Copyright Axe To Fall On YouTube? 295
theoddball writes "In what should come as no great surprise, Universal Music Group is preparing to file suit against YouTube for copyright infringement, the AP
reports. Discussions with the site's owners have broken down (although talks are apparently still progressing with Myspace / News Corp over similar issues). From the article: 'We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars,' Universal Music CEO Doug Morris told investors Wednesday at a conference in Pasadena. This development follows last month's announcement that YouTube is negotiating with labels to legally host videos. While the primary complaint is against music videos, one cannot help but wonder if this will also impact the many, many homemade videos using copyrighted UMG songs as a soundtrack (or — *shudder* — a lipsync.)"
how insane (Score:5, Interesting)
am i alone when i say i am blown away that record labels ask stations for a penny to show their videos? i don't know how they did things in the stone age, but MY generation will NOT pay major labels to promote THEIR albums.
Had to be a *music* company (Score:3, Interesting)
Youtube is going to become Napster 2.0: once wildly popular, then sued into oblivion.
a host or a distributor? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sue'm All (Score:2, Interesting)
YouTube Legal Strategy:
We seem to be liable for 'contribuatory infringement'; aka we make it possible (knowingly?) for others to violate copyright (even though we respond to requests to remove copyrighted material).
The RIAA, etc, want their 'pound of flesh', and we don't think they deserve it.
If we are liable, for contributing to the violations, then necessarily, others must be as well. While we provide the service to share, the individual users must knowingly violate, as well as everyone between the copyright holder and us.
Therefore we sue:
Amen. The lawsuit to finally decide the issue.
Re:Tens of millions (Score:5, Interesting)
Evanescence AMVs (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:When will these people get it?? (Score:3, Interesting)
took this long? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:how insane (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Looks like the rider beat the horse (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:how insane (Score:3, Interesting)
Pretty much, unless you can somehow cross the time-barrier about 15 years.
The labels have all made it pretty clear (and the analysts have agreed) that they made a big-time mistake providing free content to MTV for as long as they did. Sure, Huey Lewis and The News and a-Ha never would have had the careers they did were it not for the freebies, but at the end of the cycle MTV (and it's johnny-come-lately rivals, like Fuse) fared far, far better in the deal than did the labels. When MTV captured the eyeballs and mind-set, it switched gears away from vids to original programming, leaving their "purist" rivals stuck with paying the bills to the newly educated and enraged recording labels.
I was there (literally, as it turns out) when MTV launched in '82, and I can tell you that everyone I knew just kept their tube on that channel cuz there was no where else you could see these vids or hear these artists. And you couldn't search an archive, and no metadata indexing engine type-matched your interests so you could discover similar artists, and nobody dreamed of "owning" a vid they liked, they just hoped they were in front of the tube when it played again.
Why would anyone watch MTV or Fuse for the videos when they have broadband? And why would a label give a free ride to a video network, knowing what it knows now? (If Fuse does not get vids for free, it will have to pay somebody for some kind of content; label figures, 'why not me?' And they're right.)
MySpace is to youth culture in 2006 what MTV was to it in 1982. It is through the conduit of the social networking sites that the labels will be promoing their wares, not linear-ly programmed TV networks.
Re:Tens of millions (Score:2, Interesting)
Whether youTube makes money through advertising seems entirely irrelevant. Hosting providers like Geocities that provide free hosting with advertising don't become more responsible for hosted content because they get advertising revenue. Specifically, [RI,MP]AA organizations seem to insist that they oppose the redistribution of their content, regardless of whether any money is involved.
Re:Tens of millions (Score:3, Interesting)
Viral Ownership by the Anti-Publishers. (Score:3, Interesting)
At the end of the day, these movie/song clips are just basically adverts. Its the ultimate form of Viral Advertising and the studios should be encouraging it, not trying to control it. If they want to make money then this sort of stuff is gold for them, it doesn't cost them anything at all and its not hard to start something.
For a normal publisher, that would be true. A normal publisher finds and promotes excellent works in a free market. Big media is the exact opposite of all that. They are based on exclusion and it has nothing to do with artistic merit. YouTube is just another attempt a free entertainment market, a competitor to be owned and destroyed.
The two big music companies make money by controlling your taste in music. They grew up with physical median and are still geared to the "big hit" marketing model. They don't want anyone else exposing you to something they are not promoting because that will take money away from their promoted act. Their whole business model is based on owning the broadcast spectrum and excluding everything but their sad top 40 songs a week. They have bought an extensive set of laws to extend this model into the future
YouTube is going to meet the same fate as Napster and MTV before it. They own your culture because they own all recorded media by purchase and intimidation. Witness the problems Jib Jab had over a parody of a song that was actually in public domain. It's a chicken and egg problem big media thinks they can win. At a nominal rate of $40,000 per sample, big media can decide who gets to use anything from the recorded past in our common memory. When a YouTuber puts a Led Zeppelin guitar riff into a home video, big media can screw YouTube. They did it to MTV, which no longer plays music and they did it to Napster, which is now a failing M$ music service.
This is viral ownership. Because big media owns a tiny portion of the work placed on YouTube, they think they can take it all. In cases like MP3.com, the courts agreed with big media. I hope that the courts look at this one and finally realize that it's bad for culture to be owned like that. If big media is allowed to steal every new business this way, they will continue to own and limit what we are all exposed to. That's exactly the opposite of what copyright is all about.
Re:One of the biggest issues for the Internet (Score:2, Interesting)
I have to disagree with that premise. I think most people feel like the flowering of free expression that is resulting is a benefit to everyone, including those who currently think they are being harmed.
It is also unrealistic to believe that there would be no damage if the infrastructure was completely shut down (even if this was technically possible, which is doubtful).
Same thing