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TV Networks Don't Want DMCA Protection For YouTube
sburch79 writes "A brief filed in the Viacom v. Google case asserts that the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions were never meant to apply to sites like YouTube. It also goes on to say the if safe harbor were given to these sites, it would put too big a burden on networks to police their own material."
that's what you get for lobbying for such vague legislation then.
My sympathy for major media companies being forced to do some work for their money is pretty much non-existent. Welcome to the real world with the rest of us. Enjoy your stay. Get to work.
Part of copyright is that one should be watching out for their own material, and have any documentation to back it up. While many people do so as a courtesy, it is generally not the responsibility of somebody else to make sure that material they are not responsible for does not wind up in places it doesn't belong.
This sig no verb.
Maybe youtube should try to police the material for a few days as a demonstration of how ridiculous such an attempt would be.
Hahahahahahahahaha *gasp* I just read the hahahahahahah TFA hahahhahaha *gasp* So there's this lawyer right hahahahahahah, and he argues hahahahahahahhahahahahahah *gasp* that the law should be enforced according to the spirit of the law, instead of the exact word! hahahahahahahhahahaha!
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
The DMCA safe harbor provision was intended for exactly this case.
no, that's what you get for PAYING for vague legislation.
Big Media translated: "waaah we're too lazy to do our own work so we want the government to shut down Youtube."
Response of customers: "I've had it up to here with DRM, 'copy protection', and all the other anti-consumer shit. Big Media can go fuck themselves."
In addition: most of the stuff I've seen on Youtube should be covered under Fair Use, especially parodies. So double-fuck-you to the MafiAA.
Big media response to the viewers: "See, piracy is affecting out business".
Btw - viewers are very rarely "customers". Certainly for TV programming they are not, the advertisers are.
The customers are those who pay money to receive a product or service. The viewers are consumers.
Anybody who taught you otherwise hadn't read through the fine print in the EULA at the end of the Constitution. It's all right there.
The viewers are that product
Fixed that for you.
it would put too big a burden on networks to police their own material.
awww.. poor fucking babies. So instead its MY responsibility as an ISP to police YOUR fucking material? Who the fuck at your network do I send my invoices for my labor to do your fucking job for you? Either police your shit or dont prosecute for infringement. Anywhere else in society the financially harmed has to take civil suit action against those that do the harm for a tort claim
YouTube hosts content posted by third parties which it makes available to others without prior review. It is exactly the kind of situation the DMCA's safe harbor provisions are meant to address.
Fuck you Viacom for expecting to reap the benefits of copyright law while rejecting those aspects of it you dislike.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Yeah, it's so onerous to have the power to send automated C&D letters that carry full legal weight if ignored, but carry no practical threat of legal reprisal if machine error caused them to be sent to an innocent party's ISP.
You're right, that's too much to ask of you...
"The problem that Google has is that almost every video that is uploaded is protected by copyright."
Amazing thing. You create a system that is an opt-out system for copyright, rather than an opt-in system, everything is indeed protected by copyright unless that right is relinquished. Even home videos! Not everything that is copyrighted has any commercial value. And, a lot of the stuff that the holder feels has commercial value, doesn't.
And it wouldn't be too big a burden on YouTube (or pretty much any other site) to police their user uploaded content? Let's say I upload a video. There's a copyright on that video so should YouTube prevent it from being uploaded? Well, what about if I was the one who made it? Should they allow it now? What if I made it for a studio who now owns the copyright? Deny it? What if the (enlightened) studio is working with me to promote their products by putting the video online? Allow it?
There is no way for Google to sort through all of these. The only option for them might be to shut down YouTube completely. (Which is exactly what Viacom really wants.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
If Viacom says that the DMCA wasn't intended to apply in this case, shouldn't they know? After all they should know exactly how the law they bought and paid for should be applied?
If it's too much of a burden for them, then maybe they shouldn't make so much? Or maybe they could release more things into public domain so that they wouldn't have to keep track of all of it.
The safe harbor only applies to sites that don't actually publish anything! How could we have been so stupid not to realize that!
cry me a river
build me a bridge
and get over it.
Good start, but the second line needs three more syllables. Anyone care to finish this poem?
