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YouTube Is Guilty Of Criminal Racketeering, Grammy Winner Says (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader cites a TorrentFreak report (edited and condensed): YouTube is guilty of criminal racketeering. That's the headline-grabbing claim of Grammy award winning musician Maria Schneider, who claims that the Google-owned site is abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to siphon money away from musicians into its own pockets. Over the years, Google has transformed into the new bad guy and the pressure is mounting in a way never witnessed before. The U.S. Copyright Office's request for comments into the efficacy of the DMCA's safe harbor provisions has resulted in a wave of condemnation for both Google search and the company's YouTube platform, with everyone from the major record labels to the MPAA and back again attacking the technology giant. Grammy award-winning musician Maria Schneider really ups the ante by stating that YouTube is guilty of the same criminal acts that Megaupload is currently accused of. "YouTube is guilty of criminal racketeering," Schneider wrote in an open letter to the platform. "YouTube has thoroughly twisted, contorted, and abused the original meaning of the outdated DMCA 'safe harbor' to create a massive income redistribution scheme, where income is continually transferred from the pockets of musicians and creators of all types, and siphoned directly into their own pockets."Digital Music News has more information.
Well you see... I have no idea who Maria Schneider is other than she doesn't know what racketeering means.
Did Youtube demand money from her in exchange for fire, theft, and kneecap insurance?
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
Copyright law is broken and doesn't work correctly anymore.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
One could say that Megaupload is doing far less that could be considered illegal. I would definitely trust them more.
Grammy award-winning musician Maria Schneider really ups the ante by stating that YouTube is guilty of the same criminal acts that Megaupload is currently accused of. "YouTube is guilty of criminal racketeering," Schneider wrote in an open letter to the platform. "YouTube has thoroughly twisted, contorted, and abused the original meaning of the outdated DMCA 'safe harbor' to create a massive income redistribution scheme, where income is continually transferred from the pockets of musicians and creators of all types, and siphoned directly into their own pockets."
Pardon me for not shedding any tears, as the RIAA/MPAA members have upped the ante by thoroughly twisting, contorting, and abusing the original meaning of the Copyright Clause of the Constitution, turning into *real* theft from society.
What about these organizations abusing the DMCA by issuing false requests for legitimate content?
Did Youtube demand money from her in exchange for fire, theft, and kneecap insurance?
I hope so.
I guess she doesn't understand much about how YouTube works, and is claiming that they are just redistributing money. Not true, actually. In order to operate this FREE SERVICE that they are using, and get PAID THROUGH, they advertise. After they collect that revenue, they appropriate the funds according to percentages and costs of the ads. Sounds to me like she doesn't understand what operating costs are, either. And, they are a business, so they are out to make money, too.
Why do things that matter have to affect you directly? That's another question to ask yourself. There are many things that are bad that don't affect you directly. The wildfire in Ft. McMurray for example, it doesn't affect you, yet it is vitally important to many people who's home are being destroyed and who's livelyhoods are being threatened. She feels it is important to her, and her industry. which actually includes many people besides just the artists, but the producers, the commercial jingle writers, anyone who has ever held a copyright.
Why is this important to anyone? Well, I actually don't think the letter has much merit, and that is important to me. YouTube has proven that they comply with takedown orders, they cannot control everything that is put up there, with ~300 Hours of content uploaded every minute, (2014 stats) that would require, let's do the math, 300 hrs x 60 x 24 = 432000 hrs uploaded per day, that would require 54000 8 hour shifts to go through all the content. 54000+ employees to monitor every video uploaded for copyright infringing content. Yeah, I don't think that's feasible. The use of digital fingerprinting leaves it open to false positives, and fair use violations, (It would cause an official release of Ice Ice baby to go down because it might match just enough to Queen's Under Pressure). How they're taking money from artists, is questionable, I suppose having to have a lawyer send the takedown notice. But usually the label does that, which they might charge back to the artist but that's not youtube's fault or responsibility, if anything that's racketeering on behalf of the labels not Youtube.
Hate break it to you miss, but it's the label under which you signed that's siphoning money away from you. If it wasn't for YouTube and other streaming services, your audience would be substantially smaller.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
...(sigh).
Why are the people from MN that have any sort of fame such nutballs?
(looks at self)
We're not ALL nutballs up here, are we?
-Styopa
I have to agree this is the wrong term. Racketeering is mainly protection money and such. If Youtube was telling musicians that they better have their videos on Youtube or else Guido and the boys will come rearrange their vocal chords, that's racketeering. The RIAA's chasing after stores for having the radio on, waiters for singing Happy Birthday, etc, is a much better example of racketeering.
