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YouTube Was Evil, and Google Knew It
pcause writes "Silicon Alley Insider has the most damning evidence released in the Viacom/YouTube suit. It seems clear from these snippets that YouTube knew it was pirating content, and did it to grow fast and sell for a lot of money. It also seems clear that Google knew the site contained pirated content and bought it and continued the pirating."
I'm still waiting for the evil part.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
I find it unlikely that Google considers this evil. After all, given their stance toward books and other literature, they seem to think that they have every right to reproduce and host content at their whim.
This isn't a double standard at work. Google simply believes that it's above the law, and 'evil' can be conveniently redefined to mean whatever suits the company's interests at the time. Don't fall for the feelgood narrative.
im also still waiting for the evil part. if anyone blabbers to the contrary, im ready with a phletora of evidences of REAL evil ranging from monsanto to comcast-nbc, viacom, microsoft, and many many more.
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404: Evil Not Found
AnimePapers.org: Anime Wallpapers Handled With Care
The ethical status of doing all this notwithstanding, and especially _knowingly_ relying on it as part of one's business plan, it would appear that Youtube had safe harbor to do all this under the online copyright liability limitations enacted as part of the DMCA.
So this is a direct response to http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/03/18/2059236/Google-Slams-Viacom-For-Secret-YouTube-Uploads from Viacom ?
One interesting quote (by Patrick Walker of Google) was this:
Top 10 reasons why we shouldn't stop screening for copyright violations: 1. It crosses the threshold of Don't be Evil to facilitate distribution of other people's intellectual property, and possibly even allowing monetization of it by somebody who doesn't own the copyright.
A handy assessment of copyright and IP from an ethical (as opposed to legal) point of view. Next time the topic on how Google "really" feels about copyrights comes up, you know the answer.
No, what YouTube (and Google) was allegedly involved in was gross copyright infringement. Quit calling it piracy already.
Of course. I mean, it's a mere 400 years of precedence for the word "piracy" having the meaning of "copyright infringement"; nothing to bother about, right?
1. Google Search
2. I'm Feeling Lucky
3. AARRRRR!!!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Nowadays, words have more than one meaning. If you think that's bad, you should probably avoid the topic of "Abbreviations" altogether.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/03/broadcast-yourself.html
"Pirating" is such a slanted, unhelpful framing of using and sharing digital material without permission.
Just remember that and keep saying it over and over. Google is our friend. Google is our friend. Google is our friend.
I don't think people's opinion of Google would change if they installed an application that uploaded to their servers anything that contained the word "copyright" in it and they then sold access to these gathered files. Better yet, just made the files available with embedded advertising. Imagine getting access to movie scripts as works-in-progress with some topically relevent ads sprinkled in. How about design documents for new consumer electronics gear, a year or so before it hit the market. You could market this under the moniker "Open Google".
The problem with Google is they got so incredibly big so incredibly fast without ever having to learn anything about growth or ethics. A lot of the senior staff are very young and have little experience other than Google. If it can be monetized, there is no reason not to do so in their eyes, especially if it doesn't seem "evil" at first glance.
They probably did need that infringing content to survive. But now, they've reached a point where that's no longer the case. If you really could remove all the stuff on YouTube that's unauthorized and doesn't qualify as fair use, it almost wouldn't matter any more. Nearly all the most-viewed videos now are some type of personal video, or something that's authorized and legit.
It's also really hard to make a claim that YouTube has hurt content providers more than it has helped them. You don't see full TV episodes or movies for instance. All you find is short clips that, if anything, function as advertising and get more people to purchase them than would have otherwise. Perhaps the same is not entirely true for audio tracks and music videos, but those have been so trivially easy to acquire illegally for years now, I'm not convinced YouTube had a net negative impact for those kinds of content providers either.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
I think if they search harder, they may find that as a search engine, google indexed pages about piracy, hate speech, and terrorism. How evil is that?
Don't get me started about the PHONE COMPANY. They carry all sorts of damnable content. I've heard copyrighted music over a phone, before.
