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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."
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
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
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.
For the lazy, the case in TFA involves Universal accusing MySpace of copyright infringement based on the ability of its users to post copyrighted music videos to the site without permission.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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.
MySpace is not fundamentally different from offering generic webspace. The safe harbor provisions cover this. It's hard to argue that MySpace is not an ISP under the terms of the DMCA.
The fact that to deny responsibility, the ISP is better off not policing their network is hardly the ISP's fault. It's a badly drafted law. Perhaps Universal should have thought about thiswhen lobbying for it.
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.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
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?
Freedom is a state of mind. A mind is a state of being. Stay the fuck out of my mind and my being. - Corporate Avenger
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, a "get rich fast" scheme would be:
/. /. for copyright infrigement for profit!
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
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.
I've written on this point exactly: here.
FTA - "Its part of the continuing struggle between content owners and developers of technology, he said. People are trying to find out where the line is."
This is a very basic concept - the same people who invent technology are the types that create content. Broad-thinking creative types. The other type of people are the merchants: traditional business owners.
The battle between these SAME two factions drove founding of America. It was the traditional merchants who did not have enough power in 'old culture' Europe - so they left and came to the new world. They have been running things, yoking and squeezing the creative types ever since.
It is the same factors that drive the Shiite and Sunni conflict. It has lead to the most significant ideological gaps in human history.
Interestingly, the tide turned in the USA in November 2006. No longer is there any need for the small-minded, traditional merchants to run the system. Global communication, Web 2.0-mentality, and the empowering of the individual are all working together to eliminate the entrenched foothold by the merchants.
It will be great to see if the courts follow suit.
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.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
How is that situation different from this one?
I think the major difference is that the movie/music/"content" industry has, since the Betamax case, spent probably close to a billion dollars lobbying Congress and getting laws passed which together change the dynamic of the playing field from what it was like in the 1980s.
They learned from where Jack Valenti failed (from their perspective) and are now a lot smarter when it comes to using the government as a cudgel against their own customers.
In short, the industry is smarter now, and they have had 20-odd years to make the environment more politically receptive to their point of view, on all levels.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The new printing press, the internet, came and provided a means of great information freedom.
But for the companies that used a business model based on controlling media, the freedom of information was a threat to profits.
So these companies paid/lobbied/bribed the government to get some new laws passed. One that extended the copyright to 95-120 years. And another specifically written to control publishing digital information and override past "fair use" clauses that allowed things like VCR's and Tivo's.
But even with all of this, the public still expects to have more freedom and innovation that internet had promised.
Companies and web sites come up for sometime short times that offer a glimpse of what could be. Then the controlling media companies try to shut them down, pointing to the laws that were legally paid for.
The media companies may be successful in suppressing information for a time, perhaps in some countries. But a country that manage to fight this control, and manage to allow a level of information freedom that really promotes innovation; This country will have a great advantage.
Considering that CBS has already said that clips on YouTube are helping their business you wonder why Universal bothers.
CBS and Universal operate in fundamentally different modes within the entertainment/'content' business. CBS basically responds to consumer and viewer demand -- delivering news and less-than-cutting-edge television entertainment -- while Universal has made a killing by staying on the bleeding edge. Universal doesn't follow demand, they manufacture it.
Thus while CBS is perfectly fine having YouTube create a market for their stuff, Universal is far more controlling. Their success depends on complete control of distribution and publicity; they want to micromanage everything, playing with artifically-induced scarcity so as to maximize the effect and appeal of their brands and products. Anything that relinquishes any amount of control over media distribution to the public is a Bad Thing to them.
If you think of 'the curve' of public interest, CBS is a fairly conservative organization and basically stays just behind it, while Universal wants to be out front. This requires a far more aggressive and controlling attitude when it comes to their content.
I think eventually you're going to see a schism in the entertainment business, between companies that are responsive to demand, and basically look at what's popular and try to respond to it, without a whole lot of risk (and who are basically receptive to any new technology that reduces costs), and companies that try to project themselves ahead of demand and actually manufacture popularity, a fundamentally riskier (but potentially more profitable) endeavor that lends itself to maximizing control over the entire process, from creation to viewing. For many years, these two business models have coexisted -- companies owning movie studios and record labels also owning television networks -- but I'm not sure it's as natural an alliance as it appears.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You might be interested in reading another comment I posted in this same discussion. Basically, I think there is a fundamental and growing difference in the entertainment industry between companies (the news companies, most major TV networks) who are responsive to consumer demand and try to follow/track demand as closely as possible and tailor their offerings to it, and companies like Universal that want to manufacture demand itself. Currently there are many organizations (like GE's NBC Universal) that do both, but I think that just masks the conflict, it doesn't mean it's not there.
I think this is why you get TV networks that are much less restrictive and controlling about their content than the movie studios are; the studios have a business model that relies on control and engineered 'supply shortages' to create demand, while the networks exist to push as much content out (along with ads) as they possibly can, at the lowest possible cost.
At the extremes, it's a 'manufacturing' versus 'service' industry conflict. Broadcasting, as exemplified by the 24-hour news channels, are a service. The value is in the continued stream of information, not in discrete copies of a particular recording (except for special cirumstances, e.g. recording of a particular event, or if the anchor does something embarrassing). Music and movie companies, on the other hand, are "IP factories." They design, produce, market, and profit from the sale of 'media widgets,' discrete quantities of content that have a measurable value, separate from their value as part of a service or stream of information.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."