"...everyone from the major record labels to the MPAA and back again"
That's not everyone. That's hardly anyone. In fact, that's pretty much only one, single interest group.
"In closing, Schneider has several key demands. Front and center is a call for “takedown and staydown“, the mechanism championed by every Google critic thus far in this DMCA consultation."
If we're going to be hard on that side of the issue, then it is only fair to be just as hard on the other side. What penalty should be applied to an organization that files an obviously false takedown request? After all, they have knowingly falsified a legal document. Criminal prosecution? Or just a massive civil fine, payable to the owner of the copyright that they impugned? Funny, she didn't mention anything at all about this problem...
How does this affect me?
It is interesting to see other perspectives of copyright law, and what 'the other side' might be thinking of issues. If she is successful in convincing the masses of her position, it will strengthen what many on /. believe are already overly broad, overly strong and otherwise misguided IP protection laws.
It would affect you, in that any entertainment you consume would likely become even more expensive. Also, if you use youtube, it might eliminate the reason most of us go there, and leave it as a venue for otherwise unemployed people to try to make a living on ad revenue hosting clips about nothing.
I'll get modded down to -1 for asking this because Slashdot users don't like answering important questions
No, you will get modded down because people think you are trolling.
Translation:
As with much of the rest of the legal corpus. But the voters keep electing the rich, and they keep writing law that favors the rich. It's not a mystery. It's profound validation of the concrete social and economic effects of the Gaussian.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Did Youtube demand money from her in exchange for fire, theft, and kneecap insurance?
Yes, that's one of the main points of her open letter. Youtube has a system in place, Content ID, to stop piracy and it works quite well. The crux is that they only allow it's use to musicians who have agreed to license their content to them or at least that's assumed, as they don't publish any rules. Everybody else gets left in the dust and isn't allowed into Content ID and thus their content can be shared on Youtube without permission. Which according to her argument violates the requirements for "Safe Harbor" protection and makes Youtube guilty of mass copyright infringement, as that "Safe Harbor" law requires technical measures to be made available to everybody.
You've mis-understood her complaint. She has a legitimate gripe here: either the DMCA is irredeemably broken, or YouTube's implementation of it is. Their system is:
1. Make baseless DMCA complaint about someone
2. Get all their ad revenue until they successfully fight the complaint - several days at least for high-profile YouTubers, perhaps forever for normal people
3. Keep all that revenue after the complaint is found to be baseless
4. Profit!
There are dozens of videos from movie and game reviewers about this, who are constantly barraged by baseless takedown notices.
Here's a good start to learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This search gives many, many viewpoints (from dozens, perhaps hundreds now, of YTers affected by this mess): https://www.youtube.com/result...
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Youtube violates the hell out of copyright.
And that's in any sense of the word- not just stuff over 28 years old.
Furthermore they make huge amounts of money via advertising off of other artist's copyrighted works without properly licensing the artists and (as far as I have been able to determine) without paying them a dime.
The day after a new song comes out, there are many copies of the song on Youtube. Often entire movies are posted as well. It's so bad that I have to suspect it's a temporary situation.
I strongly disagree with copyright past 28 years (and don't respect it in my actions) but what Youtube is doing is 0 day copyright infringement. Enjoy it while you can, but it's so bad, I can't see how it's going to last. It's clearly illegal. It's clearly a massive pattern of behavior and repeated infringement.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Google hopes the big-name content holders will accept ad revenue instead of out-right take-downs, which tick off small Youtube publishers and viewers, and risk Google being sued for censorship. However, that ad revenue is tiny compared to the old-fashioned way of selling entertainment.
But that's life in the Internet age: viewers have too many options to be forced to stare at boring, cheesy, blowhard ads for too long. Choice has watered-down profits, and many attention seekers publish entertainment for almost free. The big-name providers have to now compete with cute kittens. Ads have got to be short or unintrusive. The captive audience of the 1970's TV living room is gone, as is paying $5 for a song, but the old-school entertainment companies refuse to accept change, and try to force the old ways back.
Table-ized A.I.
She is right, Google is every bit as guilty as Google...which is to say they both shouldn't be held liable for what users upload. It is idiocy to criminalize a tool that can be use for a crime, instead of the criminal action.
The funniest part is, if Google actually deleted all of the "infringing" content, Maria Schneider and the RIAA Mafia wouldn't be very happy about it.
