YouTube No Friend of Copyright Violators 149
ncstockguy writes "YouTube appears to be fully aware of their copyright vulnerability and is now actively moving to head that problem off. They're now taking active steps to aid copyright holders in pursuing litigation against violators." From the article: "Its prompt legal capitulation suggests that YouTube users who post copyrighted material should not expect the company to protect them from media-business lawsuits, said Colton, whose firm wasn't involved in the Paramount subpoena or lawsuit and who learned of them from a MarketWatch reporter. The 'Twin Towers' episode is reminiscent of the way the entertainment industry vanquished the first version of Napster Inc. and other digital-music sites that made it easy to download copyrighted songs over the Internet. Music company lawyers first warned and then sued individual users who downloaded their songs. Now it looks like piracy hunters for the movie studios are using the same technique against YouTube users."
Fair use? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fair use? (Score:5, Interesting)
Pitty isn't it. I didn't have a clue about Family guy until I saw a clip of it on the Internet on some site, somewhere. Now I own all complete seasons on DVD.
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Posting clips on youtube might be legal of they were done as satire, as in with voiceover, or edited in some other way, but straight off pasting of entire clips, or collections of clips is not defensible under satire, so comes under copyright violation.
Fair use means you have the right to make your own copies, or (so far as I recall) use as satire. It does not imp
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Got torrents? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Fair use? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is completely asinine. If ever there were a fair use case to be made, that was it. Yet everyone is running scared because the cost of defending an action just isn't worth it.
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That story is related in this comic [duke.edu] (don't let the format fool you, it's an extremely good intro to the problems with current IP law.)
Oh, and don't worry about D/Ling it. It's under Creative Commons.
Re:Fair use? (Score:5, Insightful)
You speak of obvious fair use. In many ways fair use is just like the problem with patents. The patent might be obvious or have prior art, but you can't invalidate it since it would take a small army of lawyers and a few suitcases of cash to do so. Similarly, the use of a clip may be obvious fair use, but if the copyright holder decides he wants to go after you, you're toast. A trial will most likely be more expensive than the licensing fee. The cheap option in both cases is to either not use the patented technique or not use the clip.
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Trademark (Score:2)
In a word....Trademark.
If trademarks are not defended, you could lose the trademark. Of course, trademark is about name recognition which is marketing.
B.
Re:Fair use? (Score:5, Informative)
Since that time, it's dropped out of use. That's one way laws become draconian - unofficial guidelines that worked get dropped in favor of 'rigorous interpretations' that benefit only one party. All your examples are quite accurate under current law (to my admittedly limited knowledge - read my sig goldarnit). All of them are also enormously, almost mind-numbingly less than the old 1/4 guideline would imply they should be.
This happened at the start of the 'war on drugs', back in the first decades of the 20th century with the anti-opium laws - the laws included not too rigorous guidelines about some quite practical exceptions, such as doctor's perscriptions. Then the courts just started ultra-narrowly interpreting everything that wasn't spelled out in detail, saying for example that Doctors couldn't perscribe just to treat addiction itself, couldn't treat the pain from disease "X" because "X" wasn't painful enough, couldn't specialize in treating addiction, etc., and as it gathered momentum; 10,000 doctors lost their liscences or were actually jailed within the next few years.
According to some pretty reputable historians, you could add: the nation tried a costly experiment with prohibition of alcohol based on the opiate law model, we had Doctor shortages that lasted, in some once well served areas, for more than a generation, medical prices began their still ongoing rise at rates much faster than general inflation, and the average addict had virtually no chance of getting treatment rather than incarceration for the next 35-40 years, until we had to deal with a huge influx of addicted veterans from WW2 burn wards, and the general reluctance to just jail them forced a few changes on the system.
I don't know if an IP issue can screw the whole country up as bad as that did, but I'm pretty sure the current policies will do the maximum damage possible within their sphere. Personally, I think it will be blamed for at least a literary dark age, when we lost a lot of media before they became common culture.
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How Is The Use Fair? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or did you mean "fair" in the sense of actual fairness? This, sadly, is only a distant cousin of "fair use" fair.
Re:Fair use? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It would be stupid.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Irony (Score:2)
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But if you insist:
nazi should be Nazi
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The full, but short, Wired piece is here:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/start.htm l?pg=13 [wired.com]
More fair-use links are here:
http://www.screensite.org/index.php?option=com_boo kmarks&Itemid=28&mode=0& [screensite.org]
And now they're fucked. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And now they're fucked. (Score:5, Funny)
Although bandwidth might be a problem...
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In English though.
Re:And now they're fucked. (Score:5, Insightful)
1.65 billion. BILLION.
1 650 000 000 USD
Maybe Google was f*cked with YouTube, but damn... I think the founders achieved all they could ever want:
- Get a HUGE LOAD OF CASH (in google stock IIRC but anyway, they can cash it anytime)
- Avoid the whole entertainment business suing them for infirngements
- Leave YouTube in good hands (Google).
Now, of course Google will sort things out on the copyright front, but Google already has this image of "anti-establishment" and "cool". So as long as YouTube is associated with them, and they don't change it too much to displease the fans, it'll keep running for some years to come.
