Comments on: YouTube's fate rests on decade-old copyright law

Wording of DMCA, which appeared in Congress long before the Web video revolution, could determine whether YouTube disappears.

[lingsun]

Youtube engages in copyright infringement on a massive scale.

Youtube engages in massive copyright infringement. They profit from people viewing copyrighted material. They deny any responsibility to the copyright holders. In their own way, they're as arrogant as the music thieves were.

[hadaso]

What's "massive"?

What's "massive"?

is 0.1% massive? is 1% massive?
What percentage of material posted to UTube is posted contrary to the copyright holder's will?

Everyone that is making any profit on the web does it by letting people view copyrighted material. There's no such thing as "material that's not copyrighted". Everything is copyrighted by default. Everything that's posted to UTube is copyrighted. Almost everything posted generates no complaints. A very small minority of copyright holders complain about others posting their materials without permision to UTube and as far as we know when this is brought to UTube's knowledge they remove it.

SO what's the problem? The problem is that a small minority of content producers that for half a century controlled the market until it became cheap to produce and distribute content want to preserve their monopoly by closing any service that reduces the cost of distribution. They use copyright law. But their aim is to avoid competion. They want to preserve the feudalistic model they got used to where they own the means of distribution and creators of content have to work for them on their terms. They want UTube to not allow uploading of their content but they will not provide the information needed to do it. They expect UTube to to find the small percentage of posted content that they don't want posted without any info about it, and it is quite clear that the only real way to do it is not to post anything.

[Mergatroid Mania]

It's not Youtube

It's the people using Youtube.

They are a service provider. They try as they can to remove copyright stuff, but nobody's perfect.

You work for a movie studio or record company or something?

If I put a bulletin board up in my store, and someone copies some pages out of a book and pins them up, that does not make me a copyright infringer.

Actually I just realized people put newspaper pages up on bulletin boards all the time, and no one gets in trouble over it.

Face it, Youtube is a library for video. People don't sue libraries.

[mattumanu]

why is it always...

The fault of some corporate entity and not the fault of the people doing the act in the first place? When you look at the first pages of Youtube, you see that it is user generated content that prevails. When people misuse something, it's their fault and not the creator of the service.

Look at all the artists who use the service to distribute their own works. Look at all the people doing vloging. Look at all the families who use the service to share home videos with faraway relatives. But Viacom wants to ruin all of that because they percieve they are losing money. Now, I'm not calling for a boycot, but I'm looking up all the services that viacom offers so that I can avoid them in the future. Probably can't do that perfectly, but at least I'm sending a message by voting with my feet and walking away from such heavy handed tactics.

[gustaneras]

That is the price you pay...

When YouTube was only a small company, there were no
lawsuits against them. Why? It was suppossed to be a 'poor
company' lead by two young fellows...
But after Googley bought it for 1.6 billion dollars... it is a 'rich'
company, and where it is money, everybody wants his share...

Viacom videos have been in YouTube since long ago. This will
lead Google just to close it, as there wiil be lots of lawsuits like
this one, just because Google is a whealthy company. And there
is no company that can bear that load of lawsuits, and
EVERYBODY will be without this excellent way of sharing videos.

If Googles buys the Wikipedia Group... A LOT of people will try
to file lawsuits 'because i wrote that'... It is sad, very sad...

I propose a flaming -at least-, maybe a boycott, to every
company that files a lawsuit against YouTube for contents that
have been there before Google bought it. We have to defend our
rights to have YouTube. Even -as in my case- we have not
uploaded any video to it!

[Mergatroid Mania]

I agree

There needs to be some kind of protection for on line archival companies.

So long as their not allowing complete movies or anything nasty like that, just clips, they should be protected.

[Mergatroid Mania]

Why do they have to interpret the act?

Can't they just ask the guy who wrote it? Or, they could just ask a kid in grade 3 what "direct" means.
(this is why Shakespear wanted to kill all the lawyers)

And since when is a 10 year old law an antique?

[slimshady007]

Re: The (probable) meaning of "antique"

This is an internet related story, and while the DMCA is not limited
to issues about the internet, it has (as the story says) changed
drastically since 1997. Think about how a 2 yr. old laptop or 3 yr.
old desktop can be considered (by some) as "old." 10 yrs. does
make this particular application of the DMCA makes it seem
antique. The law itself is not antique, I will concede that.