The summary and the article linked within are (purposely) doing a poor job of representing the actual position of the attorneys. I wasn't comfortable thinking they were that blatantly stupid and greed, and so dug a little deeper:
(From http://copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com/2010/05/viacoms-friends-lend-support-in-youtube.html)
Viacom's friends lend support in YouTube case
Two groups supporting major copyright owners have filed amicus briefs in support of Viacom in its copyright suit against Google and YouTube.
The first, filed on behalf of a coalition including ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, Disney, NBC Universal, Warner Bros., and others, makes three main points:
- Congress enacted the DMCA to combat -- not protect -- copyright infringement;
- The DMCA Section 512(c) safe harbor does not provide a defense to inducement liability;
and
- Section 512(c)(1)(B)'s language denying the safe harbor where a site derives "a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service
provider has the right and ability to control such activity," should be interpreted consistent with the "right and ability to control" standard from common law vicarious liability.
The second, from the free market-oriented Washington
Legal Foundation, focuses on the legislative history and purpose of the DMCA's safe harbors, arguing that the law mandates a "shared responsibility" among copyright owners and online service providers in addressing infringement, and does not relieve sites like YouTube of all obligations to fight illegal use of others' works, especially while profiting from it.
So their argument goes a little deeper than 'waaaaaaaa' as some of my fellow slashdotters have summarized it.
Against the actual argument, however, I think YouTube's most logical response would be to stop policing the content themselves at all. The position here seems to be that YouTube is a facilitator by not completely blocking copywritten content. A fair response would be for YouTube to step out of that role and give the content providers the power to do this directly. Vis-a-vi, allow the big media companies to sue those providers directly. By the way, if you haven't noticed, the providers are the individuals making content and posting it to YouTube... you know, the end users.
It was most definitely not meant to apply to this.
Viacom paid for the law so that they could be shielded when their users do something wrong, not for when someone else's users do something wrong.
Sheesh! Why on earth would they buy a law that would apply to them?!?!
The description is almost too hilarious to believe..that they think it would be too much work to police their own networks. It's just so...its so far out there in hypocrisy land I can't even believe it.
It makes me want to develop a really awesome youtube channel that the networks would show clips of (under completely reasonable fair use provisions) and then sue their motherfucking balls off. I realize the insane hypocrisy of that, but hypocrisy is really all we have left. Anything that brings the collapse sooner is probably a good thing at this point.
So what if it's a big burden for Viacom? That's Viacom's business problem, not Google's. It's just as laughable as hearing an entrepreneur say "it's too big of a burden to find costumers".
But let's say that "it's too big a burden" is a valid argument for a second. Viacom is known to intentionally hide the fact that its the one uploading its own material to Youtube. This has led to Viacom mistakenly sending takedown requests for material it itself placed on Youtube. If Viacom can't get it right with regards to its own material, it would be downright impossible for Google to get it right for Viacom's material, much less everyone's material. It would be an even bigger burden for Google, thus the status quo imposes the least burden.
Finally, what differentiates "these sites"? Their size? Their success? By that argument, Apple should be responsible for preventing bank robbers from using an iPhone to organize their crime. That's nonsense. Liability must lie with those who actually perform the illegal act.
The argument is complete garbage.
Why, don't they teach to use google these days in schools?
Go fuck yourself!
And thats all I have to say about that.
Cry me a river
Build me a bridge to nowhere
and get over it!
How is playing a song during a home made video any different than it being played on the radio? In both cases the song is put into the public arena. Actually the home made video is better since it's not paid for by advertising.
Unless the media companies have some kind of shady practice to get radio stations to play their songs they're being a bit two-faced. [/sarcasm]
if safe harbor were given to these sites, it would put too big a burden on networks to police their own material
and so the networks die. welcome to capitalism. what are you going to watch now, PIRATES?!#^&)
The argument that "it would put too big a burden on networks to police their own material" is not at all the primary one in the amicus curae being discussed - go ahead, read it for yourself (yes, yes, I'm new here etc).
Rather, they argue that DMCA is supposed to protect providers only in cases of "innocent infringement", i.e. when they're not aware that material they host is infringing. They furthermore claim that, in YouTube's case, Google does know, or reasonably suspects (which is "good enough"), that most of material being posted onto the site is infringing, even if they do not know that about every individual video being posted - they refer to it as "willful blindness". They furthermore claim that Google, while knowning this, essentially ignores that, and "abuses" DMCA safe harbor by only performing post-infrongement take-down by request, while profiting from ads displayed while playing all those infringing videos before they're taken down.