Time for a history lesson:
In 2013, a number of German publishers successfully lobbied for the passage of a very restrictive copyright law, intended to limit the amount of publisher content that could be shown by third parties (e.g., search engines), so that publishers could collect licensing fees from Google and others.
After the passage of the law, Google decided to avoid potential liability by removing publisher content snippets from search results, in compliance with the law. As a result, German publishers said they lost significant traffic and asked for the return of their “snippets” without a demand for licensing fees.
How does this affect me? Why is this important to anyone except Maria Schneider? I'll get modded down to -1 for asking this because Slashdot users don't like answering important questions. But this needs to be asked, and I challenge any of you to give me a real answer rather than insulting me. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone here is up to the challenge.
1) How does this affect me?
We cannot know the answer to that because we have no idea of who you are. Are you a musician? A Google/youtube employee? A lawyer? Those people would care a lot, but we have no idea who you are so we cannot answer your question. Only you would know what your interests are, and not everything that happens affects everybody.
Don't ask this question again.
2) Why is this important to anyone except Maria Schneider?
She is a member of a community (published musicians) that has the share a common experience (or belief) that their works are being unfairly posted and uncompensated. This also affects employees of google/youtube and attorneys who may be interested in copyright law.
Entertainment is a multi-billion dollar industry and an important part of the economy, as is google/youtube.
This is explained in the articles linked to, and tells us that you are posting to an article that you have not read.
You are asking us to read the article for you and explain it. How can you not know how annoying that is?
3) I'll get modded down to -1 for asking this because Slashdot users don't like answering important questions.
We do like answering important questions. We don't enjoy discussions with people who have NOT read the articles.
You get modded down because your questions are about you and not about the posted article.
4) But this needs to be asked,
No, you are mistaken. Your questions do not need to be asked. How the article affects you, who we do not know anything about, does not need to be asked.
5) and I challenge any of you to give me a real answer rather than insulting me.
The purpose of Slashdot is to offer a variety of topics for discussion.
Look at the top of the Slashdot web page. There is a line that looks like this:
Topics: Devices Build Entertainment Technnology Open Source Science YRO
This article is about YRO and Entertainment.
People who are interested in YRO and Entertainment would be interested in this topic. others would skip over it.
How does this affect me? Why is this important to anyone except Maria Schneider? I'll get modded down to -1 for asking this because Slashdot users don't like answering important questions. But this needs to be asked, and I challenge any of you to give me a real answer rather than insulting me. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone here is up to the challenge.
No, you are getting modded down to -1 because you ask the exact same question over and over again regardless of the topic, indicating that you are more interested in trolling than getting an actual answer to your question. The only reason I am responding and quoting you is so people can see and recognize your pathetic attempts at begging for attention.
Please people, stop responding to this guy.
Maria who? what indignities has she suffered again? -free press??
Sick and tired of artists crying because their work is "stolen" or someone is supposedly making millions on their work while they starve for food.
The labels are milking you and tossing you out for the next "hip" thing. Worse, too many so called "artists" do not actually do any fucking work.
They produce their one hit and expect an infinite revenue stream. Even football (not American) players do not feel so entitled.
Once upon a time artists were paid for work. A performance, a sculpture, an act etc. Bands would go on tour and perform! (read work)
So now just because we have ears we have to pay you every time we hear your song? because we have eyes we have to pay you every time we see a movie?
I already paid for the movie/song/series. How? by paying for TV/radio license, for the netflix subscription, for spotify, for fucking cable; I paid for your shit several times over but they still want more. They say I was only renting it per use as per the EULA. Who the fuck reads the EULA that's a fucking joke. It can say I'm renting my dog to Satan no one will notice and because people are known not to read it it says things they;d not agree to.
No additional effort was made for that additional use of mine, what was lost? nothing. It's not like money, It's not like copying a dollar bill. It does not inflate the economy and it certainly does not hurt sales by "making it available". Star Wars is highly pirated movie/content and does that decades long, multi-billion dollar franchise look like it's not profiting?
So now we have a platform (many actually) that spreads some random "artist's" crap for free, leading to additional audiences and additional revenue opportunities for that artist and still some ignorant people keep bitching.
How about you lazy fuckers work? You know, people work. Seen any surgeon that performed one operation then retire expecting money forever? that surgeon studied for many years, trained many years and has to perform yes, *groan* the same operations many times. Crazy huh?
I'll pay to see an act in theatre per performance because you know, someone has to work to perform for my pleasure. I'll pay a band every time I see them because they do something for it.
