YouTube No Friend of Copyright Violators

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."

Comments

Fair use?

[caseih]

Will clips from shows like the Simpsons and the Family Guy start disappearing from youtube? I believe they are legal due to fair use. But we all know how copyright holders feel about that these days.

Re:Fair use?

[CRCulver]

The definition of "fair use" depends entirely on the type of media in question. Sure, with a lot of text, from academic or journalism sources, one is able to quote small snippets fairly freely for scholarly purposes. With literature, the vise tightens; publishers feel unsafe if their authors quote more than a single line from a work of poetry without permission from the poet or estate. With music scores, you'd best not even try quoting, because even a single barline copied without the publisher's permission will get you sued--the RIAA gets a lot of bad press on Slashdot, but I think music publishers are even more vicious.

With a television program, you'd probably only get away with making use of stills, not an entire animated sequence, let alone one that encapsulates an entire joke.

Re:Fair use?

[Dachannien]

Posting short clips from TV shows alone (i.e., not in any context other than simply to allow others to view the clips) is probably not fair use. But it would be stupid of the TV networks to remove such clips from sites like YouTube. It's free advertising for their shows, though that's never stopped a media executive from having said free advertising taken down anyway.

Re:Fair use?

[suv4x4]

With a television program, you'd probably only get away with making use of stills, not an entire animated sequence, let alone one that encapsulates an entire joke.

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.

Re:Fair use?

[sgtrock]

I remember reading someplace that the makers of a documentary about a traveling opera troupe wanted to show a scene of the crew backstage while the performance was underway. Apparently, there were 3 or 4 guys sitting around playing cards while a TV showing the Simpsons was playing in the background. It was a very short scene, about 8 seconds or so, but the lawyers for the documentary company felt that even that short segment was liable to be challenged by Fox. The documentary's director eventually, reluctantly, decided to drop the scene rather than approach Fox to see if they would have a problem with its use.

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.

Re:Fair use?

[OECD]

That story is related in this comic (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?

[Artifakt]

Up through about 1970, there was a general rule of thumb, that you could not be sure of remaining within the law if you quoted more than 1/4 of a work under fair use. This was invoked re. purposes such as criticism or teaching that were themselves basic to fair use, and I personally heard it used by both legal departments and judges in copyright cases.
      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.

Re:Fair use?

[stinerman]

It was in the book "Free Culture" by Lawrence Lessig. Apparently Fox wanted a very large sum of money (I thought it was over $50,000) for a license to use that clip in the documentary.

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.

Re:Fair use?

[/dev/trash]

Legally they are not fair use. They are infringement.

Re:Fair use?

[rockhome]

A lot of these situations are, in part, the making of the fair users. Fox has no leg to stand on if the using the footage is fair. there was no intent to include, and the piece was in no way related to the copy righted material, it was incidental to the environment. If more people would stand up and refuse to pay for fair use, then many of these problems would go away.

Re:Fair use?

[pipingguy]

Similar thing here. After seeing Futurama on TV I ended up buying the whole series on DVD. Is watching a show on TV vs. YouTube all that different?

Re:Fair use?

[pipingguy]

On a related issue, what is with the deliberate blurring of product names in some programs? Is it a result of a request from the rights holders or a form of marketing?

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the copyright holders aren't being compensated when some guy posts clips off the dvd ripped episodes of Futurama/Family Guy on YouTube. Doesn't mean they couldn't extend their tollerance with the view that it might actually increase sales, not decrease them. Who wants to watch 5 min Family Guy clips when you can get the whole seasons for practically nothing?

Re:Fair use?

[EtherealStrife]

And lets not forget the Peanut Butter Jelly Time joke that Family Guy used, without permission from the creator. Of course, the creator used materials from other sources (w/o their consent) to create the original PBJT short. So if a YouTuber put that up, would it be 1st, 2nd, and 3rd hand copyright infringement? I bet the **aa lawyers are salivating over that one . . . .

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

it usually because the blurred logo/product is a competitor of a company that bought advertising and they don't want to risk losing them over "endorsing" a competitor's product

Re:Fair use?

[rucs_hack]

from their point of view, yes, since someone paid them for the right to broadcast on tv, but they get no royalties for unauthorised web broadcast.

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 impart the right to rebroadcast, which posting on youtube/google video is equivilent too.

I don't know how far satire can be stretched either. Possibly the huge volume of content means they'll just steamroller over people who are posting satire (which I'm sure they'd love to do anyway).

For a good example of defensible satire, check out vader sessions on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A0rwG39Jzk

It's a shame, since I have also purchased content I've caught on the web, but this transmission method does not fit within their business model, so they can't allow it.

Re:Fair use?

[ArizonaJer]

To be more precise about the definition of "fair use" under US law, ask these four questions about the use being made (summarized in a Wired article from 2003):

1. Is the use transformative?
2. What's the nature of the copyrighted work?
3. How much did you change?
4. What's the effect on the market?

The full, but short, Wired piece is here:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/start.htm l?pg=13

More fair-use links are here:

http://www.screensite.org/index.php?option=com_boo kmarks&Itemid=28&mode=0&catid=5&navstart=0&search= *

Of course, I Am Not A Lawyer--even though my father and brother are.

Re:Fair use?

[Oligonicella]

Speaking of which, how much trouble would it have been to blur the screen and audio enough to become 'mumbling'?

Re:Fair use?

