Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Better than dressing up like an ape cause you can't take a hit or two without padding and helmet.
Hang on, what the fuck, I'm participating in a conversation about football codes?
Who just typed that?
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
If you squint really hard, you might actually be able to see a sport in between the commercials.
Ah, soccer.
Where the advertisements kick a ball around.
Great interpretation of how just the law is from someone who obviously profits from it.
And, as I said... you don't create, so you don't understand. So I'll break it down for you...
My contribution to culture, however small, was done because I had the expectation of being able to trade that contribution for enough money to pay my rent, feed my kids, etc. If there was no expectation, you know what I would have done? Become a lawyer.
The long hours, sweat, and money I have put into creating art and paying others to create art... gone. The hours, sweat, and money thousands like me put into it... gone. The only reason you have as much content to copy, particularly good content to copy, is because copyright encouraged others to create it.
We have a right to be free.
One which was only secured for you by good people who made great sacrifices. And furthermore, freedom is not absolute. Your freedom is limited at the point where it stops someone else from being free.
We have a right to copy.
No, you have an ability to copy. You only have a right to copy something you PAID for and then only to copy it for personal use. Proclaiming a right to any copying that goes beyond that is like me saying I have a right to steal your car merely because it's stealable.
Slave owners quoted the bible to prove they had a "right" to own slaves. There are people who think their rights as parents extend to beating their kids unconscious and that the government arresting them for breaking a four-year-old's arm is a violation of their rights.
You can proclaim all the "rights" you want. That doesn't mean they're legal, ethical, or moral.
We no longer want these laws.
There are people in Germany who no longer want laws prohibiting the Nazi party. There are CEOs who no longer want laws prohibiting insider trading. There are pedophiles who no longer want laws prohibiting the possession or distribution of child pornography.
The dislike of a law doesn't make it unjust, just inconvenient to criminally-minded people like yourself.
Our numbers are growing.
Sadly, so are the numbers of Nazis, corrupt CEOs, and pedophiles. But growing numbers doesn't make be accept their causes, arguments, or criminal behavior, nor will they make me accept yours.
Start a happiness pandemic
> My contribution to culture, however small, was done because I had the expectation of being able to trade that contribution for enough money to pay my rent, feed my kids, etc. If there was no expectation, you know what I would have done? Become a lawyer.
And mine was not. Is it less valuable? You do realize that there are other ways to make money from works of art and imagination (not mere "content" one might stuff into a box with a price tag), no? Or that something called the Renaissance happened outside the domain of copyright, no? You DO also realize that essentially ALL of your ideas are based on those of others, too, no? Otherwise, you'd have to write using only those words you had coined yourself. After all, while human thought, like water, originally shapes its own riverbed, ever after it flows down and is shaped by the same riverbed it first formed.
> One which was only secured for you by good people who made great sacrifices. And furthermore, freedom is not absolute. Your freedom is limited at the point where it stops someone else from being free.
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?
> Slave owners quoted the bible to prove they had a "right" to own slaves. There are people who think their rights as parents extend to beating their kids unconscious and that the government arresting them for breaking a four-year-old's arm is a violation of their rights.
And ignored their obligation to free them all every 7th year during the Year of Jubilee, ignored that a "slave" was one who originally sold themselves (or was, alas, sold by their parents), not to mention a whole host of other limitations they found inconvenient. It's right that too often we see a right touted without ANY consideration for what gives rise to it, however. And here the point was NOT to give authors a right to profit, but instead to enrich culture. A goal that is almost if not entirely ignored by current copyright laws.
> You can proclaim all the "rights" you want. That doesn't mean they're legal, ethical, or moral.
Quite right. Copyright, as it exists now, can only rightfully be considered one of those three. It's no wonder then, that disrespect for it is continually mounting and will continue to mount until such time as the laws reflect something more real.
> There are people in Germany who no longer want laws prohibiting the Nazi party. There are CEOs who no longer want laws prohibiting insider trading. There are pedophiles who no longer want laws prohibiting the possession or distribution of child pornography.
Surely you know that by equating copyright infringement to Nazis and molesting children, you have long since undermined whatever point you were trying to make by abandoning reason wholesale in an attempt to demonize the opposition? Can you honestly find no better reasons to support copyright than "think of the children"? Yes, perhaps I am being glib with your response, but I cannot rightfully apprehend the sort of confusion that would prompt such an untoward comparison.
> Sadly, so are the numbers of Nazis, corrupt CEOs, and pedophiles. But growing numbers doesn't make be accept their causes, arguments, or criminal behavior, nor will they make me accept yours.
They are? Based on what do you suppose that these numbers are growing?
Now then, you say indeed that ad populum does not make a good moral system. I can agree with that, but the moral basis I use can only consider copyright infringement evil if it is ultimately hurtful to society. I do not find evidence of that, therefore I wish to see the law reformed into something which is good for society. Alas, I am not holding my breath.
But who am I kidding? You went to Godwin this discussion. I have to believe that you're just trolling, because you appeal only to emotion and not to reason.
Google falls down holding its knee, his face looks like he is in agony. No wait, now hes up again 2 seconds later running at full speed.
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
Start a happiness pandemic
Creation? Innovation? It's a frigging football (soccer) match! It's not like the FA is a bunch of artists writing poems or whatever, it's a sport.
It's not being streamed live in competition with the live broadcast.
Football is an important part of a large part of the world's culture. It is unjust to lock it up behind copyright, that just doesn't make sense. Making it available after the fact doesn't diminish the advertising revenue (that's what this is about, revenue) of the live broadcast, there's plenty of demand for the live broadcast.
But once the match has been played, what's the problem with people being able to watch it?
This is a good example of the bad side of copyright, locking up public culture for fear of losing even a penny of corporate profit.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
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.
What was once true, is no longer so