The entire model of charging "per use" for people to use their sense although legal is actually based in BS. One day we will be able to record thoughts, images we imagine and see and thus transfer them. What will happen then? will it be illegal to think copyrighted content? -this point may seem arbitrary but this is what copyright is, thought.
I recorded a thought and now I want every to pay $9.99 for it. That's cool but unlike hardware thoughts do not seem to depreciate. I could sell a million copies and the price would still be $9.99 -the effort I put it was nothing compared to the effort so many people put in to earn $9.99.
You see if I could automate my job function and sell it no one would need me to do any work any more. In order to earn money I would have to do a new function. Don't musicians do anything beyond record their work and sell that? after all, I already have a mastered copy of their best, auto-tuned performance. Why would I need them again? -unless of course, shockingly they did something new like performs live the way music actually sounds by doing actual work.
I never promised to buy your shit to begin with, the fact I was willing to listen to it on youtube should be flattery enough that I'm a potential customer.
The value of your copy of said work is what people are willing to pay for it. We are no longer willing to pay, fuck you, get a real job and fuck off.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Link? After RTFA, it seems she does not give a shit about people suffering that situation, and her proposals would make it worse (try contesting a DMCA claim when you have no idea who made the claim in the first place; have fun arguing your video is fair use when you can't even upload it thanks to fingerprinting; and do I really need to comment on how much of a cluserfuck take-down-and-stay-down would be?)
Not-actually-an-Edit: Reading part of the actual letter, you are full of shit. She explicitly complains about Youtube offering financial support to people who wish to contest false DMCA requests. The problem you bring up is a real problem, but this leech doesn't give a fig about it or the people it affects; this is just the childish footstamping of someone who doesn't understand how things work, and feels that somewhere, somehow, they're losing out on a buck.
I agree that youtube has a serious DMCA / fair use problem, but do you really think the nostalgia critic is the best person to speak against this. His MO is to basically talk over other peoples content, it's the same deal to an even great extent with LPers.
I've had automated copyright notices for background noise because some algorithm though it sounded like a samba. This robo-filing along with a "we'll get back to you when we feel like it, and probably affirm the claim anyway because actually checking things is hard - see you in court if you don't like it pleb" attitude is a far greater abuse of content ID than youtube's reluctance to arbitrate on what is or isn't fair use.
It seems that a lot of people in the comments don't know who she is, but she is one of my favorite musicians, and certainly one of the greatest living jazz composers.
The irony here is that Jazz isn't supposed to be composed........................
Talented as she may be, opinions like hers are born from a lifetime of entitlement under a Copyright system which lets them work once, and collect money for selling the same work over and over. No other business or occupation operates like this - after you've been paid once, if you want to be paid again, you have to do new work. The closest is the rental industry, and they still have to pay for maintenance and replacement costs as the things they're renting out break down and wear out.
Wedding photographers went through exactly this shift in business. They used to shoot the weddings for free, then charge for the prints and reprints - collecting money for selling the same work over and over. The advent of low-cost scanners and inkjet photo printers forced them to realign their business model with reality. Nowadays, wedding photographers charge you up-front to shoot the wedding, and they'll give you the prints at cost or even free. You're paying for a one-time service instead of a product. Which more accurately represents what's actually going on - the bulk of the photographer's production costs are in the photography, not in the prints. Just like in days past when composers would write music on commission as a service, not get an artificial monopoly on selling a product - the printed composition. The bulk of the composer's production costs are in the composition, not in the copies of it which are reprinted.
I can listen to any copyrighted song I want pretty much just by using Youtube. I'm actually surprised that I've never found a service that has a way to construct song libraries by scouring youtube for a play list and possibly even autoripping them. Seems like a good bussiness model since youtube is the one guilty of making available copyrighted works if it comes to a legal battle.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The crux is that they only allow it's use to musicians who have agreed to license their content to them...
I don't know how you got the idea that there was some form of licensing going on. YouTube is not reproducing the works covered by ContentID, so they don't require a license for the works.
...as they don't publish any rules.
You mean these rules?
Google scans every video uploaded to YouTube against its ContentID system. That's a few hundred hours of video per minute. This is also not the only way to enforce ownership rights on YouTube. Google is under no legal obligation to provide their ContentID service. It is the copyright owner's job to enforce their rights. Google cannot do that for them without an explicit agreement, and they have no obligation to make any such agreement with anyone. It is not part of the "Safe Harbor" exclusions, and it would not remotely make sense if that were so, since the point of those exclusions was to prevent service providers from having to police their networks.
that "Safe Harbor" law requires technical measures to be made available to everybody.
