Viacom Wants Industry Wide Copyright Filter

slashqwerty writes "Unsatisfied with the proprietary copyright filter Google recently unveiled, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman has called for an industry standard to filter copyrighted material. Mr. Dauman has the backing of Microsoft, Disney, and Universal. 'They reflect the fact that there ought to be a filtering system in place on the part of technology companies,' he noted. 'Most responsible companies have followed that path. What no one wants is a proprietary system that benefits one company. It is a big drain to a company like ours to have to deal with incompatible systems.' How would an industry standard impact freedom of speech and in particular censorship on the internet? How would it affect small, independent web sites?"

Comments

It shouldn't

[speaker of the truth]

An industry wide copyright filter shouldn't affect small and independent websites unless its embedded into the OS or browser. If it is then companies selling such crippled products should be forced to disclose it first. As for it being built into websites, I see no problem with that provided they have fair use exceptions. After all, people SHOULDN'T be providing copyrighted content except under fair use laws. Although companies should only institute systems that take into account their local laws, so these situations do not occur.

If a system didn't incorporate one of those conditions, then I would not patron any website that utilized it. The DMCA, for all its flaws, is good in that if someone erroneously issues a DMCA takedown notice and the host complies (safest course of action). The person who originally put it up can issue their own DMCA notice to have it rehosted and there is nothing the "copyright owner" can do execpt take the person to court. In these situations the DMCA (when its not abused and its the duty of webhosts to make sure they haven't been sent a clearly abusive DMCA takedown notice) is good in that it has checks and balances. Any industry wide copyright filter should have their own checks and balances, in my opinion in the form of my first paragraph.