English Premier Football League Sues YouTube

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is reporting that the English Premier Football League has launched a lawsuit against YouTube and its owner Google, claiming unspecified damages. The league is sitting on high-profile content valued at $5.4 billion over the next 3 years in a recent series of auctions. This will be the second major suit against YouTube since Google's purchase."

Comments

shame for soccer fans

[Aeron65432]

As a big soccer/football fan myself (forza juventus!) sometimes YouTube is the only way I can watch the premiership or international football games in the US. None of the major networks broadcast it, it's rarely if ever available on cable, and it's impossible to find games on the internet. Except YouTube, people often upload it in segments. Maybe if there was a way to watch it online for cheap (or ad-supported) we wouldn't have to resort to watching on YouTube...but as of now for 90%+ of Americans, that is the only way to watch.

Re:shame for soccer fans

[gbulmash]

It seems to be the business model of large media companies... restrict access to content, refuse to make it available to the users who want it, then start suing when it escapes your control.

For years, people told the record companies: "things are changing, the way we listen is changing, the way we collect music and manage our collections is changing. Get with the times and provide solutions that suit us or we'll just find our own."

Now, with broadband expanding and compresssion/streaming technologies improving, the companies that provide video media are starting to get hit with the same problems Napster brought to the record companies 10'ish years ago. With a decade to learn from the plight of the record companies, adapt, and profit... the video media companies are making the same mistakes, thinking they can solve their problems with lawyers instead of adapting to the new circumstances.

Nice to see Google taking the heat

[QuantumG]

A number of us have been saying for years that sooner or later people will stand up and refuse to obey unjust laws.

We've made the claim that copyright is just such an unjust law.

The last few years we've seen it actually happening. We dipped our toes in with music sharing, but it was too hot, so we went back to the shadows. The so-called Pirate Party grows stronger. Now there's YouTube/Google.

The silent majority of us ignore these laws. Now there's a vocal minority who are saying enough is enough.

I think this issue has finally come of age.

Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat

[wbren]

Well, it's not likely Google/YouTube stood up and said, "We'll fight this lawsuit with all we've got!" It more like they said, "Well, this may be a good partnership in disguise. Let's see if we can make some money from advertising from this lawsuit." Google is not the "fair-use savior" as some have claimed. It's a business. Its goal is to make companies see the potential advertising revenue in these short clips on YouTube (they are an advertising company). Google is not standing up for fair-use rights; it's seeking potential streams of income (EPFL) and making them see the way (to profit). To pretend anything else is foolish and naive...

Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat

[Oligonicella]

What a bunch of crap. Google has no 'right' to distribute whatever the hell . If I have a copyrighted material I don't want distributed by Google and their users want it, too bad. I own the friggin' right to decide distribution, not you, not Google. They are definitely not on the right side.

Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat

[gbulmash]

Copyright is not an unjust law. It exists to spur creation and innovation, and for a lot of artists, it's the only thing that allows them to afford to create the content you unjustly enjoy.

It is not a perfect law and it does get abused. The concept of a creator being able to exert some control over their creation so that they can profit from it and prevent its adulteration to a certain extent is not wrong. And without copyright, anyone could take a GPL'ed project, incorporate it into closed source products, and no one could say boo to them.

The concept of copyright is not only just, it is necessary. There are a lot of people who, if they didn't have copyright laws to protect their creations, wouldn't create them, either because those creations cost too much or simply because there was a more profitable use of their time. The dream of being rich and famous spurs a lot of artists, and while you might argue that the "true artists" would create anyway... how much less would they create when the only reward was personal satisfaction?

You're a fringe ideologue who probably creates nothing and is only looking for an excuse to commit intellectual gluttony on someone else's dime. If you created stuff and actually were good enough to have a hope of doing that for a living, you wouldn't try to take that hope away from others.

- Greh

Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat

[Score Whore]

We all have a natural right to copy whatever we like..

Do you mean like credit reports, purchasing habits, medical histories, dead bolt keys, telephone conversations, looks, social security numbers, home addresses, photos taken with a telephoto lenses,credit card numbers, bank account numbers, names, email?

Or do you just mean you want to get free shit? That you don't want to pay for other peoples' hard work?

Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat

[gbulmash]

Most likely the players wouldn't make so many millions per year, but I'm sure somebody would still be willing to do the job.

"Somebody would still be willing to do the job." Of course. But have you ever watched minor league baseball? Ever gone out to see the Cucamonga Quakes at the Epicenter? Entertaining to be sure, but nothing compared to major league baseball.

The thing that keeps some of the best in any business doing what they do best is the fact that they can make loads of money doing it. If you take away the money, you take away their contribution. And that doesn't just decrease the quantity of creation, it decreases the quality of creation.

No, the English Premier League wouldn't shut down. But it might become crap, or less good than it is. Some of the best players might be working as college coaches or car salesmen or lawyers because the money was better. And the quality would suffer. Perhaps the game might be more "pure", but some of the artistry of play that the best players bring to the game would be gone.

