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Veoh Once Again Beats UMG (After Going Out of Business)
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Veoh has once again beaten the record companies; in fact it has beaten them in every round, only to have been forced out of business by the attorneys fees it expended to do so. I guess that's the record companies' strategy to do an 'end around' the clear wording of the DMCA 'safe harbor': outspend them until they fold. Back in 2009 the lower court dismissed UMG's case (PDF) on the ground that Veoh was covered by the DMCA 'safe harbor' and had complied with takedown notices. The record companies of course appealed. And they of course lost. Then, after the Viacom v. YouTube decision by the 2nd Circuit, which ruled that there were factual issues as to some of the videos, they moved for rehearing in UMG v. Veoh. Now, in a 61-page decision (PDF), the 9th Circuit has once again ruled that the statute means what it says, and rejected each and every argument the record companies made. Sadly, though, it did not award attorneys fees."
...and I am undone -- Pyrrhus of Epirus.
It's so sad that they can sorta "win" by pushing Veoh out of business via litigation. Even though Veoh won they still lost. Sad. The judge should have awarded fees.
At least it's legal precedent.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The adversarial system is the biggest injustice ever created. Such a system dates back from the times when people solved disputes by beating each other over the head with clubs. The US legal system literally derives from the law of Germanic tribes back in antiquity.
The adversarial system turns everything into a game. Fact is irrelevant. Law is irrelevant. Justice is irrelevant. All that matters is whose lawyer is the best at legal gamesmenship. A typical civil trial in the US is a game of trying to bury the other party in motions and frivolous lawsuits until they can no longer afford to fight it. The adversarial system ensures that no help is given to a party who has a significant financial disadvantage because the law is simply not important and if you can't afford a good lawyer, that's too bad and you're going to go bankrupt even if you've done nothing wrong.
Civilized countries (e.g. the majority) realized a long time ago that the adversarial system is not just. In most countries, the inquisitorial system is used in which the judge, rather than the lawyers, are the ones who do the investigating and asking of questions. In an inquisitorial court, it is not a competition to see which party has the best lawyers and legal arguments but rather a search for the truth.
It's a system where by bringing a lawsuit, the plaintiff self-insures that they are not bringing a frivolous or unlikely-to-win lawsuit: http://ankoj.blogspot.com/
I googled veoh to see what they were, and was surprised to see that Veoh is still around. The wiki page says they were bought by an Israeli company. Is the new Veoh something similar in name only? I'm genuinely confused.
"I googled veoh to see what they were, and was surprised to see that Veoh is still around. The wiki page says they were bought by an Israeli company. Is the new Veoh something similar in name only? I'm genuinely confused."
...
The current Veoh appears to show only trailers or brief snippits, with links to paid-for sites
AccountKiller
but the patient died...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I worked for mp3.com from 1999 to them folding in 2003 from UMG's (and others) lawsuit. I worked for Veoh from 2008 to 2009 when they folded from UMG's lawsuit.
I HATE UMG.
Those were the most fun jobs I've ever had. The work was challenging, the environment was fun, and my co-worker were some of the smartest people I've ever met. I had the opportunity to write code that solved problems no one had every faced before. It was awesome.
UMG has screwed me out of 2 very fulfilling jobs.
even out the playing field? :-D
and where do you work now?
Only those with dollars have justice.
It sounds like you think Americanism Exceptionalism means American betterism. It does not. It means, simply, that the origins of the US, the founding, was DIFFERENT than other countries. Not superior, just different. In general states are based on nations, on ethnic groups. Ethnic groups formed kingdoms, and they persist today as countries. France, Germany, China - these are like most nations in that they are also ethnic groups, based on ancestry, led by kings and empererors at various times.
America, on the other hand, was not the formalization of the boundaries of ancient tribes. Instead, Americans were united by certain IDEALS. (Ideals they often don't live up to, but ideals nonetheless.) Rather, people came to America for the promise of individual liberty and the opportunity that implies. In America, you were free to practice whatever religion you wanted, and free to succeed on your own merits. A "low class" store clerk born in a log cabin could become president. In other countries, being born low class meant you stayed low class your entire life.
Does that imply that America is better? Not necesarily. Critics will point first to slavery, which once existed in the US. How does that square with a nation "founded on the proposition that all men are created equal"? It doesn't, and that, my friend, is the whole point of American Exceptionalism. American Exceptionalism tells us that BECAUSE the country was founded on these ideals of liberty, freedom, and equality, we had better make great effort to live up to those ideals. It doesn't mean that we do, it means that our founding documents demand that we SHOULD.
