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YouTube Hands Over User Info To Fox
An anonymous reader writes "Tech Crunch has an article about YouTube identifying and handing over a user's information after a request from Fox. 'Three weeks after receiving a subpoena from the U.S. District Court in Northern California, YouTube has reportedly identified a user accused by 20th Century Fox Television of uploading episodes of the show 24 a week prior to their running on television. That user, named ECOTtotal, is also alleged to have uploaded 12 episodes of The Simpsons, some quite old. Apparently Google and YouTube were willing and able to identify the owner of the username ECOTtotal, according to a report on InternetNews.com.'"
"Apparently Google and YouTube were willing" ... to comply with a subpoena from a US District Court. I think most companies would do the same thing.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I began to wonder why this hasn't already happened.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
If they were subpoenaed, they didn't have much choice. I hate the MPAA/RIAA/Studios as much as the next guy, but neither Fox or YouTube seem unrealistic here.
OK, I post a youtube video of the goatse guy in action.
I guess this dissapears? Haven't tried.
OK, I post simpsons video, and the copyright owner says, stop it, and the video stays up (or down??) and then the user who submitted gets turned over to be turned into the goatse guy?
My point, is why can come content just dissapear w/o a problem, but the other is then escalated into a problem?
Perhaps the rest will stop linking their personal information to accounts used in illicit activities. Privacy experts report that it's the simple things that get most people burned.
Darwin at work. Anyone stupid enough to put their real info and post copyrited stuff deserves to get caught. Anyone expecting any amount of true privacy on the net is just kidding themselves (except for the rare few who really go through the lengths required to do so).
Stupidity sometimes gets what it deserves...
Providing information in response to a court subpeona is very different than doing so "after a request from Fox."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
People like to say all the time that downloading movies is not theft; it's copyright infringement. And that is true.
However in this case it is truly theft, because the 24 video was never in the public to "copy". This was outright theft of what is basically confidential data.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is an obvious case of thieft and they have every right to plug the leak at their end. Posting episodes before they air has to be coming from their end so they have the right to locate and fire/prosecute the source. It has nothing to do with fair use it has to do with protecting their work. Advertisers can potentially cut funding and kill the series if they don't defend it. Youtube really has no choice since they'd be protecting the thief. Supporting the people involved harms those supporting fair use since it appears they are supporting outright thieft. A line has to be drawn and they crossed it in this case.
> This is a company whose founders contribute very little back of their wealth to charitable causes
> and instead choose to spend it on 747's with waterbeds and other such items.
Sounds like they gave something back then, bet they made friends at Boeing at any rate and kept a few ordinary workers gainfully employed.
Getting involved in charities is something rich industrialists should NOT do until they retire from day to day operations, until then they are performing a far greater service to society by PRODUCING WEALTH. After they tire of working eighty hour weeks creating wealth and start feeling their mortality is the time to use their share of the wealth they created to leave monuments to themselves. And I'm good with that too, after all ya can't take it with you and leaving craploads of cash to your offspring is an almost sure fire way to destroy em.
Democrat delenda est
It is not OK to take some licensed media and just upload if to Youtube. You fucking (/. editors) hypocrits will cry loud when GPL is violated but when somebody evidently pirates a copy of copyright protected Simpsons episode it is OK?
RRRRRight. So let's say you see a guy get robbed in the street and can identify the robber. The police find out you witnessed the robbery and subpeona you to appear as a witness. Are you evil for giving up the identity of the robber?
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that whoever uploaded this video early was breaking some law or another. How is it evil to turn him in, especially if your it states in your privacy policy that you will comply with law enforcement? If they had refused to hand over the information, we'd probably be getting people complaining about how Google is aiding and concealing criminals.
A sarcastic "Don't be evil" is not an insightful (much less thoughtful, intelligent, or unique) response to every single action Google takes for the rest of eternity.
The problem lies in the fact that it had not been given away for free _yet_ . There are people that pay fox to give away the content so that people watching the content will see the commercials of those paying. Now, if half of the people who would have watched the show decide not to because they already saw it 12 days before it aired, then those people paying probably wouldnt. FOX stands to lose enough from this scenario that they will be coming after this person hard. The fact that it will be an inside source makes this more important for them to stop it as it will continue indefinitely, and all those advertisers will be chased off.
Now, after it has aired for "free", i strangely have no interest in these things being protected, as I watch it on VCR, or tivo, or one of many other devices (youtube) that can allow me to skip. There is the case of several ads that still get played while I am distracted with other tasks, or need a break.
Do not evil unless a lawyer subpoenas you.
Why is it "evil" to comply with a court to catch someone who is breaking the law? I hate the RIAA attacks on individuals (I realize this is Fox, not the RIAA), but I certainly don't blame any ISP for complying with a subpoena for information. If I wrote a book and someone posted it to the Internet before I even had a chance to publish it, damn right I'd want to go after that person. It's not the ISP's/YouTube's/Google's job to run interference so someone else can break the law. In fact, I'd say that doing so would be evil.
I agree with you that Google should definitely have handed over information in response to a court order, and that the parent's sarcastic "Don't be evil" comment was not insightful.