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Nice smoke and mirrors.
I would agree with you IF i
A major threat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A major threat? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A major threat? (Score:4, Informative)
Flash 9 (Score:2)
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Re:A major threat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those three clips have been up and down like a yo-yo, you bet Fox would like to see them gone so they can run "edited highlights".
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It'll never end up in "edited highlights", but more likely the trash can.
Clintowned! Watch these clips. (Score:2)
The first comment on the video says it best: Wallace got Clintowned!
If you watch only one YouTube video today, watch the Clinton-Wallace interview... unless you've already read Richard Clark's book; then you know the story already.
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Re:A major threat? (Score:4, Funny)
It's a joke. Laugh.
posting agreement (Score:5, Interesting)
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No. Because that risks reifying the concept further. It's vital that people are as careless as possible.
google, destroyer of worlds (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:google, destroyer of worlds (Score:5, Interesting)
Ya got me. But I never understand this stuff. Years ago, before there were any, I was approached to develop a live online poker site. I declined, saying it will never work because you can't stop people from cheating. And you can't, but it turned out not to matter. Then a few years ago I was approached to develop an site similar to youtube, and I said it would never work because people will always post copyrighted material and you'll get sued into oblivion.
How's that for business acumen? ;-)
Re:google, destroyer of worlds (Score:5, Funny)
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I've read at least one plausible-sounding verifiable online poker system in the last few years: it may have been in one of Bruce Schneier's books. I seem to remember it involved letting each player 'shuffle' the deck and hand out cryptographic hashes of their 'shuffle' so the other players could reproduce the starting deck afterwards and
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Because they wanted to destroy YouTube. It is basically the biggest competition for their own Google Videos product. It was only a matter of time before
How? (Score:2)
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"By their IP address (what if they used tor, a public library computer, or an open access point)? "
I doubt thats very common from most YouTube users. We are not exactly talking about master criminals here. I'm failry positive the vast majority will be kids using a computer in their parent's basement.
"Shouldn't the copyright holders be going after youtube since they are a clearly identifiable hoster of material that they do not have the rights to archive and/or distribute?"
They could, which is why Y
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Exactly. And most of these non-master criminals can't even secure a wireless access point with something as simple as WEP. I can pick up 65 wireless networks from my apartment using netstumbler. Very few of them are set to anything but defaults. Their parents aren't any smarter in most cases. Even a closed ac
Inaccurate (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Inaccurate (Score:5, Interesting)
You're making the presumption that Google intended to keep Youtube as it was when they bought it.
Seriously, Youtube kicked Google Video's butt in the market. Google realized that if you can't beat 'em, you should join them. So they bought off Youtube, and now their major competitor is themselves. They can do whatever they want with Youtube because it can only be positive for Google Video.
Being Google, I don't expect them to shut the doors like Oracle & PeopleSoft. Rather, I expect that Google will aim to take whatever it is that makes Youtube successful, and merge it with the Google Video backend. In theory, this fusion would improve both services. In practice... well.... (*rocks open hand*) eh, we'll see.
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Google Video is just an unpopular Youtube without the copyright violation. Its #1 function is to waste Google's money.
So the only competition that Youtube offered Google was in the money wasting biz. And now Google has cornered it.
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And you assume YouTube's success would last long enough to matter. The matter of fact is they were in highly unstable situation.
No tangible solid revenue source, and the whole entertainment industry targeting their ass
Re:Inaccurate (Score:4, Insightful)
Paying to see to it that your competition is destroyed is not a waste of money.
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http://youtube.com/watch?v=54LcZbig8fY [youtube.com]
YouTube has real problems, like Napster (Score:2)
Like I said before [slashdot.org], YouTube has the same legal problems Napster did.
If they're not yet doing so, I'd expect the RIAA to start running a song recognition program [tyberis.com] against YouTube content. That will catch all those videos with commercial music attached.
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Ooh, you pro!
> same legal problems Napster did.
Napster were tiny - that was the "legal problem" Napster faced. Google, however, are huge, so who's going to win any legal battle?
Google will host whatever people upload, and if there's a complaint, it'll be pulled. That's it.
Fair use and congress (Score:2, Interesting)
So battle must be fought in Washington by supporting and electing off
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Actually, YouTube is following the law - they're complying with DMCA to the letter.
Title II [wikipedia.org] limits their liability if they follow the conditions for safe harbor, namely that they warn users in their terms of service, and promptly take down content if it infringes copyrights. This they are doing.
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it's difficult to see why Google puts up with this (Score:2)
It's an election year. Why the hell aren't they trying to buy off Congress and the Senate? 435 Congresscritters and 100 Senators, a $100K campaign contribution to each (or in the case of R/MPAA leadership, to their opponent) would only cost $53.5 million dollars. This would dwarf campaign contrib
Who will protect YouTube? (Score:2, Insightful)
Analogy: If a store knowingly sells bootleg DVD
Gotta hand it to them (Score:5, Insightful)
Invite the world to post whatever they like on your site, take the massive bandwidth costs on the chin thanks to the venture capital money. Gain countless users virtually overnight due to your easy-to-use site and cavalier attitude to copyright law. Sell the site to a competitor keen to see you out of the market so they can have it to themselves, get yourself a ridiculous amount of Google shares. Days after selling the site, turn on the users that have just made you mind-bogglingly rich, and watch them desert in their millions while you laugh all the way to the bank, leaving the people that have just bought your site with a worthless asset.