[Oligonicella]

That "general rule of thumb" certainly didn't apply to novels or recordings. If so, you're saying you could quote fifty pages of most novels and a full minute of many popular songs and be within limit. Nope, don't buy it.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox has no leg to stand on if the using the footage is fair.

Ah, "if". Nice word that. Every lawyer can hear that word coming from miles away. It literally takes a lawsuit to determine if using the footage was fair.

If you don't like it, start voting people out of office until you find people who aren't so beholden to the laywers that they are incapable of producing laws where you can determine whether or not what you intend to do is legal before you do it. None of this "I know it when I see it" bullshit.

Re:Fair use?

[Rhipf]

Now its gotten so bad that absolutely anything remotely possible of causing a copyright hassle is blurred. I am find it extremely annoying to see all the blurred t-shirts, prints, televisions, etc. that may be in the background of a film. Before long (and maybe they already do) news footage will be blurring out these things as well. Just imagine a shot of Times Square in this new age of copyright worry. One big blur with only the acter seen clearly.

And now they're fucked.

[Spazntwich]

There's nothing special about YouTube to keep people there and away from their competitors. Once they earn a reputation like this, I think we'll quickly see a mass migration to more "people friendly" sites. Whether they want it or not, the anti-establishment teens are going to see them as corporate shills and take their eyeballs elsewhere.

Re:And now they're fucked.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, Spazntwich, lets chopper to Sealand and co-create VideoHaven. We'll have that Simpsons clip on the front page, the one where Homer says: "There are no laws here: We can do anything we want!"

Although bandwidth might be a problem...

Re:And now they're fucked.

[Spazntwich]

I'm in, but I want our front page to be this clip.

In English though.

Re:And now they're fucked.

[Anonymous Coward]

And good riddance with that.

Re:And now they're fucked.

[suv4x4]

Re:And now they're fucked.

There's nothing special about YouTube to keep people there and away from their competitors. Once they earn a reputation like this, I think we'll quickly see a mass migration to more "people friendly" sites. Whether they want it or not, the anti-establishment teens are going to see them as corporate shills and take their eyeballs elsewhere.

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.

Re:And now they're fucked.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. The ONLY thing youtube had over the other sites is lots of content, a huge part of that being illegal. If you remove all that copyrighted stuff, you're left with something like google video under a different name. Just a bit of stale and uninteresting content left. It's EXACTLY like the old napster case. Get rid of the copyrighted stuff, and everybody will go away. And just like napster, it was fun while it lasted...

Anybody cares to mention a few alternative sites?

Re:And now they're fucked.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sealand is a fantasy. There's nothing stoping the British army/navy from raiding those servers for "illegal content." If the MPAA can get their lackeys to do it in Sweden, the can get them to do it on Sealand.

A major threat?

[elronxenu]

Because of course I like to watch my hollywood movies on a tiny screen, transcoded and fuzzy.

Re:A major threat?

[aymanh]

Add to this the fact that sound goes out of sync with the Linux Flash plugin, and you are gold :)

Re:A major threat?

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

Because of course I like to watch my hollywood movies on a tiny screen, transcoded and fuzzy.

Hollywood movies aren't the sort of thing that bothers the copyright holders so much as losing control over things like this.

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".

Re:A major threat?

[aarku]

Well, you can click the fullscreen button, wait for your movie to reload, then watch it sorta fullscreen, transcoded, and really really fuzzy.

It's a joke. Laugh.

Re:A major threat?

[O'Laochdha]

Jesus...it's always Fox News. I would be more scared over music videos, or clips of TV shows.

Re:A major threat?

[tpemble]

I'm not sure about this, but isn't news public domain?

Re:A major threat?

[sheldon]

Fox more likely tried to pull that video because they realized it was making Wallace look bad, despite their attempts at spinning it the other way.

It'll never end up in "edited highlights", but more likely the trash can.

Re:A major threat?

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Try the Flash 9 beta. Finally I can watch flash videos under Linux and have sound that actually works properly.

Re:A major threat?

[ocelotbob]

The facts are public domain, but a particular presentation is not. While you're perfectly within your rights to produce a copy of, say, "A Midsummer's Night Dream," you cannot record a theatre's version and publish it freely.

Re:A major threat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course Fox would like to see them gone. They've been edited by liberals.

Re:A major threat?

[OneoFamillion]

Doing this will, of course, eat up all your CPU cycles too.

posting agreement

[TheSHAD0W]

When these people posted the videos, they affirmed that they had the right to do so. That certainly opens them up to legal trouble if they did not. I don't know how long the concept of intellectual property will hold out, but until that point everyone needs to be careful about what they upload.

Re:posting agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how long the concept of intellectual property will hold out, but until that point everyone needs to be careful about what they upload.

No. Because that risks reifying the concept further. It's vital that people are as careless as possible.

google, destroyer of worlds

[Anonymous Coward]

this is going to destroy youtube. If people are afraid to post anything with copyrighted material, whether it's the music in the background or clips from a show, then the whole thing is going to fall apart. I know I'm just repeating what's already been said a million times over, but why the hell did google buy youtube in the first place if they were just going to turn around and do this?

Re:google, destroyer of worlds

[Paradise Pete]

I know I'm just repeating what's already been said a million times over, but why the hell did google buy youtube in the first place if they were just going to turn around and do this?