[H Voyager]

Because what you think it means isn't what someone else thinks it means etc

That's the problem with laws: people don't always agree on what the law actually means, and the more complicated the issue, the more complicated the possible meanings. That's why we have a judicial system in the first place: there must be some final authority on what a law fully means, or even if the law means anything at all, or else law would cease to be a meaningful concept.

Oh, and since when is a 586/67 obsolete?

Harry Voyager

[Betty Roper]

Carrying water for Google

Wow, that news blackout really had its effect...

So the DMCA is an "antique law"? How's this for a *really* antique law that still applies: Thou Shalt Not Steal.

[extinctone]

Personally, I think YouTube is going to get its knuckles rapped...

I don't believe that they're going to be able to demonstrate "good faith" under the safe harbor provision. A policy that puts the onus on the copyright holder to monitor and report copyright violations for a service that encourages copyright violations isn't going to play well in court.

[disco-legend-zeke]

Viacom may need to go after the evil uploaders.

when you upload a video to youtube, you sign of (electronically) on a waiver to hold youtube harmless for copyright violation.

and now i just discovered a (beta) way to add licensed music tracks.

i thought i remembered a commercial at the end of each video... guess that was MySpace. Google seems to be going out of its way to "Not benefit directly."

[Gary Treible]

This is a joke (literally)

Take the Comedy Central clips off youtube and there's no reason to
go there.

[rorybaust]

It amkes sense

Just like the RIAA , its just a new revenue stream, one billion dollars, I would like them to demonstrate where their loss occurred, the offset that against the free exposure that U Tube gives them.

Greedy company that goes by the mantra if you can't beat them, can't compete with them , then litigate against them.

Vaicom will lose or else we all lose to a greedy company that wants to charge for everything.

Imagine if you had to pay to see a copyrighted menu. and yes the menu of many fine and not so fine eating establishments would be copyrighted.

[imacpwr]

What was Google thinking when they bought YouTube..??

I mean come on... it was obvious to the simplest of simpletons that
YouTube was distributing copyrighted material for a profit and
Google bought them anyway...?!?!
Hey Google.. I can make you a great deal on some (obviously
stolen) Rolexes..
;-)

[Cradelikz]

:(

I'm a youtube fan, and you know...why do we love it it's because it's a great way to see what we can't watch in normal tv.
For example, I can't see recent music video releases, and I do watch 'em on Youtube, then I buy the album, or the DVD!!
But Viacom don't see that!!
it's a free publishing tool!!

We Love Youtube, please...don't kill it!!

[fcekuahd]

If you love it, are you willing to pay for it?

That's the real question.

[golfman76]

Courts interpret law's wording rather than guess at intent?

"But what Congress intended to accomplish doesn't matter nearly as much as what it did accomplish--because courts interpreting Section 512 will focus on the law's actual wording rather than the murkier question of congressional intent."

Are you kidding me? The Courts' main focus, so it seems, is to 'interpret' what the lawmakers 'intended', trumping what it actually just 'says'.

Especially for things like the 2nd Amendment. For example...

In 2004:
A federal judge upheld the District of Columbia's gun control law that prohibits ownership of handguns. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton...ruled that the Second Amendment does not apply to the district because it was "intended" to protect state citizens, and the district is not a state.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/01/15/gun.law.ap/

Then just this month 2007:
"The district's definition of the militia is just too narrow," Judge Laurence Silberman wrote for the majority Friday. "There are too many instances of 'bear arms' indicating private use to conclude that 'the drafters intended' only a military sense."
http://www.abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=nation_world&id=5109239 And
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030902416.html

[avsb1]

Let's try some thing new...

We all knew this fight was going to get official. while both Viacom and Google are media giants in their own ways, only the latter has stepped up for its users in the past. Do you have any facts or views to add? Write a line or share a detailed analysis...both will help. Now's the time to speak, and here's the place: http://viatube.blogspot.com

[forrestkelly]

What would happen if Google made it a policy that no content copywritten by Viacom would be allowed on YouTube? Would Viacom file a discrimination lawsuit? If not, perhaps the loss of revenue that Viacom receives from free advertising on YouTube would require the financial controllers of Viacom to stop the fees being paid to the attorneys they've hired to prosecute YouTube.