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."

Comments

tough shit

[Anonymous Coward]

that's what you get for lobbying for such vague legislation then.

Re:tough shit

[Warhawke]

I'd contest that the most egregious offenders ever get busted. Look at most of the RIAA suits, and they're going after people who download 10-100 songs, not filling up terabyte drives with music. I have acquaintances who download compulsively as "archivists" who could never listen to the entirity of what they've infringed. It's not that the bigger infringers are any harder to bust, it's that if the RIAA goes after these major downloaders, the overall damages would be absolutely absurd, and people would realize how ludicrous the claims of damages truly are. For example, 1 TB drive = 1024^2 Mb = 1,048,576 Mb. Assuming an Mp3 is 3 Mb in size, you could fit 349,925 Mp3s (ignoring drive constraints and spare change). At $80,000 a pop from the Capital v. Thomas jury award (though later reduced by the judge, the jury found this to be the appropriate damages for infringement), you're talking $27,994,000,000. Twenty-eight billion dollars for a single drive. Fill it with eBooks instead just for fun and you're talking around $84 billion. No single human could do that much damage on the internet, not even Mitnick. So if the RIAA went after the big seeders, their whole scheme would unravel. If you want to pirate, pirate so big you become "too big to fail!"

Boo Hoo

[whisper_jeff]

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.

Re:Boo Hoo

[dgatwood]

Agreed. Hear that sound? That's the sound of the world's tiniest violin playing the saddest song in the world.

Sorry, Hollywood, but YouTube is precisely the kind of site that safe harbor exemptions are for. It is an ISP whose material is provided exclusively by its users. What, you thought that somehow a site shouldn't count because it is getting too big for you to bully? Waaaah. Cry me a freaking river.

Re:Boo Hoo

[DavidTC]

Cry me a freaking river.

Especially as they were forced to make the 'safe harbor' provision in the DMCA to be allowed some of the more egregious stuff.

'Safe harbor' may seem to be fair and sane to most people, but it's important to note it's not particularly supposed to be fair, it's actually intended to be rather lax. It's a compromise reached to allow tougher laws against people who knowingly facilitate the distribution of copyrighted material.

And now they're bitching and whining about it, complaining it is doing exactly what it was intended to do...not require companies to police their customers.

So, of course, now they want to use the harsher laws that they only have because of 'safe harbor' to go after YouTube.

We might all whine about companies issuing DMCA takedown notices, but at least those are under the threat of perjury and are actual filed legal documents. Too many people have forgotten about the universe before that, when companies would call other companies and have some non-lawyer hint heavily about lawsuits and have them remove content that they had no legal ability to object to or sue over, but the host company didn't want to risk it.

I am, of course, in favor of actually filing some perjury charges here and there over obviously bogus takedown notices, but even without that, the system is still better, both for hosting companies and end users. So of course content providers object to it.

Re:Boo Hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Hear that sound? That's the sound of the world's tiniest violin playing the saddest song in the world.

Careful, that song is probably copyrighted.

With great power comes great responsibility

[dacarr]

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.

Re:With great power comes great responsibility

[AndersOSU]

I think it's also worth noting that copyright isn't like trademark. You don't have to enforce it to maintain it. So ... if there's little commercial value in yanking Hitler parodies off You Tube, there's no reason to continue to do so.

Re:With great power comes great responsibility

[nlawalker]

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.

Actually, this is a great idea. Let's make every YouTube user responsible for policing themselves. If they upload infringing material, they can issue themselves a takedown request, respond to themselves with a fair use claim, and then sue themselves for copyright infringement. Look how streamlined this makes the process: The publishers won't have to lift a finger! They should be paying me for coming up with such great ideas.

Re:With great power comes great responsibility

[morgan_greywolf]

This isn't even about copyright infringement. Hell, much of the copyrighted content on YouTube was uploaded by the copyright owner on purpose, to get people to watch it. As for the other stuff that was uploaded without authorization, as TFA says, Google has gone above and beyond by scanning through their archives with sophisticated software that automatically sends notices to the copyright holder, asking them if they want to A) take it down or B) make money off of it.

Google has gone out of their way to get along with content owners. All Viacom is trying to do is eliminate their competititon. People visit sites like YouTube often in lieu of watching television or Hula, or whatever. YouTube is the most popular video site on the Web, and Viacom would rather have people watch their stuff than go to YouTube.

IOW, litigation is cheaper and easier than innovation.

Hahahahahahaha

[Eudial]

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!

Re:Throw em a bone

[Captain Spam]

Maybe youtube should try to police the material for a few days as a demonstration of how ridiculous such an attempt would be.

What human beings think when they see this:

1. Request is made for YouTube to police everything.
2. YouTube grudgingly complies.
3. Obvious difficulties are revealed.
4. YouTube cannot keep up.
5. People see and realize the problems, reconsider.

What executives think when they see this:

1. Request is made for YouTube to police everything.
2. YouTube grudgingly complies.
3. Someone else is doing the work for them; delegation successful, YouTube is now entirely responsible, this is no longer the concern of those requesting it.
4. Any future difficulties in this are obviously failures on YouTube's fault. Report as such.
5. Keep going until YouTube is dead; this is called "beating the competition". Declare victory.

fourth branch

[orgelspieler]

Remember from your social studies classes in elementary school, there are four branches of government:

• Executive - Enforces the law
• Judicial - Interprets the law
• Legislative - Votes on the law
• Corporate - Writes the law, re-interprets the law, and helps enforce the law

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.

Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

The viewers are that product

Fixed that for you.

Too big a burden???

[e3m4n]

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

Re:Uh, yes it was...

[jimicus]

Re-posting because I forgot to log in and I didn't want to say this as AC:

The record industry and the film industry are two sides of the same coin - hell, in many cases they're different arms of the same company. What we see now with the MPAA is an almost exact action-replay of what we've seen with the RIAA over the last 10 years.

The first thing the record industry did was ignore the existence of the Internet, MP3s and other such things. Then came Napster and suddenly ignoring it wasn't an option.

The second thing the record industry did was sue Napster into the ground and attempt to force ISPs to block file sharing (they're still doing this to a certain extent, though I'm not sure how much is being driven by the MPAA and how much is being driven by the RIAA these days).

Next up, we've got "refuse to license songs for distribution over the Internet, put draconian DRM on CDs which doesn't really achieve the desired aim and just hacks off your customers". Erm... anyone see any parallels with DVDs and BluRay?

After that, we had "License songs on condition that DRM is used to 'protect' them". iTunes used to apply DRM, and there didn't used to be any such thing as a company selling plain unencumbered MP3s unless you count dubious Russian site allofmp3.com. I would say we're somewhere between this and the "refuse to license for Internet distribution" stage for movies and TV shows.

Today we have "License songs without the DRM conditions", and several companies are selling plain unencumbered MP3s quite legitimately without having to set up shop in some part of the world where copyright is considered broadly optional. Despite all the screams of how MP3s would kill the music industry, I know of no major record label which has gone out of business, and alas it seems we still have squeaky-clean teenage Britney Fucking Spears (seriously, "Fucking"'s her middle name) clones churning out dross. I don't think we've entirely moved on from the record-exec induced hysteria, but for the most part it seems that we can at least have a sensible adult discussion as to how the Internet can be used to help a band, which is more than we could 10 years ago.

My prediction is that in 5 years time, the movie industry will have gone in much the same direction, and in 10 years time most of us will have forgotten all of this. Until the next thing that forces them to re-think their business comes up.