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

[Professor_UNIX]

If people are afraid to post anything with copyrighted material, whether it's the music in the background or clips from a show, then the whole thing is going to fall apart. I know I'm just repeating what's already been said a million times over, but why the hell did google buy youtube in the first place if they were just going to turn around and do this?

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 YouTube tanked though. Napster on one hand was merely a directory of users that were serving up content from *their* computers in a peer-to-peer fashion. Napster never hosted any copyrighted content like YouTube does and yet Napster still got their asses handed to them. YouTube flagrantly allows users to violate copyright laws without any policing on their part whatsoever. Why don't uploaded videos have to pass through an editorial review process before they get posted to a public forum? YouTube needs to take responsibility for the fact that they have a huge hand in allowing copyrighted material to be hosted on *their* servers. Ignorance is no excuse.

Re:google, destroyer of worlds

[ocelotbob]

Could you let me know next time you're presented with another unworkable idea you want to turn down? I'd kinda like to become rich and famous.

Re:google, destroyer of worlds

[kz45]

"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"

It seems that people that are oblivious to any kind of law (copyright or otherwise) are successful (they don't sit and think about how something is illegal..they just do it and then hope that when they are called on it, they will figure a way out).

I had the idea for napster about 2 years before it was even out. I even had a beta of my program that I gave to a bunch of my friends...I only stopped because I figured I would be destroyed by the recording industry.

Even though napster was eventually taken down, Shawn Fanning did get a couple million out of it (I heard he is living in a nice house in Orange County).

Re:google, destroyer of worlds

[Sancho]

As others have said, you can make some good bank developing the software... Nothing says you gotta run the company--it kinda looks like you were being asked to do some contract work, which would have paid regardless of the success of the site (unless they were paying you in stock, I guess, but I'd really rather not take that risk no matter what the job is.)

Re:google, destroyer of worlds

[0123456]

"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."

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 verify the game went as it should.

However, I'm not sure how you could prevent collusion between the dealer and one of the players unless you set up the system so that no-one could know what the next cards would be until the player decided whether to take them or not. Otherwise they could at least tell the player what the next cards were so they'd know whether they'd be a better hand than they had before.

Re:google, destroyer of worlds

[Project_1993]

Google is falling behind due to the fact that they are just another search engine. If they try something that hasn't been done before then they can earn publicity and now they are earning double with the add posibilitys that they gain through youTube. I am geussing that people will be seeing a lot more adds than ever before when they log on to youTube in the next few months.

Re:google, destroyer of worlds

[Paradise Pete]

it kinda looks like you were being asked to do some contract work, which would have paid regardless of the success of the site

You're right. But this was in the middle of the internet boom - I was already getting paid way too much where I was, and had some stock options that looked like they were going to be worth about ten million. (they weren't.) So I would have had to have really believed it could work. Since I was certain that it wouldn't, I never really even considered taking it on. And of course it doesn't mean it would have succeeded, but I'd sure like to fire up the time machine and give it a try ;-)

Re:google, destroyer of worlds

[Paradise Pete]

But you can never stop people from exchanging information about their hands. If you and I are in the same game we can speak on the phone or by IM and have a huge edge. And I know for a fact that it goes on in the high limit games.

Re:google, destroyer of worlds

[Propaganda13]

Hey Paradise Pete, I got this idea for a site. It's called Hire a Thug. You put what your problem is and what area of the country you're in. The site then connects you with available thugs in your area that will solve your problem for money. Obnoxious neighbors, abusive husbands, creepy perverts are problems of the past. Thugs will love it since they'll be able to state pay requirements, show references, list what types of cases or levels of thuggery that they're willing to do, and they won't have to wait in dive bars all the time.

I'm telling you man it's gold.

Next time, set it up so you get tons of money before the company gets sued out of existence.

Re:google, destroyer of worlds

[naoursla]

In 96 or 97, the consulting company I worked for was writing a system to help a brick and mortar auction house to manage their auctions. We kept talking about creating an online auction site, but thought that people would scam each other and not pay. The idea was unworkable and we talked ourselves out of it.

How?

[delirium of disorder]

How are copyright holders identifying whoever uploaded a given video? By their username (I thought everyone faked that info)? By their IP address (what if they used tor, a public library computer, or an open access point)? I would think that hunting down individual uploaders would be impossible. 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? Yet no one will go after youtube because youtube will just remove the particular offending video, and two more of the same video will be uploaded the next day. If they media companies were to sue youtube out of existence, another service would just take it's place. This is no different than the p2p wars of the past. I suspect that the corporate media companies are just spreading FUD to scare people away from using youtube.

Re:How?

[nwbvt]

"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 YouTube is doing this. As long as they cooperate fully, they are protected from such lawsuits by the DMCA.

"I suspect that the corporate media companies are just spreading FUD to scare people away from using youtube."

You say that as its some sort of revelation. Of course it is their goal to scare people away from violating their copyrights, and I'm sure if you asked them they would say the same thing.

Re:How?

[crossmr]

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.

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 access point with just WEP is only secure for a few minutes.

Inaccurate

[Henry V .009]

Music downloaders were never sued. Music uploaders were sued. The same will happen with Youtube, because Google isn't interested in getting sued to hell themselves. This will kill Youtube, of course, and Google will have wasted a lot of money on nothing.

Re:Inaccurate

[AKAImBatman]

This will kill Youtube, of course, and Google will have wasted a lot of money on nothing.

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.

Re:Inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Google didn't waste money on anything. Google wasted a lot of stock on something which will turn out to be nothing.