As YouTube's council recently pointed out, more or less any video is copyrighted. If you make a video, it's copyright to you upon time of creation. Few people actually bother to release their stuff in to the public domain, so the works remain copyrighted. Now that does NOT mean they can't be posted on Youtube. The holder of a copyright can determine how it is allowed to be used, including given away for free to anyone.
Now, as that applies to big media companies the problem is that they themselves, or their agents, like PR agencies, do indeed upload content to Youtube. So just because a work is uploaded that is owned by a big company, it doesn't mean there has been infringement. Perhaps the company themselves did the uploading. They don't always do it through some official account.
As such it makes sense to respond to infringement notices and remove the content, but not to run around assuming that you know what is and is not ok to be on there. Other than videos by the government (which are public domain at creation) or ones that people have bothered to release in to the public domain, it's all copyrighted material. However a great deal of it the copyright holders WANT to be on there, including when said holders are major media companies.
You know what's evil? Copyright term of "70 years + life of the author".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_term
Almost every single thing creative that someone creates today will *never* enter the public domain within our lifetime. Nothing. The owner of the copyright must explicitly grant it to the public domain, or license it for other's use, distribution, sharing, mashing, basically anything more than fair use... Copyright is no longer about promotion of creativity, its a legal exclusivity and an effectively permanent lock on all creative output by business interests. Add WIPO and ACTA and soon within 10 years or so, it will be a global exclusive lock, again driven by business interests.
The current copyright laws are simply a denial of any sense of balance or social good in intellectual property.
I know that, but calling 'gross copyright infringement' is nothing more then a marketing tactic (which has worked) to paint copyright infringers in the same light as those who go out on the high seas and steal stuff from ships when it isn't even the same thing. In piracy you steal a physical product. In gross copyright infringement you COPY something and then share that copy. The original product (legally bought or not is not the case here) is still able to be sold for fun and profit. Unfortunately the MPAA, the RIAA and other such organizations have yet to join the Intarwebs in selling their products at competitive prices.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
From Wikipedia article on copyright infringement:
"Even prior to the 1709 enactment of the Statute of Anne, generally recognized as the first copyright law, the Stationers' Company of London in 1557 received a Royal Charter giving the company a monopoly on publication and tasking it with enforcing the charter. Those who violated the charter were labeled pirates as early as 1603."
And, yes, there is a reference there. Go look it up yourself.
Quit calling it piracy already.
It's piracy. Get over it. The word has evolved beyond parrots and yarrh's to include appropriation and distribution of files for which no license to distribute was provided by the content creator.
Language grows. "Hacker" used to mean a really bad golfer. And "Geeks" bit the heads off chickens.
Maybe someday, the people who argue over semantics will win. It'll go something like this: Congratulations. You won the semantic argument. We won everything else.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Propaganda isn't just a 20th century thing - the nazis and americans refined it to an art in the 20th century
I'm sorry, but you just can't call out the Nazis and the United States for refining propaganda in the 20th Century and leave out the Soviet Union and China.
It's true that Western propaganda was heavily influenced by Viennese and American concepts and put to the test in the U.S. in order to push the country into World War I by Woodrow Wilson. However, that occurred in parallel with the development of Russian revolutionary efforts to sway the populace which would be enshrined as a central element of Soviet rule.
I'm not seeing the evil. All I see is discussions about covering their asses and a few individuals admitting to copyright infringement (with no actual evidence and no indication that this was done by YouTube itself). I see an acknowledgement that much of the material could be potentially infinging, but I also see discussions on how to proceed with takedown processes (whether to have a direct reporting link or wait for a takedown notice). As this kind of thing hadn't been done before, it could be argued that waiting for a takedown notice was a perfectly legal option, instead of having to be proactive.
There seems to be very little factual evidence in all of these IM and email quotes, not to mention that they are all taken out of context or given new context by Viacom's lawyers (prime example is the personal opinion that rightsholders were assholes being touted as a general disregard for copyright). It seems that much of this could easily be classed as hearsay (mainly the IM conversations) not factual evidence, and is only really useful in establishing character of the Google and YouTube management.
It seems that if Viacom are dredging up these emails and IM conversations as key evidence, they may not have much of a case, and that putting them out there is more about trying to publically shame YouTube into a settlement. If this is all they have to file for summary judgement, the rest of the case may be pretty flimsy.
