Slashdot Mirror
Viacom Sued Over YouTube Parody Removal
A self aware computer input device writes "Just a week after Viacom sued Google over copyrighted material, MoveOn.org Civic Action and Brave New Films LLC have sued Viacom claiming the cable network company improperly asked the video-sharing site YouTube to remove a parody of the network's 'The Colbert Report.' Couple this with the iFilm fiasco reported earlier, and you have to question how a company like Viacom can cry foul when it can't even accurately account for its own copyrighted material."
I know I like to cry fowl when I see a turkey of an article like this one.
Those vultures at Viacom have a full-fledged plan to feather their nests by hatching lawsuits -- and it looks like some people are getting soar about it. Hiring those legal eagles to flip them the bird won't come cheep, though.
Bah, the RIAA probably egged them on in the first place.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
And still have to comply with the DMCA takedown notice, or have enough lawyers to hold back Viacom
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHqX27hlz8
Pretty unfunny imo.
and organize the Everyone vs Everyone trial.
Did you even watch the video? It is obviously a critical review. Think of the ramifications if all a corporation has to do to stop negative reviews of their products is file a DMCA takedown notice. There is no way in the world that protecting somebody's imaginary "property" is more important than protecting the first amendment.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Viacom's complaint is exactly what's stated in the headline--that they CAN'T POSSIBLY track all the content they want taken down.
They want to shift the burden of policing to the website operator.
The law:
Copyright violator puts material on website without proper rights to do so.
Copyright holder complains to website operator.
Website operator immediately takes down material, then follows up as appropriate.
Courts, whatever follow.
In exchange for certain protections (and they made out like bandits, but it's still not enough), the industry's lobbyists agreed to bear the weight of policing when the DMCA was finally passed in 1998.
What Viacom wants:
Website operator is responsible for making sure material in violation of license never appears on their site.
If this ever happens, copyright holder gets one biiillllion dollars (well, 1.6, but you get the pinky anyhow).
Well, that, or viacom just gets to dictate terms to google when they finally partner up.
As the google/youtube lawyer said this morning on NPR--this is something they should take up in the Congress, not the Courts.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
.....Viacom gets a Wag Of The Finger!
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
In this case you are probably right, but this is not always an (affordable) option. In the past, I had to use Google Video to post a video of an event we held. Our current provider doesn't allow us to host the video ourselves, so I did the next best thing: upload it to Google Video.
I am going to venture a guess that you have never actually seen the Colbert Report, or that you never watched the video. What some of his videos and then rewatch the parody. It makes a lot more sense.
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jht ml?ml_video=&ml_collection=70004&ml_gateway=&ml_ga teway_id=&ml_comedian=&ml_runtime=&ml_context=show &ml_origin_url=%2Fmotherload%2F%3Fml_collection%3D 70004&ml_playlist=&lnk=&is_large=true
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
But the default position shouldn't be to take down any work just because a lawer says it infringes. If Viacom prove in court that it's infringing or at least convince a judge that it should be removed pending a case then fine.
The government passed a law that allows people to trivially infringe on the first amendment rights of others. If you don't think there's an action of government in there somewhere, you're not thinking.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The DMCA is probably the single worst piece of legislation on the books. Clearly no one took the prototype and demonstrated how to abuse it prior to issue.
... and that's the fundamentally-bad part. To quote Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap!"
However, the Constitution of the US is all about how the gub'ment interacts with the people. It has little to with how people interact with each other (anti-discrimination elements are an excption.) The government says I have a right to bear arms. That does not imply that you are powerless to prevent me from bringing a sidearm into your home or place of business. It only means that the government (and it's agents) are restricted in what they may do regarding my firearms.
Similarly, the government is obligated to provide a level playing field for the citizens regarding freedom of speech, liberty, pursuit of hapiness, etc, etc. The executive summary is basically "The government may not demonstrate a bias." You however, are free to "bias" all you like. If you run a coffee shop, and allow customers to use an open mic on "political rant night," you're not obligated to allow anyone equal time. You're not an agent of the state, so those rules don't apply directly to you. If someone takes the stage and says something you don't like, you may ask them to leave. If they don't, they're trespassing and you have the option of bringing in law enforcement folks. Said individual may cry "I'm being oppressed" at the top of his lungs, but an individual (you, the coffee-shop owner) is not held to the same standard as the government. Granted, tossing someone out on open mic night is probably a bad move with respect to the customer base, but that's an image-issue, not a government-regulation one.
If you can demonstrate that Viacom (or anyone else) is acting as an agent of the state, then you've got a valid claim of Nth Ammendment violation. That would be a government action by proxy, and I would fully expect any judge to get extremely angry at a government agency attempting such an end-run. Otherwise, it's just the DMCA being an overly-broad piece of crappy legislation. It could probably be declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it horribly infringes on fair-use under copyright law. But that's a totally different fight. Perhaps that's the one Google wants to fight - "In order to exercize my fair-use rights, I'm required to obtain a circumvention device (my PC) and to disable the kindergarden-grade protection measure." That's a shell game - in order to have these rights over here, you're required to break this other law. The situation allows the government to arrest you for exercizing your rights
Yes. The DMCA is fundamentally flawed. But that doesn't matter. There is no objective measure at the moment whether this video is infringing or not. If Viacom were to sue the creators directly, and made an argument as to why it infringes, then it would take a court to make the decision. Now, as long as the creators submitted the argument "It's clearly a parody" they'd win in court, but that hasn't happened yet.
The DMCA would not be so bad if it were actually enforced as written. As things are it's only being used in a one-sided manner such that large companies are able to suppress whatever they want with no repercussions and small content providers are not protected at all (and are in fact being silenced via misapplication of the DMCA). In order to compel someone to take down infringing content providers have to swear under penalty of perjury that they own the content. To date, although numerous examples of blatant violation exist, including takedown notices being issued for obviously original works and other work that the submitter does not own, no prosecutions seem to have occurred. This is also the first lawsuit I have heard of on such grounds; it is a wonder that more have not been submitted.
As for your bit about arguments being submitted in court, that is an odd bit of logic. TFA is about precisely that; to wit, the creators have submitted the argument, in court, that their video was wrongfully removed because it is in fact a parody. You don't even need to read the summary because this information is contained in the title of the slashdot article.
Viacom probalby should have known that this is non-infringing, but their argument that they aren't in a position to make a legal judgement will be a decent defence in court.
No, they have to be able to prove that they knew for a fact it was infringing. They are in a positioon to make a legal judgement and have done so wrecklessly. This is a blatant abuse of the DMCA which is covered in the statute itself. It's also an important case because this kind of abuse is far too frequent and comes of content providers not doing the due diligence required by the Act. It's about time someone cracked down on it; let's hope they make a fine example. Hang 'em high, judge! Hang 'em high!
Why do you post on slashdot and not any of the other online tech forums?