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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.'"

9 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 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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      Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
    3. 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 !

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      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.

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    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.
  3. 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.

  4. 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
  5. 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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