This is where we are headed. When there is no justice to be found within the system, people will inevitably take justice into their own hands. The willingness to do so will only increase as people are driven into poverty by the ruling class.
Please stop feeding the trolls, they're too fat already. Ignore them and they'll go away.
Free Martian Whores!
Sadly, the meaning of the internet "troll" has been lost. It's ties to fishing have been misunderstood as the things that hang out under bridges. Trolling has nothing to do with "trolls".
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
You do not need a license to copy a work to use as intended. Read the fucking Berne Convention, you copyright tool.
> I was told that some companies did not want to advertise with us because of the lawsuit.
I only wish there were some way to prove whether and how the labels were behind that. Supposing they were behind it, there are laws that could have been broken.
Fraud.
Since everywhere you work goes out off business, please go work at UMG, then Microsoft, then the White House. Thanks.
Is nothing new, and will never go away.
And that's why Google bought Youtube. Without Google's pockets, video uploading or user-generated content sites in general would be in deep, deep trouble, and as common and popular as limewire, emule, TPB, etc.
Google needed another platform to sell advertisements, and it protected user-generated content sites in the process. Sometimes, things DO work out.
Perhaps, but given all the concerns about privacy that surround the company, I don't think you can hold up Google buying Youtube as a shining example of a perfect outcome. You can repeat their "do no harm" mantra all day long, in the end it's still another huge mega-corporation acting unilaterally without input from the internet-using public. How long are we going to just sit back and watch these companies in effect make important policy decisions that should rightfully happen only after long public debate, with the results written into law rather than being imposed by regulatory or corporate fiat. Now THAT would be things working out, but it never seems to happen that way. Google may be less evil than some, or even most, but... Do we really have to settle for "less evil"?
Would you rather Facebook buys YouTube?
You're sued by a rather large company. You have two options.
a) Forfeit everything you have worked your entire life for and have it over to the company.
b) Shoot the CEO and forfeit everything you have worked your entire life for and hand it over to your family.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ...
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the UNFINISHED work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
The UNFINISHED work, Lincoln said. Our first founding document, the declaration of independence, established what that task is. We started a new country, the Declaration said, because "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights". Have we finished that work? Heck no! Have we even done a good job of it since 1965 or so? Perhaps not. But that's absolutely what our founding principles call for us to do. No other nation, to my knowledge, was founded on that basis.
From the banking scandals it should be clear to anyone with half a mind that Washington wants you to stop being a little thief and start being a very big one
You gotta understand the rationale behind this ...
If you are a little thief your loot is too little for them to take a big bite
But if you are a humongous thief you'd have more than enough left for them to take some bites
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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In your slashdot post above, you point out a link to "Large Recording Companies vs The Defenseless", ABA Judges Journal, Equal Access to Justice issue, 2008
where the link itself is
http://beckermanlegal.com/Documents/080729LargeRecordingCompaniesVsTheDefenselessHTMLVERSION.htmThe problem is that when you go to that link, the title at the top of the browser page is
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\www.pdfdownload.org\pdf2html\conversions\p2h_5981445\tmpF695.tmp:That's probably because there's a missing title tag in the web page. Wait, strike that. I checked the page and the problem is that the actual title of the page is that long file address.
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\www.pdfdownload.org\pdf2html\conversions\p2h_5981445\tmpF695.tmp
Oops. The quoted code had "<" and ">" in it which got interpreted as HTML code. Here's the web-page-source which I copied from your page at
:>)
http://beckermanlegal.com/Documents/080729LargeRecordingCompaniesVsTheDefenselessHTMLVERSION.htm
I checked the page and the problem is that the actual title of the page is coded as being that long file address.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\www.pdfdownload.org\pdf2html\conversions\p2h_5981445\tmpF695.tmp</TITLE>
Change the title to be what you want the title to be as
<TITLE>Corrected Title Here</TITLE>
rather than as the long file-name from your windows computer's C: drive.
I assume that you've gotten the express consent of the ABA, or possibly the express consent of Major League Baseball or at least from the Commissioner of MLB, right? ;>) IANACLoCA (i am not a copyright lawyer or copyright attorney...)
Wow, Troll AND Overrated! My collection is almost complete. :P
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.