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RIAA Calls YouTube-Viacom Decision Bad Public Policy

Posted by timothy on from the manufacturing-outrage dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "The Recording Industry Association of America voiced its opposition to the recent decision in the YouTube-Viacom copyright infringement case, stating that 'the district court's dangerously expansive reading of the liability immunity provisions of the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] upsets the careful balance struck within the law and is bad public policy.' Cary Sherman, RIAA president, also wrote in a blog post, 'It will actually discourage service providers from taking steps to minimize the illegal exchange of copyrighted works on their sites.'"

20 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Uhhh... by Daas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'It will actually discourage service providers from taking steps to minimize the illegal exchange of copyrighted works on their sites.'

    Since when is it their job?

    1. Re:Uhhh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Since they've pretty much bought their way into the Justice Department, and White House, and want to do the least amount of work policiing the internet, while maximizing their profits.

      This response by the RIAA shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. If anything, it paints their message very loud and clear. YOU the consumer, have no fair-use rights, and we believe you should pay for every instance of every copyrighted work transmitted, copied, or used, on or off the net.

    2. Re:Uhhh... by TENTH+SHOW+JAM · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "As the White House recently noted in its strategic plan to combat intellectual property theft it is essential for service providers and intermediaries generally to work collaboratively with content owners to seek practical and efficient solutions to address infringement," Sherman wrote. "We need businesses to be more proactive in addressing infringement, not less."

      Can someone please inform Mr Sherman, that removing 10,000 videos in 24 hours is pretty much as proactive as you are going to get?

      --
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    3. Re:Uhhh... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 4, Insightful

      'It will actually discourage service providers from taking steps to minimize the illegal exchange of copyrighted works on their sites.'

      Since when is it their job?

      Worse. They're saying it's an ILLEGAL exchange.

      The DMCA makes it legal UNTIL a takedown notice is issued.

    4. Re:Uhhh... by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Liability, ie paying money or going to jail has pretty much been the way to make people do the right thing for quite a while.

      It was a bunch of lawsuits against file sharers that made iTunes successful, right?

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    5. Re:Uhhh... by LandDolphin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I thought not even the RIAA could justify Viacom's side of this case.

      c'mon.. you know RIAA could justify anything.

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    6. Re:Uhhh... by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It goes way beyond that though. This is corporatism at it's worst. The RIAA carefully hides here the fact that they are not the holders of the majority of the copyright out there. Under international law, every time I take a picture, write a /. comment or a blogpost or make a recording on my cellphone I own the copyright to it.
      That makes ME a rightsholder.

      The system as it stands, despite the problematic parts of the DMCA actually rather works okay here. The balance struck wasn't struck where the RIAA says it was, with damn good reason. Say I post a video of something silly to my blog, you like it and upload it to youtube. Technically you've committed copyright infringement -but chances are, if you credit me and link the blog I would be grateful rather than angry.
      But it's impossible for youtube to know how I would feel. What the current DMCA means is -if I don't like it, I can file a takedown notice and get it down if I want, or say thank you and leave it up if I want.
      What the RIAA wants here would remove that level of self-decision from the millions of rights-holders who are NOT the RIAA and turn ISP's into a police force. Youtube would have to somehow verify that you either created the video yourself or have an agreement with me about it everytime you do an upload !
      That's a massive legal overhead and in the very vast majority of the cases it would be a complete waste. That's not even considering that a video you don't own, nor know the creator of may have been published under a CC license - and now youtube has the duty to go find the original web-page and check that ?

      I agree with the judge here - the onus for identifying and reporting should belong to those rights-holders who desire to excercise control, not with the ISP's whose job ought to be to build reliable fast servers that are not so congested as to be unusable. The moment and IT company has more lawyers than developers things go to hell for customers. Just look at Microsoft. Let's not force that to be the case for every ISP and 1-man hosting company in the world as well !

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  2. Suck it, RIAA. by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'It will actually discourage service providers from taking steps to minimize the illegal exchange of copyrighted works on their sites.'"

    In other words, minimizing the illegal exchange of copyrighted becomes the responsibility of the copyright holders, by forcing them to identify which works are their copyright, and which works they would like to not have floating around on the Internet. Go cry me a river. It's bad public policy only in the world where 'public" is defined as "corporations under the RIAA umbrella".

    The more you steal from the public domain, the less I care about abiding by copyright law. I haven't bought a new CD in years, my movie buying is exceedingly limited, and care less and less about ripping any movie/song that I like.

    Before someone accuses me of not wanting to pay for content that I use - nonsense. I actually donate money to a completely silly online game because even FB game developers need to eat, and I donate to NPR because I listen to them. I pay if I think I'm getting something in return, or if I feel that I'm supporting a deserving cause. I feel that I don't get anything from the media conglomerates.

    Go suck it, RIAA.

    --
    Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
    1. Re:Suck it, RIAA. by Drishmung · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You can't steal from the public domain. ...

      But you can steal 'the public domain'.

      The law doth punish man or woman
      That steals the goose from off the common,
      But lets the greater felon loose
      That steals the common from the goose.       http://www.wealthandwant.com/docs/Goose_commons.htm

      --
      Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
    2. Re:Suck it, RIAA. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Every work under copyright is a legal landmine waiting to go off.