Perhaps you'd prefer to live in a blander, more flavorless world where we have more car salesmen and lawyers, but I don't.

Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat

[gronofer]

Perhaps you'd prefer to live in a blander, more flavorless world where we have more car salesmen and lawyers, but I don't.

The Premier League would still be the highest level, so that's were the best footballers will be. I'd be surprised if the teams couldn't scrape up enough funds in one way or another to pay them an ordinary salary.

In any case the number of lawyers needed will surely decrease once copyright is abolished, which is another good reason for getting rid of it.

Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat

[gbulmash]

Sir, the problem is simple.

The *minute* you start to enforce a restriction on information in any way,
is the minute you start to limit free speech. Copyright is a restriction
on free speech, as is censorship. Don't agree? Witness the recent uprising
about a *number* being transmitted *AND SHUT UP*.

Should I point out the irony of you blabbering about free speech and then telling me to shut up, or would that limit your freedom of hypocrisy? It's amazing how many proponents of free speech only seem to believe that their speech should be free and tell their critics to "shut up".

Again, I'll point out that copyright law is not perfect and does get abused. I am not against copyright reform or the eradication of copyright abuse. But a lot of people participating in that uprising were protesting against an abuse of copyright law, not against the concept of copyright itself.

And furthermore, we limit free speech all the time. Ever heard of laws against incitement to riot, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, municipal noise ordinances.... Even though you can go up on stage in a night club and say the word "fuck" over and over for 4 hours, and call it performance art, if you tried doing that over a bullhorn in front of an elementary school, I guarantee you that the cops could arrest you and that even the Supreme Court would uphold that arrest.

I value my free speech far more than I value my right to get paid.

Tell me that when you have no food or shelter and no money to pay for them.

Isn't after all, caveat emptor?

How does "let the buyer beware" have anything to do with free speech? "Caveat emptor" means you need to inspect something before you buy it, so you're not ripped off by false representations. It does, on the other hand, have a lot to do with your elected representatives who help create copyright law. I'd heartily endorse a "caveat emptor" policy on election day, no matter what your political leanings.

Repeal the libel, the slander, the dmca, the copyright, the patents.

Please reply to this post with your photo and your full, real name and address so I can plaster your neighborhood with posters about how you're a child rapist and a danger to all children in your neighborhood. If you truly believe in the repeal of slander and libel laws, and you're all about freedom of speech, you'll not only take no legal action, you won't even pull the posters down (because that would be censoring me). You'll just suffer through your neighbors throwing rocks through your windows as the price of your ideals.

Lawyers, go fuck yourselves. You create nothing but misery.

And when you get get tossed in a cell in Guantanamo, I want you to tell that to the lawyers who are trying to get the government to let you go and stop torturing you.

- Greg

Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat

[Brickwall]

The point is it is not your speech; it's someone else's that you have misappropriated. Your free to say what you want; you're not free to take someone else's commercial product and redistribute it.

oops again

[wizardforce]

youtube has in the past responded to take downs without doing any fact checking and in this case it seems that the material would have been taken off immediately had they had such a notice- instead as far as I can tell the company just sued youtube without such notice. now aside from that, what is youtube being expected to do to prevent any and all copyrighted works from being submitted illegally? are they still working on that unique identification system? if so it hardly seems like they're intentionally profiting from the whole thing

Interesting...

[Jarjarthejedi]

Just rambling here but isn't it interesting, YouTube sits there for years without any major lawsuits that I remember and then a large multi million dollar company buys it and suddenly companies are suing it...makes you wonder if they're really that disturbed about their content or if they simply want a quick buck...

But, a little more on topic, YouTube's response is just silly, threatening the internet? Is this supposed to become the tech people's "Think of the Children" meme? No offense but if YouTube goes down the internet won't be affected at all. However the accusation is also silly, YouTube pushing football (non-American) in order to raise it's profile. YouTube needs a bigger profile? I mean, is there really any person with internet access for the last couple years, or who simply watches the news, who doesn't know about YouTube?

As for the copyright issues wasn't there some law that said that people posting to a site (text) were responsible for their posts, not the hosting company? I may be wrong about that but if there was such a law would not this fall under it?

Oh well, it's not like YouTube is going down...and even if it did everyone knows that something would come up to replace it...probably a site with less regard for copyright law...you can't stop people from sharing things by making it hard on the places where people share, all that does is make people go to the less reputable places and then you have an even harder time stopping them. Better to let them share on a site like YouTube, where the worst offenders can be stopped, rather than sending the traffic to a site that would make it impossible to stop anything like this.