Re:Inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Google didn't buy YouTube for the videos.

Re:Inaccurate

[gg3po]

This will kill Youtube, of course, and Google will have wasted a lot of money on nothing.

Paying to see to it that your competition is destroyed is not a waste of money.

Re:Inaccurate

[Henry V .009]

Youtube was never going to make any money. Its popularity came from copyright violation, and it still lost money hand over fist.

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.

Re:Inaccurate

[interiot]

If true though, that would mean that Google paid $1.6billion for only: 1) the brand name, 2) the extra software features that YouTube had over and above Google Video that made YouTube more popular, and 3) the people who built those features. Certainly those are valuable, but are they really $1.6B valuable?

Re:Inaccurate

[suv4x4]

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.

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 asses with lawsuits.

It's arguable that if Google left them on their own for an year or two, they would shut the doors themselves.

I suppose the real reason Google got them is because YouTube was ripe for selling, and they would rather risk and leave AOL or Microsoft, or Yahoo or anyone else to buy them, and *potentially* lead the market in the long run.

In short, the situation now is: either Google runs the video market, or noone does.

If YouTube's users go away, noone will.

Re:Inaccurate

[kentrel]

That depends, the $1.6billion was paid in google shares, and not cash, so it's tied into google's standing on the market, which I think is up at the moment.

Re:Inaccurate

[maxume]

Unless they paid 1.6 billion dollars to make sure that they get 100% of 100 million dollars.

Re:Inaccurate

[ZombieRoboNinja]

An animated demonstration of the principle, provided quasi-legally via YouTube:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=54LcZbig8fY

YouTube has real problems, like Napster

[Animats]

Like I said before, 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 against YouTube content. That will catch all those videos with commercial music attached.

Re:YouTube has real problems, like Napster

[Threni]

> Like I said before,

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

[viking80]

YouTube probably should follow the law. They are quite exposed as it is. In the US today, consumers have lost almost all fair use rights, and and copyright law have gotten quite draconical and exclusively favoring the copyrightholder aganst the common good. Both democrats and republicans are receiving generous financial support from companies like Disney, and are *solidly* on the side of copyright holders against consumers and fair use.

So battle must be fought in Washington by supporting and electing officials that will turn the tide in favor of consumers and the common good.

There seems, however, to be almost NIL interest in this issue in the general population, so dont expect this to change in the near future.

Re:Fair use and congress

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube probably should follow the law. They are quite exposed as it is.

Actually, YouTube is following the law - they're complying with DMCA to the letter.

Title II 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.

Re:Fair use and congress

[viking80]

My point exactly. They are following the law, and they should follow the law. Maybe it was unclear.

Re:Fair use and congress

[/dev/trash]

Posting a whole TV show is not fair use.

Re:Fair use and congress

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Not quite NIL interest...

How Is The Use Fair?

[CheeseburgerBrown]

IANAL or other IP professional, but how would excerpting copyright materials for public display fall under fair use? The audience is undifferentiated (this ain't "education") and advertizers (depending on where the clip is embedded) are potentially reaping the rewards of the traffic generated without license or authorization.

Or did you mean "fair" in the sense of actual fairness? This, sadly, is only a distant cousin of "fair use" fair.

Who will protect YouTube?

[daeg]

In all the upcoming legal battles, will YouTube be able to fend off hungry media empires? I honestly doubt it. Napster didn't protect users, either, but they still got slammed (and appropriately, at that). YouTube is a party to massive copyright infringement, even if they didn't upload the clip themselves. It is obvious that YouTube knows that there is a plethora of copyrighted work in their system, and they continue to profit from it even if they do remove it.

Analogy: If a store knowingly sells bootleg DVDs and the MPAA comes along and says "Hey, stop!" the store won't get off by simply saying "Woops, my bad." and remove the offending DVD, particularly if they make the MPAA notify them of every bootleg DVD the store has in stock and the store kept selling new bootlegs. They'd get sued, and sued hard.

YouTube's best bet, in my opinion, is to strike a deal with the media companies. The media companies agree not to bring suits against YouTube or YouTube users, and in return, they get context-sensitive advertising. Are you watching a clip from last week's Simpsons episode? Then the ads would go to FOX-approved advertisers to buy boxed DVDs or high-quality downloadable episodes. However, based on the lack of forsight by most media groups, I doubt this would happen very quickly.

Gotta hand it to them

[Bertie]

These guys are scam merchants of unparalleled skill.

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.

Re:Gotta hand it to them

[daigu]

Ever consider that the change in attitude might be due to the new Google ownership?

Re:Gotta hand it to them

[Bertie]

Google aren't exactly known for shopping their users to the authorities. Remember when some department or other of the US government asked them to hand over a load of search data, and they told them to fuck off?

Re:Gotta hand it to them

[roman_mir]

take the massive bandwidth costs on the chin thanks to the venture capital money - are you sure the entire thing was not the actual business plan? After all, the sale will make the VCs all the money back and then some.

Re:Gotta hand it to them

[Bertie]

Oh, I'm sure it was. They never seemed to have any intention of trying to cover their costs. It was the classic dot-com approach all over again - get as big as you can, as quick as you can, then worry about how to turn a profit. Or don't bother trying to make a profit and just hope somebody can be persuaded to buy you out. I know they've started to bring in ads lately, but how much ad revenue can you expect to make when people are free to embed content from your site in their own pages with their own ads?

