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Court Rules "Locker" Site Is Not Direct Copyright
suraj.sun writes "A federal judge in Miami has dismissed direct copyright infringement charges against Hotfile, a popular online "locker" service that the major Hollywood studios allege is responsible for massive copyright infringement. But he allowed the case to proceed on charges that Hotfile has induced and profited from the infringing activities of its users. The case, which began in February, represents the latest front in the never-ending arms race between Hollywood studios and users seeking free copies of their movies. Hotfile is a "cyberlocker" site. Users upload files they wish to share with others and are rewarded financially if these files prove popular. The studios allege that the overwhelming majority of the files users upload to Hotfile are copyrighted content being distributed without the consent of copyright holders' like themselves."
Court rules title on website not a full.
This is fairly standard given current law, and is the "easy" part of the win. Hosts of these kinds of user-driven content sites (e.g. YouTube) are not themselves considered to be violating copyright when copyrighted material ends up on them. The harder part is that sites alleged to be largely organized around promoting infringement can be held liable, under circumstances not completely clarified, for some variety fo inducement or contributory infringement. The Napster case was the leading one in that area.
So the fact that they got direct-infringement charges dismissed doesn't mean a whole lot, for better or worse; that was mostly a foregone conclusion, and I'd guess was thrown in just on the off chance that plaintiffs would get lucky with their draw of judges. The controversial part of the case, whether Hotfile is more Napster-like or more YouTube-like, is still to come.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Many firearms are used in the commission of a crime here in the United States, go ahead and try to ban guns based on that fact. Never happen.
At some point, we have to accept that people are going to misuse services and devices to break the law. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater by banning said service or device because of the misuse by a small segment of the population is a tad too Orwellian for me.
Protip: Hulu is owned by major media companies. People who make up the very same people you call copyright trolls.
WTF are you talking about? The 'new model' which you refer to is: Netflix pays studio for right to stream content. When they don't agree on a price, Netflix does not stream the content. Without the studios and their content there is no Netflix.
They use DRM.
That is, they have decided to create a situation where pirated content (the stuff they don't get paid for) is worth a lot more: easier to use, more reliable, more functional, and interoperable with more devices than their own for-sale content. And they are entirely in control of this; it's a decision, not a accident of fate or luck.
If you offer them money in exchange for hassle-free content, they say NO.
If they wanted to get paid, they would offer what pirates offer, except in exchange for money. Pirates have already done the research and proved that people want it. Moving to a for-profit model would be a move completely free of risk and R&D.
If someone says No to money, and continues to voluntarily create conditions which punish people who stubbornly pay them, and benefit those who give up on the hassles of doing business with someone who doesn't want to do business, I think that is pretty strong evidence that they want to not be paid.
Interestingly, they are owned by companies that also produce hardware (e.g. Sony). I'm not saying they're not in business, just that they're not in the business of selling content.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Isn't the DMCA supposed to protect such services against these kinds of lawsuits? So long as the operators of these websites respond to DMCA takedown requests on a timely manner, they really should not be held responsible for their users' actions. To make the operators of these services liable for their users' actions would no doubt harm those who seek to use them for legitimate purposes such as distributing their own original content.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."