Google Will Find a Solution to this Problem

[datastrategy]

Google's got far too much invested in YouTube and way too much at stake overall to allow a steady stream of high profile, potentially extremely costly lawsuits to continue. So I bet they and their YouTube folks are working hard on a technical solution that would provide enough upfront screening/checking to drastically reduce the amount of copyrighted material that wound up posted on either YouTube or Google Video (which would strengthen their legal basis for defending against any lawsuits). They are also likely to redouble their efforts to strike marketing deals with all the major content providers to head things off at the pass as much as possible, and to of course find new ways to contribute to their bottom line. Should be very interesting to see how all this plays out.

Re:As expected from a producer of "content", not a

[gbulmash]

Indeed. And when the only way to properly enforce copyright is to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC, should not their right give way, particularly when it was a right created for the good of society?

Why do you have to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC? You accuse me of using extremes, then use them yourself.

Again, and for the last time... Copyright law is not perfect and gets abused. But you're going at it like if a concept is poorly implemented and gets abused, we should just chuck the whole thing instead of trying to fix it. You're looking at this as a black and white situation rather than one with shades of gray. A binary worldview is dangerous.

Do I think it sucks that WMA DRM music can't play on an iPod and AAC DRM music can't play on a non-iPod? Yes. Once you buy it, you should be able to play it on any player. But do I think the solution to that is to abolish copyright rather than abolishing DRM that limits fair use? No.

Do I think that once I've bought a movie on DVD, I should be able to back it up to a personal media server or another disc so when the original DVD I bought wears out or gets scratched, I can continue to enjoy the content I purchased? Of course. But should that be done via abolishing copyright altogether or abolishing stupid anti-copy protections? The latter.

When you abolish stupid copy protections and bad DRM, the potential for piracy goes up... and so should the penalty. But when you make it possible for people to actually enjoy the content they paid for, more people will pay for it.

My first post on this story was pointing out that the video content producers were approaching the problem of digital distribution with the same stupidity and narrow-mindedness that the music industry demonstrated as MP3 began to rise. Rather than respond to their customers with innovation, they responded with draconian measures to try to stifle innovation. And that creates binary thinkers like you, so pissed off about the draconian measures that they rail against the concept of copyright instead of railing against the poor implementation of the concept that allows the draconian measures.

There is a middle-ground. Copyright is not bad in and of itself. It is the current state of copyright law that is bad. That state needs to be changed. But if your method of changing it is to destroy it, you create an environment in which those who agree with you on many points must end up opposing you, because if you make this an argument with only two sides, you make it a choice of the lesser of two evils. And at least for me, anarchy is always the greater evil.

- Greg

English Premeier League == RIAA == SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

The English Premier Leage are IMHO in the same league as the RIAA & SCO.

The premier league have taken and are taking more publicans to court for copyright violations over showing footie matches.
The crime that the publicans committed?
They legally purchased Premier League Matches from a legitimate TV station over Satellite. The source was based in anouther EU Country and had purchased the rights to show the matches. Under EU Rules every person is free to buy stuff from another country unhindered by governments etc unless the EU itself passes a law against it. In this case, no such law/ruling has been passed.

The premier league say they have the rights to control who sees the matches country by country.
So, if I live in a place close to a border with another country I can't legally watch premier league footie matches that ate broadcast by the country next door.
IANAL but IMHO this is against EU Rules and might fall fould of RICO laws in the USofA.

Why do I make the SCO analogy?
They sen out letters threatening legal action for violations which are probably legally pretty shaky.
So far the pub sued have caved in. Eventually they will sue one too many and the publican will take them to Europe where they will probably loose.

There is an equally silly situation in the USA. American Football. The controlling leagues claim to have total rights to everything associated with a match. from the list of who is playing to stopping you from reporting in a Blog that I watch the Redskins vs The Cowboys and think that the ruling by a ref at a crucial point in the 4th quarter was silly. Just record a match and look at the legalese in the broadcast. Other sports are the same. Apart from being against the 1st ammendment this just sucks.

The Billions of $,Euros, Yen, Pounds etc at stake in these sports today make these moves more and more predictable.
The premier leage is in total hock to Sky. Without their BILLIONS the league would be probably non existant. Who controls SKY?
The same family that controls FOX etc and wants to but the Wall St Journal. Need I say more?
Needless to say, I don't have cable or satellite TV. I refuse to pay silly prices for what is often total crap.
I prefer to watch my local Amateur Rugby League Team for FREE.

Re:Oh no

[meringuoid]

If only you understood how penalties worked in soccer... Whether anyone likes it or not, "faking" is part of soccer. No one complains about a basketball player who "draws a foul," yet since many Americans don't understand how soccer fouls/penalties work, they see a player who "fakes" an injury as being a sissy. As hard as it is for some people to understand, it's part of the game.

The mistake they make is thinking that the man who takes a dive is being a sissy, as opposed to being a cheating bastard. De facto part of the game it may be, but I'm always delighted when the referee actually calls people on this one; to see a notorious diver actually get booked for simulation once in a while is a wonderful thing.