Slashdot Mirror
How the DMCA Protects YouTube
bartle writes "Slate is running an article that analyzes the question of how much legal trouble Google may get in having bought YouTube. Not much, according to the author, and thanks seem to go to a provision in the DMCA that may provide more protection for YouTube than torrent services." From the article: "But what about Mark Cuban's copyright argument? Why isn't YouTube in trouble in the same way Napster and Grokster were? The first difference, as indicated, is that Napster simply wasn't covered by the 512 safe-harbor law, and YouTube is. Napster wasn't "hosting" information at the direction of its users, but rather providing a tool for users to find and download predominantly infringing content. It may sound odd that Napster gets in more trouble for helping you find illegal stuff than YouTube does for actually hosting it. But that's the law and why YouTube should really, really thank its friends at Bell."
Does viewing/listening to copyrighted content constitute distribution?
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
the daughters of senators and district attorneys and other rich people tell their parents that YouTube is great. Napster was a little too hard for the estemed gentleman's little princess to figure out, but YouTube isn't.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It is the law.
But that doesn't make it any less absurd.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
I think its the "predominantly" bit that makes the difference. Most of the stuff on Youtube is legitimate. Most of the stuff on napster was infringing copyright.
The other part is that the search engine is just a small aspect of the entire site,whereas it was a key part of Napster.
does anybody really think that Google didn't spend a lot of time/money/lawyers figuring this stuff out BEFORE shelling out over a billion dollars for youtube? Just because the armchair QBs kept going on about the legal trouble(s) google was going to end up in, it doesn't necessarily make it true.
-- the cake is a lie
When presented with copywright holder's request to remove material, isn't it always granted? Hard to do that when you don't host it.
>Except that we have about 15 years of precedent that includes busting FTP warez servers.
Except that history is all pre-DMCA. The DMCA gives an out for those who demonstrate good faith attempts to prevent infringement and remove all reported violations.
The thing that always hurt Napster was that nobody could go to Napster's system and legitimately say that it was being used for anything other than piracy. There was a handful of legal content on there, burried in a sea of pirated files. On the other hand, YouTube is mostly non-copyrighted material.
Sure we get excerpts of the occasional TV show, clips from Olberman, and Stewart, but it's not wholesale copying and the quality is twelth rate. Nobody's going to decide to not buy a DVD of a film because they watched it on YouTube. So really I don't see YouTube having a problem. They take down content when notified that it infringes copyright and they move on.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The real difference between napster and google. Money. Google can afford better laws and better lawyers.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
So Google [big corp XYZ] gets to take other poeples copyrighted content, and make money off of it without paying, but users cannot even share it for free.
If this wasn't business as usual, I'd be shocked.
.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
So the DMCA is now good ... ?
But that doesn't fit the Slashdot groupthink
(brain explodes)
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
OK, so the system works because Comedy Central can tell YouTube to take some infringing work down, and that wasn't the case with Napster. I remember the RIAA wanted Napster to take files down, Napster said they couldn't, then they started filtering searches or something. That makes sense.
But then...
Huh? It sounds to me like everyone's covered by this 512, but Napster couldn't hold up their end of the agreement. Nothing to do with "hosting" from what I understand, other than because they weren't hosting the files they couldn't remove offending files.
Could someone with more information clarify this?
Also, if this precedent is set, what would stop someone from setting up a "company" that hosts MP3s on a website, same as YouTube hosts videos? The RIAA would swamp the company with requests to take down specific songs, and the community could respond to it.
Since that's the only way to keep the site up, it would be in the community's best interest to take down the files within a reasonable time limit. I'm sure the files would be uploaded again, anyway. There could even be some points system for taking down offending files.
What would this achieve? Files would be shared, for one, but I'm not especially concerned with that. It would bleed the RIAA since they would have to have people request every file be removed, individually. Since they'd probably try to use software to find all files made by their artists, a CAPTCHA could be used to ensure a real person is making the requests.
Providing torrent files wouldn't be direct infringement, but would rather easily fall under one or more forms of indirect infringement. This is because when you help someone infringe, you're in just as much trouble as the infringer is. There are limits to this: not just anything is sufficient to qualify, and where it is, there may be protections for you. This is why Google (in their main business at least) doesn't get in trouble the way that Napster did; there are enough differences that they don't have to fear being shut down. But your average torrent site isn't particularly different from Napster in any way that counts.