Google: you've been mugged.
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Google isn't stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Google can then move into this market at will. I'm all for draconian copyright enforcement, because it will lead to widespread civil disobedience and ultimately, a changing of the laws in what the public deems it's interest. It needs to get a little worse still, but the seeds are already there.
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Yeah right. In happy fantasy land with little green elves, that will happen. In the real world, people won't engage in civil disobedience. How many people do you know are willing to go to jail over "unjust copyright law"? Please get a grip. Civil disobedience is extremely unpopular. If people get caught doing something illegal, they
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Actually they know exactly what they're doing: it's the classic Microsoft tactic of simply buying out competition in order to conquer the market. They didn't even buy it with money, just shares that they can make up out of nowhere.
So effectively, Google have closed down their biggest rival in the online video market for NOTHING.
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Google/YouTube want to change Business preception (Score:5, Insightful)
What I am trying to say is that I think (and this has been said before) that Google and YouTube are betting on the fact that there is no such thing as bad press, i.e., anything that gets you out in the public is a good thing and that media companies will in the long run benefit: Think of comedy central and all the clips of The Daily Show that seem to be there. Don't tell me that doesn't turn on more viewers to the real show or tell me and then explain why it wouldn't.
Ie. Media companies benefit from exposure which gains them sells. This is called advertising. YouTube is the best advertising vehicle I've seen in a long time and because of this, Business perception will change. Or we can hope.
Re:Google/YouTube want to change Business precepti (Score:2)
The way I understand it is not that it doesn't turn more viewers onto the show but that the studio execs are pissed off that they're not making any money from the online distribution of those clips. So basically, they don't want to wait for the online clips to bring in more viewers - they want to get paid as soon as any person sees anything that has ever been on the show.
Re:Google/YouTube want to change Business precepti (Score:2)
You've hit the nail on the head here. The problem is, YouTube faces serious problems primarily because their technology is so easy to reproduce. Competitors, like Revver, provide a much better option for people who want to share videos because they offer a share of earnings that the video creates. If I was the Daily Show, or Fox or any major content producer, I would post
Here's what a random blogger had to say: (Score:3)
It's About the Copyright, Stupid [blogcritics.org]
[...]
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Remind me: Google bought YouTube for what reason? (Score:1)
They're not that thorough.. (Score:2)
You heard it here first, folks! (Score:5, Funny)
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Broken record... (Score:2)
Really, I think the **AA folks should be cheering Google for this one - it may just save them a lot of legal costs going after people as YouTube cleans up on its own.
This will just keep happening - people want free stuff and the copyright holders don't want free stuff. Nothing complicated here, folks.
The only
My own little slashback (Score:2, Insightful)
Bye bye YouTube (Score:2)
It was nice while it lasted. Now if you sneeze the wrong direction your video will be taken down, and might get sued to boot.
Why is YouTube different? (Score:2)
Is GeoCities being sued because people have uploaded illegally copied content to a GeoCities homepage?
Is Photobucket beung sued because people have uploaded illegally copied photos to a Photobucket account?
If I upload a copyrighted video to Rapidshare without permission, the copyright holder can ask rapidshare for it to be removed. B
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Google does comply with the DCMA but it is quite a complex procedure you have to go through to show you are the copyright holder. It is not just a question of blasting off an email or tagging a video you can see violates your or someone else copyright.
DCMA seems to be getting a bit overused. It is designed to extend common carrier type status to ISPs. Having read the relevant sections it is not obvious that it covers an online service that is sytematically profiting from copyrig
Is Youtube about copyright infringement? (Score:3, Interesting)
So I don't actually think that YouTube cracking down harder on people who post copyright material will matter. They have been removing any copyrighted materials reported to them for a long time. This is not a new thing.
If YouTube is popular only because of the copyright material it will die, otherwise there won't be much of a change. Personally I think it is popular because of the community it has encouraged and help build, and the free content that community creates.
Why are you assuming you are smarter than Google? (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Acquire YouTube.
2. Do a merge-and-sort operation on YouTube with GoogleVideo.
3. Heavily promote the new service.
4. Publicize attacks from copyright-holders, while staving them off with court delays, offers of settlements, etc.
5. Repeat 3. and 4. until the great unwashed masses wake up to the annoying disconnect between what they want to do and what some rich bastards will let them do, and because Google has been telling them a lot lately, they realize that this is due to those rich bastards having bought copyright laws.
6. Use the popular momentum to get the parts of copyright law that are bothersome to Google's business--and probably, also those parts that the removal of which wouldn't harm Google's business--carved out.
So sue me (Score:2)
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|Good thing thats perfectly legal in my country.
In Eastern Europe there are more effetive ways of dealing with copyright infringers
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If Google is doing so wrong then why the Google ads?