But it strikes me as particularly cynical to sell it and then immediately set about devaluing it as much as you can. Maybe stage two of the gameplan is to buy it back off Google for a fraction of the price later on...

Re:Gotta hand it to them

[bky1701]

Remember when some department or other of the Chinese government asked them to hand over a load of search data, and they told them it's right over there in the blue binder?

Re:Gotta hand it to them

[Tim C]

There's quite a difference between denying a blanket request for data on lawful activities, and complying with a more targetted request for data on unlawful ones.

Re:Gotta hand it to them

[OperativeX]

Except they were paid in Google shares, so if they are mugging Google, they are personally taking money out of their wallets and flushing it down their respective toilets. Your rant doesn't hold up to logic.

Re:Gotta hand it to them

[drsquare]

Google: you've been mugged.

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.

Re:Gotta hand it to them

[Bertie]

Nor does Google's share price, seemingly. So I reckon they'll be all right.

Movies?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought YouTube generally limited submissions to 10 minutes or less. I do not see how this can be conducive to any wholesale piracy of movies (which are better bought on SVCDs sold on the major city streets). What "big media" companies are really scared of is losing their lucrative distribution business. Like drug cartels (see DuPont circa 1930s-1960s), they will do whatever it takes to legislate competition out of business, even legitimate and genuinely-innovative competition. Nothing like the government to squash the little guy (or, in this case, the newcomer).

Google/YouTube want to change Business preception

[peripatetic_bum]

I've got some google stock and it has done nothing but go up (when it hasn't been going down) and I was wondering what exactly they were thinking. Well. I've noticed that many news sites including slate.com are using YouTube as sort of repository for things they dare not touch but like to have the reader look at. take for instance the recent article on Weird Al (http://www.slate.com/id/2151657/?nav=tap3). It's a great article and is made immensely better by the ability to look at the videos the guy is talking about. If this doesn't sell more stuff for Weird Al and his corporate company than I don't understand advertising (if I don't get it, please explain, because I will be impressed if you can).

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. :)

Here's what a random blogger had to say:

[maynard]

Caught this deep down in the bowels of reddit:

It's About the Copyright, Stupid

[...]

So let's summarise so far. Luminaries like Robert Scoble cannot make video on the web work economically, even with their advertising and audience pull. The economics are against him.

YouTube is assumed to be worth $1.65 billion yet it relies on pirated content to a degree we cannot ascertain. What we can conjecture is that it is not viable without pirated content.

Raising this theft issue invites ridicule -- something here doesn't add up.

Copyright also emerged this week as an issue for top flight talent like the Beatles and in actions taken by the music industry against 8,000 illegal filesharers.

The other side of the coin is that many media enterprises don't respect authors' copyright. Copyright abuse by newspapers in Europe is not uncommon. When it applies to freelance writers there is a wrongful assumption that a newspaper can sell and resell in the print and onlline syndication market without reverting to the content producer.

[...]

We tend to take the "technology first" view of this -- we have the technology to share files so we should; likewise newspapers can exploit the technology of databases to continually resell content, so they should. But rights are trampled on in the process. There's no point in ignoring that. It's like assuming vidcasting is viable. It seems to be until you try it without a loss maker called YouTube.

Remind me: Google bought YouTube for what reason?

[ip_freely_2000]

I'd say two thirds of the content and interest of Youtube was from copyrighted materials. Where's the long-term value? And when I say value, I mean $1.6 BILLION in value.

How will they get me?

[Plutonite]

Anonymous users with spoofed IP addresses are not a very nice target to go after. And users who create temporary accounts to upload vids, again using proxy chains, are not fun either. How are they going to sue people they don't know?

Or will they spend thousands of dollars on professionals to track us down over a couple of 4 minute video clips?

They cannot win this, from a business point of view.

Re:How will they get me?

[Anonymous Coward]

The average person uploading South Park clips or some AMV isn't going to even know about proxies, let alone go through them.

They're not that thorough..

[Channard]

One show at least has disappeared from Youtube if you type in its name. You get nothing other than small clips. Until, that is, you type in the initials that make up the shows name. And, hey presto, there are a bunch of episodes there - nearly the whole series in fact.

Re:They're not that thorough..

[Anonymous Coward]

What show?

EVERYTHING is copyrighted

[Anonymous Coward]

EVERYTHING is copyrighted, and the copyrights are now basically perpetual. (Everytime Steamboat Willie's copyright is about to expire, Disney will buy an extension in Congress.) It looks like Google just wasted quite a bit of money, as they should probably just shut it down. Besides, who would want to post there anyway, if they're just going to get sued?

Re:EVERYTHING is copyrighted

[HikingStick]

Perhaps once people realize that they will get nailed for posting others' content without permission/license YouTube may actually be a place where people expect to find original content from anyone who cares to produce it.

Re:EVERYTHING is copyrighted

[Anonymous Coward]

Your thoughts are copyrighted! I am stealing them by having my neurons interpret store and reproduce them. The very process by which the visual system, language and thought work is nothing more than a living, breathing, copyright violator! Cease and desist!

Re:EVERYTHING is copyrighted

[-Brodalco-]

No, that would be too simple and effective.

Re:EVERYTHING is copyrighted

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tonight deleted everything from my YouTube account. No point in courting trouble. Their day is done.

Re:EVERYTHING is copyrighted

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why people keep acting as if that doesn't exist on YouTube. There is in fact a lot of original content created by ordinary people.