Contrast this with YouTube/Google's filing for sumary judgement that argues that Viacom were placing videos on YouTube through covert and very deliberate means. This shows Viacome were being complete hypocrites, and it can be easily argued that Viacom could have been using this to entrap YouTube. If Google/YouTube have actual evidence of that, it could very easily be a smoking gun.
Really? Is this the most damning evidence? On a scale of 1 being least damning and 10 being most damning where does this fall when also considering that Viacom was uploading videos to YouTube in an effort to make YouTube look like it was infringing?
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/18/youtube-viacom-would-demand-removal-of-videos-it-covertly-uploa/
Fuck the media conglomerates. I hope they all rot.
FYI, a "reference" is not necessarily a link. So long as it specifies the title and author of the work, it's still a valid reference - JFGI. Or check a local library.
Since this, apparently, poses an insurmountable challenge to some people, here is a direct link to the text of the work in question (PDF).
They understood that without a way to protect the intellectual creations, such as books, music, architectural designs, inventions, et al, there would be less motivation for people to spend the time, and energy, to create them.
They thought there would be insufficient motivation. But like many other 18th century beliefs, they were mistaken: don't forget that many of the founders owned slaves, too.
We in the 21st century now know that copyright is not required to motivate people to spend time and energy to produce such content: millions of people do it every day, for free, just because they like to share their creations.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Illegal and Evil are two entirely separate things. Anything that hurts the current media industrial complex is a good and righteous act as far as I'm concerned.
Another article:
Meanwhile, Google says, Viacom "regularly uses so-called 'stealth marketing' to get its content onto YouTube. The goal is to create the appearance of authentic grassroots interest in the content being promoted." Google cites a marketing executive at Viacom's Paramount studio who said that clips posted to YouTube "should definitely not be associated with the studio -- should appear as if a fan created and posted it." To accomplish that, Google says that "Viacom employees have made special trips away from the company's premises (to places like Kinko's) to upload videos to YouTube from computers not traceable to Viacom."
Also, "Viacom has altered its own videos to make them appear stolen." Indeed, Google says that a former president of MTV, not named, testified that Viacom didn't take down clips from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report because "we were concerned that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert believed that their presence on YouTube was important for their ratings as well as for their relationship with their audience."
So... who's evil here?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
yes. lets see, because you own the patent on induction based HID lighting, people couldnt use that technology, and instead had to innovate in leds in order to beat you. and you happily say you are already entrenched in that market.
thank you for proving all of my points.
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I did RTFA, and I see how biased the article is. E.g., http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#youtube-tries-skirting-the-law-3 . This to me seems entirely reasonable and correct - if they try to police it themselves, it's harder to claim that they are ignorant, or that they should be treated like a common carrier. It is far better to leave it to the users, then it's their liability. If you think that's evil, then it's the law that's a problem, not Google. Similarly for http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#youtube-was-getting-too-good-at-removing-illegal-content-which-worried-the-founders-10 - anyone who thinks this means they supported copyright infringement is an idiot, who doesn't understand the law.
Oh, so they used the phrase "copyright bastards". So company execs use naughty words too - how "evil". I don't think that using the phrase is unreasonable, when you consider how groups like the RIAA have operated. This doesn't mean they think copyright infringement should be supported.
On the whole, most of the emails seem to be about reducing their liability, which seems an entirely reasonable and sensible thing.
Then there's this one - http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#this-doesnt-necessarily-kill-them-but-boy-is-it-embarrassing-5 . How's that embarrassing? It shows that they are against copyright infringement, as he was telling them not to do it.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#we-have-to-make-our-site-as-entertaining-as-tv-6 - what does this have to do with copyright? If it's entertaining, it must be infringing copyright? Nice spin there.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#-17 - a company is evil if an engineer calls people "a-holes"? I suspect that makes most companies evil.
As for "evil", it's completely out of context. It comes from http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#uh-ohhowever-evil-never-sounds-good-11 , but the "evil" does not mean copyright infringement, it means "user metrics" and "views"! This is not evil, and nothing to do with copyright, it's about spinning their publicity. I suspect "evil" is not intended seriously.