I believe this is a reference to those claims -made by YouTube owners and Google managers in private during the take-over, which we've seen in previous court documents - with stats for overall count of infringing material (which was way over 50%).
Now, whether this is a valid legal argument or not, I do not know. They do reference DMCA there, as well as some relevant court cases, which they claim support this point of view, but, of course, we'd need a legal expert to clarify that.
That's what he said. "Lobbying."
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
You asshole! People are starving in Africa and you're just letting your karma burn away like that? Where have the days of decency and virtue gone?
Yes, it's sarcasm. Deal with it!
Look forward to it being passed someday. The Selective Enforcement Act will allow companies to enforce their legal claims against some entities as they choose, but won't be penalized for not enforcing it against others. For example, they might say that YouTube is costing them revenue and issue take down notices for all of their content (and related and derivative works), but they might turn around and allow a site (we'll call it MediaLackey) to have them remain up. Of course the second site won't be officially affiliated with the media companies, but we'll know the truth.
Eventually everyone will start to migrate to MediaLackey by choice or by force (since the media companies will begin issuing take down notices to sites that contain two consecutive words that were also contained by a work of theirs), then the hammer will drop. "Looks like you want to watch some music videos. $9.99 gets you full access to this video clip!"
Someone will pay. Then the lawyers will go out, salivating and growling, and sue the person who was drunk enough to pay for $10 billion for copyright infringement. Then they'll go after everyone who has ever visited the website (remember how you had to login to see that rap music video (adult content)? Their business will become one of marketing and one of legal reprisal.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Google is more than willing to share its product (viewers' attention) with copyright owners. All the copyright owner has to do is sign up for Content ID, submit samples of works that it controls, and set the Content ID settings to "monetize".
On the whole, if I look at most clips on YouTube I find they are according to the four points of fair use: [1-3 in favor of copyright owner]
But are things like Cryptomnesia: Vertigo like most clips? WMG content ID muted the audio on this one for a couple weeks, despite what I believed to be obvious commentary on the works in question.
...content providers want to have their cookie and eat it too.
.sig? Get your own damn
Can we play this game some more?
Why does it matter what they want? They can want to be emperor of the world.
What is it with people thinking the law should be what they want it to be instead of what it is?
How about we just revoke copyright for anything transmitted through an FCC licensed RF signal?
For public good anything transmitted/broadcast by an FCC license cannot be copyrighted, but must be public domain
I like my way better.
So, Viacom wants google to police the infringment for it, while Viacom itself doesn't even know which of its content were posted by its employees or granted permission to do so?
If google suppose to police the infringment, then not only google need to know exact which of the contents belong to Viacom, among those, which were granted permission by Viacom, and which of those that granted permission were abusing their permission or exceeding their authorization. And not just Viacom, but also every content creators out there regardless of how big or small they are ; even for a single individual. I'm not sure there is any company on earth capable of doing such policing.
and that will be the day when I finally have enough incentive to just quit the whole computer/internet phase of my life. I'll retire to my garage woodshop, tyvm.
I've already quit consuming THEIR media. It shouldn't take much to disconnect entirely.
This may be news to all those media-pimps, but laws apply equally to everybody, including to those you don't like.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
That's great that they don't feel that the DMCA provisions were meant to apply to Youtube. What's amusing about it, though, is that they shouldn't have been writing the laws in the first place. Much less interpreting them. I'm pretty sure our government pays people to do that.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Then YouTube is in good company. A lot of shit has been done in the name of the DMCA that was "never meant to be".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... ouch.
Wasn't their original argument that Youtube was violating the safe harbor because they knowingly post videos that are copyrighted? Now they're claiming that Youtube doesn't even qualify for safe harbor? Shouldn't they have STARTED with that?
Karma is circular. It will come back in time.
Once upon a time in a mythical land called Soviet Russia, a hot bowl of grits had Natalie Portman.
What is it with people thinking the law should be what they want it to be instead of what it is?
This is the first step in the process of changing the world.
Bow-ties are cool.
You know in the good old days it was the rights holders who were EXPECTED to protect their IP.
What do these guys think? That all they have to do is sit back and crank the money printing machine w/o spending a dime?
This is well past the point of utter idiocy.
(I can't wait until they start charging productions, actors, etc. a lease fee for a studio's usage, and some sort of consulting fee or other for having some executive from a studio/network actually have to, gasp, work.)