      But, as is clear from TFA, land mines don't pick and choose their targets.

      There's still a little part of me that believes the entertainment industry itself will eventually realize that what they're currently trying to do will also kill their own industry. A very little part. And I'm not holding my breath.

      I grew up during a period when local TV stations had film libraries covering the entire history of American movies and a big chunk of foreign films. After the 10pm news, they'd play these old movies, and another one after that and another after that until the "Sunrise Semester" public service programs ran at 6am. I was able to get a comprehensive education in American Film, including film noir, iconic westerns like those of John Ford, the great films of Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, John Huston, Douglas Sirk, Billy Wilder, right down the list, from the Marx Brothers to Busby Berkeley musicals, Hitchcock to Don Siegel. And foreign films from Fellini to Michael Powell to De Sica (sometimes badly dubbed, but still...) When I got to college and majored in writing, I had a rich vein of great storytelling to draw from, thanks to these film libraries. Today, such things would be completely impossible. How much harder it is to develop both a love of cinema and the wealth of experience of seeing such a huge number of great films.

      Most of these local stations pulled their own plugs by replacing the late movie with two episodes of some lame late '70s TV show, but that kind of exposure to a great art form is no longer possible to young people, without expensive cable television subscriptions.

      I used to haunt the record stacks of the Chicago Public Library, listening to classical music from Early Music through contemporary, and jazz, and blues, and everything.

      I used to think that the internet could recreate this experience for future young people, but it looks like these goons who represent the entertainment industry are trying to kill that off entirely.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  3. Arrrrr! by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It will actually discourage service providers from taking steps to minimize the illegal exchange of copyrighted works on their sites.

    Aren't you guys trying to force service providers to pick up the tab by changing the law -- you sit back and collect the profits while they pay the costs? I recently calculated that for about $33k worth of hard drives filled with infringing MP3s (average 4MB in size) I could be sued for statutory damages greater than what this country's entire economy made in 2009.

    Don't cry to me that you can't pass the buck to service providers here when you've got that kind of legal power at your disposal.

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    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Arrrrr! by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For a few rare individuals, the world would improve if they ceased breathing.

      When we indulge that kind of thinking, we devalue human life. If the RIAA CEO died, he would simply be replaced by a carbon-copy duplicate. Do you know what he looks like? Does he have a family? Do you know anything else about him, other than he's the CEO of RIAA? CEOs -- They talk, mostly. Sometimes they sign things. That's not a reason to kill.

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      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    2. Re:Arrrrr! by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >>>When we indulge that kind of thinking, we devalue human life.

      Yes but if we allow murderers (saddam) or thieves or tyrants (RIAA CEO) to continue abusing other humans, that THAT is a devaluation of life. It is because we are sick of seeing our these crimes that we hope the Idiot will die, and the suffering stop.
      .

      >>>be replaced by a carbon-copy duplicate

      Yeah but maybe his fear of being shot in the head would make him tread more carefully, and not piss off the voters. He might even reverse policy and form a gentler, kinder RIAA. (As Obama did when he replaced Bush as president.)

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  4. Re:Ahhh is widdy baby's feelings hurt? by commodore64_love · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "But we have treaties!" - Londo

    "Words on a page. Ignore them." - Refa

    POINT: I don't consider treaties to be higher than the Supreme Law of the Land (Constitution) or the People (ultimate authority). They can be signed today and nullified ten years from now, if we so wish. When the Russian Federation took-over for the collapsed Sovyet Union, they said they would honor the treaties but they didn't have to. The new government could have just as easily nullified them as being "illegitimate acts" by a defunct government. Another example is when Japan walked-out of the League of Nations, nullified their treaties, and started building tons of battleships.

     

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  5. The key word by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The key word in public policy is 'Public'. I think the RIAA doesn't seem to get that. The Public is what grants them copyright in the first place. The Public's interests should come first with respect to anything which the Public granted them in the first place.

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  6. Re:Ahhh is widdy baby's feelings hurt? by WiglyWorm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I may be picking nits, but the DMCA makes NO specifications at all about what a company must or mustn't to when it receives a takedown notice. If I'm hosting a video which is clearly fair use, I don't have to take it down because I receive a takedown. It's just legally safer that way.

  7. Re:Too Fucking Bad by russotto · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Guess they didn't bribe^H^H^H^H^H lobby enough...

    Worse than that (from their perspective)... they got the law they lobbied for, but didn't realize that
    a) It would be applied as written
    b) That anyone could actually afford to comply
    c) That a financial model would exist where it made sense for the service provider to defend the ability to post content against a hail of RIAA/MPAA member lawsuits.

  8. They have sued people for millions by DMiax · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Where is the careful balance in DMCA?

    1. Re:They have sued people for millions by tinkerghost · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Where is the careful balance in DMCA?

      That would be where they carefully balanced your right to make backups with the prohibition on selling or distributing software that would allow you to actually do it.

  9. Re:The courts don't make policy! by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They already own many senators. That's why they're upset - they bought the DCMA, and now they found out it's not entirely what they thought they were buying.

    You know, sort of like buying a CD and finding out the only song you know is the only good song on it.

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