But you don't really think that copyright infringement and mugging share a common moral space, do you? Death penalty for speeders while we're at it?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm not claiming that Google did anything wrong - I don't think they did - but I could make an argument for it.
The argument goes like this: Copyright is an evil institution that punishes creativity by making it possible for the major media conglomerates to operate. Thus violating copyright is not wrong. Thus, turning over someone's identifying information when they have violated copyright and will get in trouble for it is also wrong.
I don't know if I really believe that (although I think copyright terms should be cut down to ten years or less, I'm not sure if I would really eradicate the concept entirely) but I think it's a worthwhile argument. Of course, it won't carry any weight in a court of law, but we're not in court.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Everyone seems to ignore the fact that he was releasing the episodes weeks before broadcast. Meaning he wasn't just breaking copyright, but trade secret and probably contract requirements as well.
For me the thing isn't that he posted episodes of the simpsons, I think it was more related to posting episodes of 24 before the air date. Which is afaik illegal because it can be argued that the company literally lost money due to people not watching the episode at air time, causing a loss in commercial revenue.
"Don't be evil" does not translate as "comply with the law".
Amen! There's always alignments like chaotic good.
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
Morality is defined by law now? Man I guess the religious right has gotten their way after all. Here I thought morality was based on a sense of right or wrong, not what some jackass politician wrote down and got a bunch of other jackass politicians to vote on.
Well, I don't consider it "mugging" that some record company exec wants to charge me $20 for a CD. I don't feel entitled to have it for less than that. It may be worth less than that to me, but in that case, unless I can find it used for the price I am willing to pay, I just don't get the CD. I am not going to call the corporate execs "muggers" and go download it for free off of a P2P site. CDs are fairly cheap to produce and distribute, but when I look at software, I definitely believe that the fact that some people steal software raises the cost of said software for people like me who buy it legally. It is not the execs at software companies that are ripping me off, but people who decide they are entitled to the software, but do not wish to pay the price set by the company.
In the U.S., we have the right to the pursuit of happiness. This means we can chase our dreams, it does not mean we are entitled to obtaining our dreams. We do not have a right to CDs or software at whatever price we decide. If you can't afford it, do without it. I can't afford a new car. That doesn't mean I should go steal one because no one will sell me a new car at the price I wish to pay. It means I have to do without or change what I am willing to pay.
People who steal, be it software, CDs, cars, or personal possessions raise the cost of living for those of us who abide by the law. I have had bikes stolen out of my yard. Perhaps I should have chained them up, right? Well, that is an extra expense that I have to pay because other people choose not to obey the law or respect ownership rights. Perhaps I could not afford both a bike and a chain. Now, the criminal has a bike, and I have none because I can't afford to buy one and stealing someone else's would be illegal and morally wrong.
One of the shopkeepers I do business with was murdered in his store for a few hundred dollars in cash. His family had to invest in video cameras, pay his hospital and funeral expenses, and will have to pay for their share of the incarceration of the guy who was, thankfully, caught.
These are extreme examples, but they illustrate the point. People who choose to disobey the law, whether it be murder, or uploading copyrighted material, cause material damage to those of us who choose to obey the law.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
That's a shame. So the guy posted some episodes of a TV show on YouTube--mind you from a TV station that doesn't require Cable to watch. C'mon News Corp-- it's not like you don't give away FOX for free anyway. If I didn't have Cable, I could watch FOX all I want without paying you a penny--so when this guy promotes your free-to-watch shows... meh. I could understand it if someone posted an episode from a station like HBO that requires Cable to watch. But it's not. That's horrible. As for Google... why in the world did you give them this guy's info? You took the videos down. You did what they wanted. I thought you weren't evil. Honestly, what ECOTotal did was not anything out of the ordinary. Just hope the guy doesn't get in any legal trouble.
Can we try not to pick apart speech so much and maybe give people a little benefit of the doubt? MightyYar seemed to be talking about whether the two crimes are equally "bad". Dave seemed to be making the point that regardless of which is worse, they are both against the law. Then you just took his wording as an opportunity to show that you know the definition of morality. I'm sorry, I just don't see how an inability to read between the lines makes you insightful. Seems to me that that's pretty much the opposite.
I, evidently among many others, interpreted "Copyright infringement and mugging share a common moral space in that they are both against the law." as a statement that roughly equates to, "Copyright infringement is wrong because it's against the law.".
Sure, that point is dumb, but I'm not about to assume that the poster made the intelligent insight of "regardless of which is worse, they are both against the law"; if he had intended to make that point, he should have said that, or "Morality aside, it's still illegal.".
Or, in other words, I reserve the right to take something the way the person said it.
Especially when they haven't gotten around to apologizing for being unclear, and they've said something that I've heard before.
All that said, of COURSE Google should turn him in; I'd rather have a neat service that uses fair use to the utmost than a neat service that gets shut down because it doesn't bother to follow court orders.
And people should already know to expect to get sued when they touch something made by Fox.
More to the point, if he had access to the episodes BEFORE they were aired, that means one of 2 things, a) he has an old Ku/C band satellite dish and just taped it (possible) or b) he or someone he knows physically stole something from FOX ...which in my opinion would be far more of an offense than mere copyright infringement.