If you go to YouTube only looking at cable and TV clips, yeah, you'll find a lot of that. But if you really take a good look at what everyone is doing on YouTube... You'll find a lot of people just goofing off with cameras. And a lot of it is entertaining. I check YouTube every day, not to see unauthorized copyrighted material, but for the original content.

Media exec are scary to death

[zitintheass]

Google/YouTube is going to storm TV, or at least deteoriate their ratings. Those TV CEOs are scary to death of this new fenomenon and also of what is comming next, because they have no control over any new threat that could arise from the internet, any kind of new YouTube thing may damage their ratings even more. So I bet they will sue to death over any violations whatsoever.

Send some cashola my way!

[blacktalonz]

Would someone tell again just what it was that Google bought for 1.6+ BILLION dollars in stock? What a stupid way to blow some serious cash, There is not a single person on the planet that didn't see these copyright problems coming. If they are looking for ways to dispose of surplus cash I would like to submit my cause. I can't draw or perform and I'm not hungry so I'm not a 'starving artist' but I would love for them to push some cash my way. I would be a much better investment. They could give me cash and I would just go away. I'm not sure that the problems from YouTube will do the same, so I am a much better investment!

You heard it here first, folks!

[Fyz]

YouTube just jumped the shark!

Re:You heard it here first, folks!

[Alsee]

Link.

-

Re:You heard it here first, folks!

[jazman_777]

YouTube? Maybe you mean Google.

Broken record...

[starseeker]

Anybody who didn't see this step coming didn't pay attention to Napster. The very elements that made YouTube popular were the elements that they are now having to avoid - Free Content from Everywhere.

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 Long Term Solution is to have both online content distribution AND FREE CONTENT. Free as in freedom, not "free as in someone uploaded it without permission."

We need some kind of "Non-commercial Crap Filtration" process that works similar to the system used by commercial folk to screen bad content. OK, so theirs doesn't work but they do avoid the "10000 videos of people being dweebs in their living rooms" problem. We need to find a way to identify commercial quality free content and highlight it.

There is no ambiguity here - the copyright holders are in the right. If we want to fight a war against Big Media dominating our culture, we need to establish a legitimate free movement "open source entertainment?" to provide an alternative where all parties are happy with things being free. The fact that we keep infringing commercial copyrights means something is messed up. We need a Better Way, and to do that we need Good Free Content. Is there any? I'm not talking about flash movies of poorly drawn cartoons (like some of that Adult Swim oddness) but Real Honest Good Content with production values, good storylines, and talent.

If we want free entertainment, let's do it the way that allows us the moral high ground. Napster, YouTube, and other such entities are no solution to anything, and the pattern of startup->popular->dead(voluntary cleanup/lawsuit) will just continue indefinitely if we don't break the centralized control of content filtration. Original Star Trek is popular after decades despite cheap sets and somewhat over the top acting - surely that level of production (or better even) is possible fairly easily today. Things like Duality and other Star Wars fanfic are indications that the technical ability (not necessarily the acting or scripting ability, granted...) is out there to do effects that are "good enough" to make decent shows. Elephant Dreams helped push the open source tools for such shows further along, although IIRC there are still fairly significant holes... Let's proceed in a direction that is postitive, legal and creative.

wow

[jt418-93]

what a waste of google stock. they should have kept using it to light doobies with. once the copyright police get done with utube it will be nothing but a propaganda front and lots of crappy web cam videos. ooooo, great investment there guys.

idiots. sights like utube are only useful and cool as long as they are run by a small operation. once deep pockets take over, the lawyers come out to feed and ruin it for everyone. kill the lawyers!

feh

My own little slashback

[xirtap]

I guess we can now forget things like this? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/22/031424 8&from=rss

Re:My own little slashback

[Kamineko]

It's a definite shame that this happened, especially after you read the further slashback.

Bye bye YouTube

[nurb432]

Did anyone else not expect this after the buyout?

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.

It would be stupid..

[nurb432]

But since when does the media giants have any common sence?

Re:It would be stupid..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey kettle...in what world do you live in where the word is spelled "sence"?

Re:It would be stupid..

[nurb432]

In the world where typos are common and people dont proof read. That world.

Re:It would be stupid..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the world of apathy. Wonderful.

"I'm incapable of forming a sentence, but I'm really quite smart." How convincing.

Flash 9

[sadler121]

You must live in a cave if you haven't heard this news .

Re:Flash 9

[aymanh]

Yeah I'm aware of it, but it's still beta. How often does it crash and take the browser with it (If at all)?

Re:Flash 9

[sadler121]

I've been using it sense it came out, not a crash yet. Works great, much better then running IE/Firefox in wine to be able to use flash 9.

Re:Flash 9

[Shawn is an Asshole]

So far I've had less issues with it than with Flash 7. No crashes yet, though Flash 7 hasn't crashed for me in a long time. Give it a try.

