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YouTube Says UMG Had No 'Right' To Take Down Megaupload Video
An anonymous reader writes "Contrary to a previous story, Google played no part in the Megaupload takedown. From Wired: 'YouTube said Friday that Universal Music abused the video-sharing site's piracy filters when it employed them to take down a controversial video of celebrities and pop superstars singing and praising the notorious file-sharing service Megaupload.'"
The DMCA itself is what "allows for abuse". The law was written so that site operators are required to take down if they receive a DMCA notice. BTW, have you seen the new "tell your Congresscritter to vote for SOPA/Protect IP commercials? Pack of outrageous lies -- like "stolen TV shows are costing American jobs".
There is a penalty for filing false DMCA claims, perjury. Unfortunately it seems like it is never enforced.
"and hire people to process DMCA request."
This wasn't a DMCA request.
That special access was given to Universal so that they wouldn't need to hire people to process DMCA requests.
UMG had admin privileges and was able to take videos down on it's own, Youtube gave them this ability in order to keep from getting hit with thousands of lawsuits. Of course, Youtube expected UMG to act in good faith with this power, and it is no clear that they have not. Hopefully, Youtube will be rescinding their privileges now that we see they can't be trusted with them...
DMCA itself is good. DMCA allows website owners protection against liability if some user of the service spreads copyright infringing content. It also puts liability against fake DMCA notices. Itself, DMCA is better thing than not to have it, because otherwise website owners would be liable for the action their users take.
Now, SOPA/Protect IP is a completely different matter, and should not be passed.
No, DMCA itself is not good.
Did you know that to be entitled for the DMCA 'safe harbor' you need to be REGISTERED FOR THE PROTECTION? If you are not registered for this DMCA safe harbor, anyone can sue you and you get no protection whatsoever.
You can sue them, but only for the damages that you suffered due to the takedown. I guess you could hire RIAA lawyers to calculate the damages for you.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
There is already heavy penalty for fake DMCA notices. It does require you to go to court to fight it, but you can't just assume that the original party should get penalty when it's only disputed. Remember that you have to look at it from the other side too. If someone was violating your GPL software and you sent the site hosting it DMCA notice, and the other party disputed it, you would now get financial penalty. We have courts to determine legal fights, and they give consequences for wrongful doing.
The DMCA requires the process to be automated
No it doesn't. Hell, some sites only allow you to send DMCA notices by postal mail to their designated copyright agent (and this is the correct way to read DMCA law). Interestingly, Megavideo is one such site. You have to send your DMCA notice by mail to Hong Kong based address.
Exactly. If they weren't just yanking down whatever the fuck they wanted to with impunity then there would be no issue. There isn't even a human being involved in the process as it is used now, a computer program scans for matches, and if something hits, it's automatically pulled down, even when it is clearly Fair Use. They obviously are abusing their power to pull videos without considering whether it is legally infringing or not.
http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html