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Dueling Summary Judgment Motions In Viacom v. YouTube
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Eric Goldman, an Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law, has an excellent analysis of the dueling summary judgment motions in Viacom v. YouTube. Basically, both sides have been trotting out the most damning things they can find and asking the judge to rule against the other party. Viacom is mad that Chad Hurley, one of YouTube's co-founders, lost his email archive and couldn't remember some old emails. Worse, YouTube founder Karim once uploaded infringing content. But then Google points out that only a very small percentage of the users are engaged in infringing activity (some 0.016% of all YouTube accounts have been deleted for infringement), one of the clips Viacom is suing over is only one second long (what about fair use?), and most of YouTube's content is non-infringing, including the campaign videos which all major US presidential candidates posted to YouTube." (More below.)
"But the worst thing they found is that Viacom can't make up their mind. They spent $1M advertising on YouTube and tried to buy it. And even though they demanded that YouTube remove videos containing Viacom property on sight, Viacom had a complex internal policy authorizing some clips, including ones disguised as 'leaks' and put out by their marketers. Viacom was so conflicted internally that their very expensive lawyers couldn't figure out what Viacom had authorized to be uploaded even after doing extensive research as required by court rules, only to discover that some of the clips Viacom was suing over were ones Viacom uploaded themselves. The lawyers then had to go to court and drop those clips from their case — twice. They missed some the first time."
This is so damn ridiculous.
This is about being the gatekeeper to media content. It has nothing at all to do with piracy per see. Youtube is the place to be if you want content to spread, like traliers, new bands etc.
If Youtube becomes the place to be for content Viacom and the rest of the leeches gets taken out of the equation as distributors. Its the same fight the RIAA is making. Its not about piracy, its about deciding what you watch, listens to and buys.
HTTP/1.1 400
Viacom learned that this "viral marketing" thing is kinda good PR, and cheap too! 'cause people don't like marketing and ads when they see them, especially when it comes to music and anything targeted at teenagers, who by default despise everything their parents (or any person over 30) think is a good idea. So they thought it would be spiffy to put up some of those videos in some sort of "clandestine" operation, probably with some astroturfing going along, and hey, I'm pretty sure it even worked!
"But those damn kids should buy our crap, not listen to it for free!", decried some other department, probably the beancounters this time, who, by their very nature, don't really talk that much with the loonies from PR. So put up takedown notices.
Watch a company battle itself. It's actually pretty entertaining.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
hey, your kitten walking on the piano keyboard was playing a song owned by SonyWarnerEMI. We'll sue the whiskers off him!
After reading the summary (seriously, do this first or this won't work at all), gauge your reaction to the article that you won't be reading to determine how long and for what purposes you read /.
If you are surprised by any of the summary, you must be new here.
If you aren't angered by the summary, you have been here too long.
If you mentally insert else statements between each of these lines, you are sleep deprived DBA. Go take a nap.
If you question Eric Goldman's credentials, but haven't done any research to to discredit him, you are a /. troll.
If you just went to research Eric Goldman's credentials so that you could respond with research to discredit him, you are a /. pedent.
If you just tried to correct the misspelling of pedant in the previous line, you are a grammar nazi.
If you instead thought that discrediting Eric Goldman wouldn't take much effort but that doing so isn't pedantic, you have a valid point, and thus, would be modded down for pointing it out.
If you just thought to yourself 'who is Eric Goldman?,' try reading the summary next time.
If you can remember another /. article that pointed out that a company ended up suing themselves (and losing), so do I.
If you read the heading of this post and thought ' this is stupid, you can gauge someone's /. age by the number of digits in the UID, its probably a valid point, but makes this entire post worthless, so keep that to yourself.
If you intend to use the copyright system as a means to cheat when you don't get your way, I feel you should be removed from the system and its protection. Viacom's copyrights should pass into the realm of public domain for their behavior in this case.
Change this later.
They (Viacom) look like a bunch of hypocrites, they want their cake and eat it as well. I am not saying Youtube is innocent. But I hope viacom get slapped, and get slapped hard.
Your trolling, no way would they sue a kitten. That would be like sueing a grandmother, or a disabled person... oh wait.
Anytime you need litigation or potty-mouth chair-throwing, Microsoft will be there for you.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-02/ff_killgoogle
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-139743.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/05/chair_chucking/
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Tell both Viacom and Google they have to supply equipment and training for the production of 500 original videos per day, to be copyrighted by the authors themselves exclusively. Modify copyright law so that most things produced become property of the people who actually work on it, not of the company who hired them, and in the future companies become forced to negotiate terms with actors, directors, and writers, constantly renegotiating terms of use with them and producing new things, rather than already owning all the content merely by virtue of having financed the work and written the contracts and imposed terms to their advantage.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Call me old fashioned but i find GNAA hilarious because of the question; are there this many people trying to get into the GNAA association?
HTTP/1.1 400
What kind of law professor doesn't know that it's Attorneys General?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, get tenure.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Any "law professor" who says "attorney generals" instead of "attorneys general" might want to consider going taking a course in Law 101 rather than teaching it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"Modify copyright law so that most things produced become property of the people who actually work on it, not of the company who hired them"
Wow. I've never read anything so blitheringly inept in my life. Congratulations.
