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Google to Viacom - The Law is Clear, and On Our Side
An anonymous reader writes "Google responded to the opinion piece in the Washington Post by a Viacom Lawyer with a letter to the editor titled 'An End Run on Copyright Law.' Their strong wording sends a very concrete message: 'Viacom is attempting to rewrite established copyright law through a baseless lawsuit. In February, after negotiations broke down, Viacom requested that YouTube take down more than 100,000 videos. We did so immediately, working through a weekend. Viacom later withdrew some of those requests, apparently realizing that those videos were not infringing, after all. Though Viacom seems unable to determine what constitutes infringing content, its lawyers believe that we should have the responsibility and ability to do it for them. Fortunately, the law is clear, and on our side.'"
I just can't wait to see when Disney loses rights to their very early stuff, that will be a laugh and a half.
That won't happen. They will ask for and receive extension after extension.
What?
Nah, Google doesn't want Viacom to drop the suit. Google was gunning for this fight and they want Viacom to come at them swinging hard. It's a fight Google is likely to win, but it has to be a fight otherwise it won't resolve anything and the rampant DMCA abuse will continue.
If there's one thing you can say for Google, they know how to stand up for sane copyright law.
That's because Google's entire business model is based around using other people's copyrighted material.
It's a symbiotic relationship where Google can use pieces of peoples content to advertise over while simultaneously causing that full content to be consumed, making the creators money.
What a strange new world...
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
The real problem with copyright law is that large corporations are allowed to possess them. This is just another example of the much larger problem of large corporations being allowed to do anything an individual can do. Even in your example, the author doesn't necessarily own the copyright. Often, it is the publisher that does so, which is good if a lawsuit is required, but it limits the author's future right to do what they wish with their work. In short, why is a company that has not produced anything creative allowed to take advantage of a legal right that was supposedly enacted to protect creativity? Perhaps these corporations should only be allowed to possess limited copyrights that only extend to the first production of the work in question, with all rights thereafter reverting to the artists who created the works. I have no absolute solutions, but I really think this needs to be looked at from the point of view of what would actually increase creativity in the real world and not just in the corporate bizarro world.