Universal and MySpace Square Off Over DMCA

moore.dustin writes "Universal and MySpace look to be on a collision course that could shape the future of media companies and the internet. The article discusses the DMCA's impact on their case, and talks ways in which the law lags behind the realities of technology." From the article: "Yet, as lawyers prepare for battle, they do so on uncertain legal ground. The legislation at the heart of the debate, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, was written years before social networking sites such as MySpace even existed. That fact has injected considerable uncertainty into the matter, according to copyright experts, and helps explain why lawyers from both sides are proclaiming that the DMCA, as it is known, is on their side."

Comments

Both sides claming the DMCA

[transporter_ii]

And they are probably right that it is on both of their sides, because it sure the hell isn't on OUR side.

Transporter_ii

The Universally Flawed Argument

[Slipgrid]

Last month Universal accused MySpace of infringing its copyrights by allowing its customers to post music videos from artists such as Jay-Z on the site without permission.

The basis of their argument is that they are allowing users to post Jay-Z videos, just like I'm sure they allow Universal to request there deletion. The gun manufactures tried this argument before. Guns allow people to kill each other. They also allow people to protect themselves. Allowing a crime is far from facilitating it. Myspace, sucks as it does, provides many with legal entertainment. Just because a few are able to abuse the system, doesn't mean that Rupt owes Univ a tax.

Re:The Universally Flawed Argument

[The Great Pretender]

One could question whether Universal owes MySpace advertising revenues...just a thought

The only winners are the lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that CBS has already said that clips on YouTube are helping their business you wonder why Universal bothers. Do they rally think they can earn revenue from users watching some pre-teen lip sync to one nof their hits? Their win in the Supreme Court certainly did not slow the growth of file sharing. In the end it just means lots of billable hours for legal teams.

I can't wait

[Digital Vomit]

I *so* can't wait until our culture gets past the "intellectual property" dark age. I just hope I'm still alive to see the incredible social, cultural, and technological advancements that will come once the notion of "owning" ideas and information has finally passed away.

Re:I can't wait

[kmac06]

Yeah, who needs any of the stuff that's been patented through a private research lab. Like anyone ever uses a transistor.

Re:I can't wait

[remmelt]

It would be great if everyone who could write songs well would make money with it. Regrettably, this is not reality today. Yes, it costs money to buy guitars, computers, software, amps, turntables, whatever you need. Renting practice space (especially for more serious bands) can be troublesome and expensive as well. These musicians hope to break even. Why do they do it? Because it's fun. Do they dream of making it big? Who doesn't! I dream of making it big and I write webpages! Come on. The reality of today is that most musicians have a regular job. Only the high profile guys make enough to buy fifteen powermacs to store in their underground private studio und run non-cracked versions of whatever on it. A lot of really amazing music is made in damp basement rooms between two jobs. I totally agree with your last statement. It would be nice indeed if the music industry was about providing musicians with money so they can make music. This is not the case.

Re:I can't wait

[arminw]

.....Isn't it possible that making people keep their day job and do this stuff in their free time.......

The problem is that manufacturing of non-tangible products of the mind IS the day job of many people in our modern world. I would they even are the majority. In our modern world, people are not paid for what they do, but for what the KNOW. Very few here on /. are making physical things such as building cars and houses. If the carpenters get paid for building a house, should the ones who drew up the plans of that house not get paid for their efforts? If you pay for the physical computer, should you not also pay for the software therein, without which that computer is a very expensive boat anchor? Reading stuff here on /. makes it most likely that you do not make your living by making or dealing primarily with a physical things. Maybe you should give your computer knowledge away for free and get a day job as a truck driver for Walmart.

Not MySpace

[aliendisaster]

I hate MySpace and refuse to go to the site, however, it seems to me that since 99% of the people who actually use MySpace know shite about FTP, HTML or the internet for that matter, I'd wager that the alleged Jay-Z video was linked from another site. If this is the case, since the video is actually not hosted on MySpace's servers, how would this be their fault in the first place?

Precisely what the DMCA was enacted for

[michaelmalak]

Contrary to what the analysts and lawyers in the ft.com article are blathering about, this is precisely the motivation behind the DMCA. In 1998, four years after the start of the Internet's meteroic rise, the media publishers had a vague fear that the Internet would bring new ways for people to make perfect copies of their publications. Thus they attacked preemptively by paying Congress to enact the DMCA. The media companies of course did not know P2P and "social networking" by name, but they knew from the Internet's growth (in size and technology) that such then-unknown things would come about. Heck, the violations were already occurring via UseNet.

While a lot of aspects of copyright are detestable -- such as the DMCA's prohibition against format shifting and the extension into perpetuity of copyrights, if the DMCA makes a special exemption for "common carriers" like MySpace (whose main purpose is social networking, not copyright infringement), then that is a good provision of the DMCA -- and it would be a farsighted one based on then-existing technologies such as UseNet, not a provision created in the "different world of 1998" as the ft.com article asserts.

If Universal wins, /. closes

[Per Abrahamsen]

If universal wins, a "get rich fast" scheme would be:

1) Create and sell copyrightable junk on e.g. www.lulu.com for an inflated price.
2) Post it as an Anonymous Coward on /.
3) Sue /. for copyright infrigement for profit!

A win for Universal would mean all user generated content on all sites would have to be pre-approved, which would be economically infeasible for most hobbyist or ad-based sites. Control of the information stream would fall back in the hands of a few large media companies, and most of the democratic potential of the Internet would be lost.

Forward-looking legislators

[Col. Klink (retired)]

I find it hilarious that a new law had to be passed "for the new millennium" that couldn't even account for changes in less than a decade.

Napster

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this different than the old Napster case?
Couldn't Napster have claimed the same "safe harbour" that MySpace is trying to claim?

Are you sure about that?

[msobkow]

the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, was written years before social networking sites such as MySpace even existed.

Oh, and what of sites like Slashdot? What is the fundamental difference between MySpace and a forum?

Near as I can tell, a Blog is nothing more than a personal forum that allows some media attachments.

Re:What's changed.

[syousef]

What are you smoking man. They want to control how long the product lives and force us to constantly rebuy it. They don't care if their copy protection screws us over for any form of "fair use" so long as they get their cut. They've used tactics like trying to sue random people and even children into oblivion and you still think they're okay because they have people that sound reasonable and pretend to want to work with us on the radio. Credit? The only credit of yours they want comes out of your bank account.