Actually, the earliest GNAA references I've been able to find online are from more than ten years after I first got internet access. I'm amazed at how long it's been going on though, I'm guessing the whole thing is run by either a bunch of really dedicated trolls or new teenage boys continually replace the old ones as the older ones realize that trolling slashdot is fucking pointless.
some 0.016% of all YouTube accounts have been deleted for infringement
Yes, under DMCA you have to post content frequently enough for the content holder to request an account takedown, as a result this is not even remotely indicative of the level of copyright violations on YT.
Anyway the issue isn't really about users posting copyrighted material (nor about content owners shrapnel approach to DMCA notices ignoring fairuse), it is about the fact Google has crowned itself guardian of all the worlds content and is basically saying to publishers "we will pay you what we want not what you think your content is worth but only if you tell us too, otherwise we will simply assume you permit us to make use of your content free". There are 5 major cases lined up behind the Viacom one waiting to see what happens, if two or three of these are found in favour of the content owners the cost to Google will be astronomical (in to the tens of billions is entirely possible).
Google should have never started with the attitude "We will use others content and seek their permission later", not only is it a disgusting attitude to take but it may ultimate set back useful IP reform decades.
You might find the "members" page on http://gnaa.eu/ interesting.
Freedom of speech. I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. Censorship, no matter how small, is wrong.
That would be a grammar course, not law. While we're on the topic; what would be the possessive form of attorney general? Would you write "the attorney general's office" or "the attorney's general office"? And if the plural form doesn't match the possessive form, I'd sure like to hear your explanation for it.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
The best way to tell the RIAA how you feel is to go see local artists in concert
Unless you happen to be a high-school-age or college-age fan of a band that happens not to play at all-ages venues.
While we're on the topic; what would be the possessive form of attorney general? Would you write "the attorney general's office" or "the attorney's general office"?
The possessive marker in English acts as an enclitic, or suffix on the phrase. More than one "king of Spain" are "kings of Spain", but King Juan Carlos wears "the king of Spain's hat".
I always find these legal battles so amusing. Not to bad mouth youtube/google but, the percentage of accounts that have uploaded "infringing content" is such a laughable statistic. I wonder what percentage of accounts have uploaded anything? More than 1 vidoe? More than 2?
My guess is, most accounts would fall into one of a couple of catagories:
1. People who made an account to post a comment, and never used it again
2. People who made an account to upload some stupid video from their phone, and never used it again after one or two such videos.
3. People who wanted to see a video that was only accessible to people who made an account because it had some "mature content"
4. People who would fall into catagory 1-3, but found they liked commenting or having personal playlists
5. Old accounts tied to old email addresses of people who currently are in 1-4.\
If those categories don't account for 70% or more of all accounts, I would be shocked.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
In which case the firms employing them can start charging the artists fees for the usage of their studios.
I agree with "work for hire" on principle since you are still getting a paycheck and are using the company's resources.
However, I think the answer here is education.
Make sure people know about work for hire.
Thing is, in most cases, you'd need to be pretty naive not to know about it. I'm quite happy that just about any creative work I've ever worked on (at least the for-profit ones) has belonged to the company I worked for. That was pretty clear implicitly from the start.
King Juan Carlos wears "the king of Spain's hat".
Dang! Does the King of Spain know about this?
Bow-ties are cool.
I seem to remember that some candidates used copyrighted music as the soundtrack for their campaign videos without permission of the rights holder. Holding them up as a shining example of all that is good and right about non-infringing use of You-Tube clearly does not match with recent history.
1. Copyright laws are already written as you suggest above.
2. Read up on the history of trying to bring the WKRP tv series to DVD and you will see how keeping rights with the original authors creates a tangled legal mess that would likely PREVENT reissues of most multi-author media.
OR for that matter, look at the film credits of a major motion picture or even a video game like Grand Theft Auto. We're talking hundreds and hundreds of people creating media for the game or movie. You want it such that if they ever ported the game or re-released the movie 10 years down the road, that they would have to track down hundreds of rights holders and negotiated hundreds of contracts? In this scenario even ONE person can hold up or even prevent such a possibility.
"Worse, YouTube founder Karim once uploaded infringing content."
Hey, we get it - there were some emails from the early days of YouTube that make clear that they (pre-Google) were aware of copyrighted videos on the site, and decided on a case-by-case basis what to do about them (delete immediately, delete in a couple weeks when a viral traffic spike dies down, wait until someone formally complains). But was it ever ruled that any of these videos were actually infringing (and not e.g. fake-leaked videos by an authorized marketing company, or fair use)?
Scenario: Karim copies a 15-second CNN 'oops' clip in which a reporter's pants fall down during a live interview, from Break.com, or the early-youtube equivalent of Fail Blog, etc. Obviously, CNN has copyright ownership in it, maybe a lawyer could argue early-failblog has some derivative-work interest in it somehow (an early-failblog watermark stamped into the corner). But whether this is actual infringement, and to whom, is a matter only the court can decide. Until such a decision, I don't see how the "incriminating" Youtube emails are worth the paper they're printed on as proof of wrongdoing.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.