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

[quanticle]

Seriously, wasn't this settled during the Betamax case? If I recall correctly, the movie industry tried the same argument there — i.e. video cassette recorders encourage copying of intellectual property. The Supreme Court there ruled that videocassette recorders were legal because of the many legal uses they had, and the fact that they could be used for illegal purposes did not diminish this.

How is that situation different from this one?

Re:The Universally Flawed Argument

[Duds]

The obvious different is that Myspace are specifically storing the copyrighted material on their site.

If Sony were allowing people to store all their betamax tapes of copied films in a Sony warehouse the case may have had a different outcome.

A better similie to that case would be if myspace was displaying videos playing off my server, at which point they would be protected.

The other difference is of course the laws were different back then.

The case

[Rob T Firefly]

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.

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.

The DMCA does cover this

[91degrees]

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.

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.

What's changed.

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:What's changed.

[Total_Wimp]

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.

I just walked in from the car where I was listening to NPR. They had a guy from Youtube and another guy from NBC. During this call-in program (The Diane Ream Show) they were actually quite civil and seemed like they wanted to work together. The NBC guy said they don't want "vast quantities" of their music on Youtube without compensatino, but said they eagerly look forward to haveing some kind of revenue sharing agreement. He pointed to the iTunes deal as a great success and said $1.99 per movie worked great for them. Additionally he pointed out that some of NBC's shows are put online directly on the NBC site. They Youtube guy said they're working with NBC right now and hope they can put together a deal

The bottom line is that it sounded a whole hell of a lot like NBC wasn't purposely trying to be evil. They're not just trying to get politicians to do their biddnig to screw everyone over. They're working with distribution outlets to get their material out there. They just want to get paid for their very expensive programming.

Now I know there's still a lot of badness out there. Copy protection sucks, as well as the fact that it's not like their whole library is available for you to pick and choose from. They still want the broadcast flag so they can force us to pay and then make content disapear.

But at least it looks like they're trying to resolve some of the basics, like giving consumers the choice of ad supported, or pay-to-watch content ("Lost" is available one way on the ABC site and the other way on iTunes, not to mention DVD) and generaly making more material available to watch, without making you pay a bunch of times for the same thing.

We should still fight the bad stuff, but, damn, they're at least starting to come to terms with the fact that consumers need some level of control over the process. They're a little smarter, also, in the sense that they realize they have to move into the internet era. Unlike the record industry, they know that they cant force consumers to keep using the same old business model. For that, at least, I do give them credit.

TW

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.