Actually reading the Napster case and the relevant bits of 17 USC 512 would likely prove informative as to just how it works, and why one site, acting one way, might be treated more favorably than another site, acting another way.
Plus, courts do have some leeway, and on the whole they don't like people with unclean hands. They'll still treat them fairly, but they needn't be friendly, and sometimes that can be serious trouble. Napster tended to run afoul of this sort of thing too.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Ah, yes, Slashdot. Where a discussion of internet copyright issues invariably ends up in a call for coup d'etat.
P.S.,
This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.
Huh? After reading TFA, I like section 512. Sounds to me like this one of the few GOOD things that the DMCA has in it. If hosting companies were held responsible for everything on users uploaded, it would stifle virtually all the creativity the web has given birth to.
While that's true from a technical perspective, I would be surprised if that held up in court. While you may not be sharing the entire file yourself, you are at the very least taking part in the "scheme". A smart judge (and most of them ARE smart) would cut through the technical crap that he probably didn't totally understand (or care about), and go after the heart of the matter - which is that you're sharing copyrighted content.
But that's the law and why YouTube should really, really thank its friends at Bell.
Thank them for what? It's not like the YouTube concept was a shot in the dark that just, luckily happened to have its ass saved at a critical moment by the DMCA?
It is, as it was planned.
The YouTube founders (lawyers) thought of all of these contingencies long before these journalists actually did some research into the DMCA.
News at 10:
"20 000 Liquor Stores Lucky Prohibition Over, Reporter Finds"
"GM and Ford Surprised to Find Existence of Roads All of World, Makes Business Model Possible"
"Mozilla Foundation Happy To Find Compatible Network Exists for New Browser, "Internet" Apparently Worldwide"
"Linux Founder Finds Millions Of Computers Compatible With Operating System, Coincidence Drives Growing Userbase"
In fact, precident for this is well established. Way before digital media, people tried to get around copyright law by distributing films divided by a new intermission, films that had a minute here and there trimmed, films where some wide angle shots were re-edited for close ups, audio tapes with one song missing from a whole album, etc. and claiming these weren't violations. The last such arguements got shot dowm by about 1955. The 1978 Berne treaty on copyrights has specific clauses where they define civil violations as including "either all, or any substantial part of" the item, probably just to reinforce this principle. I'm not sure about what''s actually spelled out in the 1998 treaty, but it references Berne enough that the details probably don't really matter.
Applying this would simply take a judge looking at these precedents and deciding that any part big enough to help another person get the whole work counted as a substantial part. With existing decisions against a group of infringers who duplicated each reel of a 10 real film in separate film labs in multiple countries, before shiping the reels individually into India, where they were finally put together, as precidents, that's likely to be a no-brainer for any half-way competent judge.
Who is John Cabal?
What the authors of the DMCA didn't realize is that you enforce copyright at your own peril in todays world.
The RIAA pissed away a $10B+ opportunity by not blanket licensing the original Napster. Now they're on their last lap around the bowl. The MPAA will suffer a similar fate if they try and push their bought and paid for copyright nonsense too much further. Google knows exactly what its doing and exposing the absurdity of DMCA is a great first step.
I think Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert and the execs at Comedy Central are smart enough to realize that having short low quality clips of their shows is really free advertising and viral marketing. They get a larger audience, more exposure and sell more DVD's/whatever because YouTube exposes their product to many people who wouldn't otherwise have watched. Nobody is selling YouTube clips on DVD-R's at the flea market or on the street.
In fact one of the most valuable services GooTube could offer us is a list of companies who, in their "piracy is theft, we lost $100B, the world is coming to an end, waaaaaaaaaaah" paranoia, actually send takedown notices.
It would let us know who the clueless idiots (most of MPAA/RIAA) are.
I would be very surprised if Comedy Central ever sends a takedown notice to YouTube. They strike me as a reasonable bunch. (Funny too.)
The rest of the asshats can shoot themselves in the foot all they want as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, I've read through the DMCA and it looks like YouTube falls down on a few points. As a poster above says on these grounds someone you set up a:
YouWarez.com
site allowing people to share software charging for downloads and so long as it responds to take down notices it would be legal. Yeah right.
As for the argument that "YouTube wouldn't work if it moderated uploads"... well boohoohoo, isn't it usually up to businesses to ensure they operate within the law.
It seems pretty far fetched that YouTube is just some innocent "common carrier".