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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."
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.
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
YouTube has processes in place to receive DMCA takedown notices and remove identified copyright material. Napster didn't have a process in place to do this, and claimed to not be able to do so. The judge disagreed and said Napster had both the ability and duty to remove identified copyrighted material, but did not, so Napster was held liable.
YouTube should really, really thank its friends at Bell."
maybe they should send them a cake.
On the other hand, YouTube is mostly non-copyrighted material.
Attack of the pedant: YouTube is mostly copyrighted (since in the U.S. everything is copyrighted automagically) material hosted and distributed with permission of the author (implied by them uploading it to YouTube). But I know what you meant, non-infringing material.
The enemies of Democracy are
They're lawyers.
1. Yes
2. No
3. It depends
4. Maybe
5. Profit!
errr, forget it.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.