Re:Remind me: Google bought YouTube for what reaso

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube is wholly based on the service of Advertising, Flash(.swf) and Flash Video. The flash-player web browser-plugins are not open-source. Some in the open-source camp don't have a problem running non-open-source stuff on linux boxes. I do have a problem with that and I tend to avoid non-open-source stuff. This technology choice and the actual web site implementation is not worth 1.2Billion. The stockholders of google are going to be crying not only in the short-term, but also in the long-term with this decision. The stockholders could have invested into an open-source technology web site using a blend of Theora and Bittorrent to help make efficient use of $$$bandwidth$$$. The win-win would be: 1)the viewers get their youtube-like video content 2)the stockholder would get a good chunk of the advertising profit 3)a chunk of the advertising profit would go to support the lives of the open-source technology developers improving the code and sharing it with the rest of the world and making synergy happen all the while giving a significant contribution to world culture preservation and humanity. BUT NO...THE DECISION MAKERS keep all technology a secret BY CHOOSING PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY(FLASH/FLASH VIDEO) so the vendors and the viewers are locked-in and nobody learns much ABOUT WHAT'S UNDER THE HOOD and everybody on the planet simply consumes. THEIR PHILOSOPHY IS "TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT AND FORGET THE REST" I WONDER WHO POCKETED THE 1.2BILLION? THE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A WEB SITE LIKE THIS COULD BE MADE IN ABOUT A MONTH BY ONE CONSULTANT. IF I GUESTIMATE 300$/DAY x 30 DAYS = 9000$US FOR THAT CONSULTANT. ok...now who got the rest of the 1.1999 billion dollars. I would suggest the shareholders to keep a close eye on Google because my gut tells me the 1.1999 Billion has just disappeared into thin air.

Google isn't stupid

[xtal]

They buy YouTube, and with a little tightening of the noose, they're removed as a threat and they've been made an example of for anyone else who thinks to follow - for example, Microsoft.

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.

Re:Google isn't stupid

[dangitman]

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.

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 will usually make some excuse and try to argue repentance for a reduced sentence. Almost nobody will say "Yes, I intended to break this law because it is unjust. Throw the book at me." when faces with charges.

Re:Google isn't stupid

[zoftie]

extend it further, most people aren't as rich and don't employ loudmouth lawyers and pr people, who should have their teeth smashed out with a large hammer. this is capitalist/imperialist country, what makes dollars, makes sense, everything else gets swept under the rug. civil disobedience doesn't pay. but i think people are getting sick of the status quo, biggest budget deficit in years, i wonder if china won't finance this budget deficit with their reserves. people depend on wealth and strength of north america, but make no mistake, as soon america can be made obsolete at some bearable cost, china will do it in a whince.

liberties of united states, have to be freed from all the cruft that has been place atop of them, which in the first place made the country great. great americans need to come out and make a stand against despotism that has been eminating from bush and his cronies. eliminate them, and you'd still have a ways to go. pedophile scandal is what democrats needed i think to wring this election from corrupt imperial pedophiles.

end rand :-P

Clintowned! Watch these clips.

[geobeck]

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.

Why is YouTube different?

[jonwil]

Why is YouTube different to Photobucket, GeoCities, Rapidshare or any other service that allows people to upload stuff and have it hosted on their server for others to download.

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. But Rapidshare isnt liable for that copyrighted video as long as they comply with takedown notices.

All those other services have appropriate things (including "uploading copyrighted stuff without permission is a violation of the terms of service" rules and "if you hold the copyright to anything on our service, we will take it down no questions asked" procedures). So why cant Google Video/YouTube do the same?

Re:Why is YouTube different?

[David Off]

> So why cant Google Video

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 copyright content. But only a judge/court could decide if that is the case. I suspect that all the services such as Google Video that are currently trying to hide behind the DCMA fig-leaf don't want to see it tested in court.

Re:Check out Google's wrongdoing!

[linuxci]

It's here: http://malfy.org/

If Google is doing so wrong then why the Google ads?

shills? Noble rebels? All empty

[ScentCone]

the anti-establishment teens are going to see them as corporate shills and take their eyeballs elsewhere

I'm always amused by this bit of silliness. The "establishment" that these noble rebels are rebeling against are... the people producing the very creative material they seem to want. They aren't anti-establishment, they're anti-paying-what-the-people-who-produce-it-ask. Or, anti-the-artists-they-like-to-have-entertain-them. But not so anti that they have the intellectual honesty to simply walk away from the material produced by the people they're "against."

Corporate shills? I wonder if, after sitting down with Matt Groening, they'd still consider the people that Groening has continued to employ to deal with his business arrangements, financing, legal crap, etc - that he has chosen - to be "corporate shills." Poor Matt Groening! He, and all of his animators, voice talent, writers, production staff, the accountants that get them paychecks and handle health insurance... they're all just creative people who want their voice to be heard, and The Man is shackling them, and distracting us with their Shills!

*sigh*

Instead of worrying the specifics of how YouTube is or isn't obeying the law, why isn't all of this noise focused on helping "the anti-establishment teens" actually get a clue about what it takes to keep The Simpsons in production for decades straight?

Re:shills? Noble rebels? All empty

[penix1]

I'm always amused by this bit of silliness. The "establishment" that these noble rebels are rebeling against are... the people producing the very creative material they seem to want. They aren't anti-establishment, they're anti-paying-what-the-people-who-produce-it-ask. Or, anti-the-artists-they-like-to-have-entertain-them. But not so anti that they have the intellectual honesty to simply walk away from the material produced by the people they're "against."

Nice smoke and mirrors.

I would agree with you IF if was the "artists & producers of content" that held the copyrights. Since it is the distributor that does, that argument goes by the wayside.

It goes to the heart of the matter. Copyright should be for the benefit of the common society by encouraging the release of works into the "public domain". It isn't intended for the use it is being put to namely perpetual profits for distributors. The rights of copyright holders are protected by armies of lawyers. Who is protecting the rights of the public domain? It sure isn't the legislative branch since they have been bought by the media conglomerates.

