RIAA President Says Copyright Law "Isn't Working"

Kilrah_il writes "Apperantly not satisfied with the current scope of the DMCA, RIAA President Cary Sherman wants to broaden the scope of the law to have content providers such as YouTube and Rapidshare liable for illegal content found on their sites. 'The RIAA would strongly prefer informal agreements inked with intermediaries ... We're working on [discussions with broadband providers], and we'd like to extend that kind of relationship — not just to ISPs, but [also to] search engines, payment processors, advertisers ... [But], if legislation is an appropriate way to facilitate that kind of cooperation, fine.' Notice the update at the end of the article pointing out that Sherman is seeking for voluntary agreements with said partners and not to enact broader laws without their cooperation."

Comments

Re:Why stop there?

[TubeSteak]

Youtube and RapidShare encourage people to post content then basically look away until someone complains about it.

Youtube and rapidshare allow people to post content and the law doesn't require them to do anything until someone complains about it.
Despite that, both companies will block previously uploaded content by hash and Rapidshare relatively recently stopped their rapidshare
points program because they say it encouraged uploading of copyright infringement.

All that said, I loathe the idea of "informal agreements inked with intermediaries"
Copyright is a public policy issue and it should be decided by the public, not by a cartel of businesses.

The big Picture

[FudRucker]

The Big Picture

Re:What a coincidence

[TheLink]

What if it was intentionally uploaded by the copyright holders themselves, or by those they authorized to do so?

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/03/broadcast-yourself.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-viacom-wanted-to-buy-youtube-uploaded-its-own-clips/32061

quote:
      For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Re:I agree

[meerling]

MD = Media Dump
CH = Copyright Holder

CH 0000001 has 30 pieces of work that they want MD to monitor for and prevent from being displayed.
CH 0000002 has 1700 pieces and wants the same thing.

MD gets about 2000 files uploaded everyday, so that means they have to check all 2000 against 1730 pieces of work. Not fun for them, and what liability do they have to face if they miss one?
Ah... we forgot something... There are THOUSANDS of CH with quantities of works ranging from 1 to many thousands. The amount of work (and liability) that MD would have to deal with goes up at an insane rate. MD has NO vested interest in those pieces of work, and can not be expected to take on the task of policing the activities of other people, even though they use the service provided by MD. Are you expected to check the criminal record and intentions of everyone that walks down the sidewalk in front of your house because the police don't want to? No. It's up the the CH to defend their own copyright, and not to force someone else to do it for them.

Re:... what about the people ?

[thestudio_bob]

Uhm ... er ... just why does the RIAA think it can write laws? Merely because they've had success in the past influencing legislation does not mean they have a right to such influence continuing.

Because the paid damn good money to get their guys into office!

• Gershengorn, left, a partner with RIAA-firm Jenner & Block, represented the labels against Grokster (.pdf) and will be in charge of the DOJ Federal Programs Branch. That’s the unit that just told a federal judge the Obama administration supports monetary damages as high as $150,000 per purloined music track on a peer-to-peer file sharing program.
• Donald Verrilli, associate deputy attorney general — the No. 3 in the DOJ, who unsuccessfully urged a federal judge to uphold the $222,000 file sharing verdict against Jammie Thomas.
• Tom Perrilli, as Verrilli’s former boss, the Justice Department’s No. 2 argued in 2002 that internet service providers should release customer information to the RIAA even without a court subpoena.
• Brian Hauck, counsel to associate attorney general, worked on the Grokster case on behalf of the record labels.
• Ginger Anders, assistant to the solicitor general, litigated on the Cablevision case.

Source Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept.

Re:What a coincidence

[robot256]

Do you really, really just want to listen to such music? Because you know, you can already. You can go listen to local bands and ask for their demo tapes, and stay away from all the artists that belong to some label working with RIAA.

Except, you can't. Venues have to pay "preemptive royalties" (mafia protection) so they don't get sued for local artists playing cover songs. They can collect royalties for songs they don't even own. And they have no intention of making sure even their own artists are fairly paid, either.