisely the video you want. The first idea is to paste the URL into the search box. Unfortunately this does not work out as expected:

Search for full URL

 But using the URL is almost the solution; what you actually need to use is the video’s id; in the case of  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XkmLj33Md0, the ID is “7XkmLj33Md0”. Sometimes youtube URLs are longer, in such cases you need to locate the “v=” part and use everything up to a “&” or  “#” (it should have 11 characters).

Search for video ID only

As you see I am now presented just one single choice and it is the correct video. If you do not trust me try the above method using a different URL.

【鏡音リン】ココロ【手書きPV】

Google+ and YouTube

YouTube – like Google+ – is operated by Google. This however does not stop them from showing only limited compatibility. Here is an example:

I first tried to add the video on Google+ by just pasting the youtube URL and only got an annoying message. This is strange as it used to work until recently. You still can add videos but only in a more time-consuming way.

Update (2011-11-15, 2000 Zulu): The above issue no longer exists. Thank you, Google.

Google Translate Beatboxing

Amazing beatboxing using only Google Translate’s sound output.

Google Translate Beaver Beatbox

Are you kidding me, Blogger?

Out of the blue, Blogger decided to talk to me in some Indian language. What on Earth is that supposed to mean?