What's the problem?

[Krytical]

The terms of agreement clearly state that users are not allowed to post copyrighted material. The bootlegging analogy is not really valid here because youtube "does not allow" the material. Once they get complaints they can always blame it on terms of agreement violations and turn over the IP and ISP of the violator to the copyright infringement prosecutors. If the problem is serious your ISP (personal experience here)can suspened your service, hand over your records to the agencies with a possible fine. I also doubt that the avarage youtube user knows what a proxy is.

Re:Google/YouTube want to change Business precepti

[nEoN nOoDlE]

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.

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

[lavaface]

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. :)

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 short clips of shows with Revver so I could make money with my "advertisements." Also, I would be working to make it easy to buy the full content as you watch a clip (a button to add the DVD to your cart ). I suspect the bright folks at Google understand this quite clearly and plan to integrate Google checkout and their targeted advertising with YouTube's services. Furthermore, they will have to innovate some type of revenue sharing for copyright holders if they plan on capitalizing on the YouTube brand name. This will happen.

Is Youtube about copyright infringement?

[the_raptor]

Seriously is the only reason that people go to YouTube about viewing copyrighted material? Thats why I first went, but now I mostly watch the user created content. I actually think what makes YouTube popular is not all the copyrighted material (though it does increase popularity), because normally the format is only good for small clips or cartoons (most of the non-user content I have watched was Robot Chicken). If you really want to watch movies and TV series in decent quality you will use traditional P2P methods to obtain them.

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.

Got torrents?

[seanvaandering]

Now I own all complete seasons on DVD. Got a .torrent?

it's difficult to see why Google puts up with this

[alizard]

They've made a $1.6B bet that they can make youtube work. Their net cap is probably quite a bit bigger than every major record company and movie studio combined, and they appear to have plenty of cash in the bank.

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 contributions from Hollywood in this campaign cycle. (those who would like to come up with something closer than a guessestimate are invited to take a look at OpenSecrets... Congresscritters, even high ranking ones, come amazingly cheap) While in theory, this buys access, in practice... politicians listen to people who come in bearing large checks.

After that, they could for practical purposes, rewrite copyright law to suit themselves. While their interest don't exactly parallel ours, they'd be in a position to create more technology-friendly laws than anything Hollywood is likely to pay Congress to do to us. Just what could Hollywood do about this? Outbid them? They very probably can't, though some of the studios in weaker financial positions might go bankrupt trying. Or alternately, google can give them offers they can't refuse: "You want your sites to disappear from the Web? Keep pushing."

Note: Net Neutrality would cost a lot more, they'd have to outbid the incumbent RBOCs and cable companies.

Please prove me wrong on this.

[Kizor]

From TFA:In addition to showing pictures of cats, YouTube serves as a major broadcasting point for governmental and corporate criticism... including the naughty ones... who can now demand the details of undesirable users... and YouTube has been bending over backwards to meet user info demands?

*Twitch*

Please prove me wrong on this.

[Kizor]

From TFA:

Also, it's [Google's] now battling requests for user details coming from Brazilian and Indian government investigators.

In addition to showing pictures of cats, YouTube serves as a major broadcasting point for governmental and corporate criticism... including the naughty ones... who can now demand the details of undesirable users... and YouTube has been bending over backwards to meet user info demands?

*Twitch*

Re:Irony

[Oligonicella]

Dear grammar nazi; The word "dont" is a contraction -- "don't".

Re:Irony

[nurb432]

You have the wrong guy.. I'm *not* the grammar Nazi, by any stretch of the imagination.. I've been accused of being many things before ( some even true ), but not that.

But if you insist:

nazi should be Nazi :)

Why are you assuming you are smarter than Google?

[aeschenkarnos]

Google's directors know very well that they have provoked a fight. My guess (I don't think I'm smarter than them, so I stress that this is a guess) is that their intention is:

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

[A beautiful mind]

Music company lawyers first warned and then sued individual users who downloaded their songs.

Good thing thats perfectly legal in my country.

Re:So sue me

[David Off]

|| Music company lawyers first warned and then sued individual users who downloaded their songs.

|Good thing thats perfectly legal in my country.

In Eastern Europe there are more effetive ways of dealing with copyright infringers :-)

Re:So sue me

[A beautiful mind]

Yeah BSA regularly pays off the police. "Murder happened? Can't investigate citizen as I've got a more important copyright infringment warrant to serve..."

Trademark

[penix1]

On a related issue, what is with the deliberate blurring of product names in some programs? Is it a result of a request from the rights holders or a form of marketing?

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.

The end of youtube

[Anonymous Coward]

If youtube removes all the copyrighted material, what will be left there? Teens with webcams will be also sued/removed for using music they did not license in their stupid videos. You also have to wander what will happen then to projects like http://www.indextube.com/, that are trying to filter out the junk on youtube, google video and others, and to create an index of only quality (e.g copyrighted :))) videos.

Overreaction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys, they're assisting in the infringement of copyright. I think that means that they're going to assist the rightful copyright holder. But seriously, do you think that big copyright holders are going to spend all their time prosecuting someone who posts a 30 second clip? Maybe a full length movie, but, they still have to wade through people dancing in front of webcams. Personally, I think that we should all dance/share insight (same thing really) in front of our webcams, and deter the copyright holders that way.