No, it requires that the service provider "accommodates and does not interfere with standard technical measures". They are not obligated to provide any such methods.
No matter how much content owners would like for the onus for copyright policing to be on service providers, it is not the case and will never be the case.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
So, what you're saying is that she's upset that YouTube doesn't give away their stuff (in this case, ContentID) for free? And, at the same time, she doesn't want to give her stuff away for free?
Makes sense now....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I have no idea who Maria Schneider is
Maybe you should look her up on YouTube and find out.
I can see the fnords!
If Youtube was telling musicians that they better have their videos on Youtube or else Guido and the boys will come rearrange their vocal chords, that's racketeering.
I believe her argument is that Google will only "protect" her works if she gives them a license to use her works. That could be considered racketeering or extortion.
That said, Google asks for this because it is up to the copyright holder to defend their copyright. It's not Google's job. And, frankly, I'm sure artists would bitch if Google was using their works without their authorization.
So, let's keep the Safe Harbor and add severe penalties for baseless claims. Perhaps something combining monetary damages and a time-out period during which that entity cannot make further claims.
Let's look at the actual text of the safe harbor:
Is ContentID offered by multiple service providers? Is ContentID described in any standards document?
Are the costs associated with operating ContentID insubstantial is terms of not only money, but CPU time and storage?
If you cannot answer those questions with a yes, then the fact that ContentID is not being offered to "everybody" -- meaning everybody who wishes to agree to "reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms," not merely terms of their own choosing -- is not relevant.
I've read the open letter, and it's self-serving mush. For example, in her analysis of whether YouTube is a racketeer:
A. ContentID is not a "standard technical measure" as defined in the DMCA.
B. Stephen Carlisle should be sued for malpractice. You send a certified letter containing the items listed in 512(c)(3) to the designated agent specified here according to 512(c)(2). Done.
C. Doesn't like 512(h) Subpoena To Identify Infringer, which clearly exists and assumes that subscriber identities are confidential, but wants to conceal the identity of the copyright owner, a right that does not and almost cannot exist.
D. WTF? Seems to be the love child of a complaint concerning broken-link error message one gets after content has been taken down and a variation of the complaint in item C. Copyright owner authorizes the takedown of content allegedly owned by the copyright owner is pretty darn difficult to hide since we can pretty much infer that yes, the complaint was essentially made by the copyright owner.
E, part 1. But those questions are in the DMCA. 512(c)(3) requires them, so yes, you get to answer questions when making a notification. 512(f) also has some laughably weak language concerning misrepresentations, so yes, you should probably be aware of that. 512(g)(3) requires lots of similar questions for counternotifications and a statement made under penalty of perjury. Seems fair enough.
E, part 2. It's called a counternotification, not a pre-certification. Requiring pre-certification would be a fairly substantial violation of the first amendment. You're welcome to practice what you preach and pre-certify everything you post, including your own open letter, as a means of educating yourself as to why.
F. The possibility that YouTube might support a user in a wrongful takedown situation is unfair. It's just little old me (get back behind the curtain, RIAA, MPAA, ASCAP, BMI, RightsHaven, Guardlex, and the rest of you guys, they're buying it!).
G. Enforce my copyrights for me for free. Now.
H.
No.
What she wants is for Google to, at THEIR cost, provide protection for HER content.
Remember, this is content that, due to copyright extension, will almost certainly NEVER enter the public domain which was originally part of
the social contract that was copyright. The government agreed to provide legal protections for works, in return for those works
entering the public domain after a reasonable time - a balanced agreement. That agreement has been continuously twisted by the copyright
owners, who see it as the job of everyone else to protect their works, and they should keep the money and the works for ever (in effect).
So no, she is just pushing the cart another inch forward, bending the social contract even further, and trying to claim that it is Googles job
to enforce HER copyrights - which it clearly is not.
If she wants her works protected on youtube its easy, employ someone to find content that is in violation, employ lawyers to write up the
required legal papers, and go for it. There is exactly nothing stopping her from doing this.
If she wants Google to do the work for her, then agree to Googles terms to provider her with this service.
What she is trying to do is the same as wanting a radio manufacturer to be legally responsible for checking that the local barbershop
isnt 'performing her works without a commercial license' because they turn that radio on, at the radio makers cost. ie: laughable.
This is just another attempt at copyright extension people, and the public, who are being shafted already (thank you Disney, etal), should be
rather angry at that. NO other industry has had such generous governmental and legal support for so long.
Or perhaps she would rather keep her works for herself, and we just revoke copyright, as she does not want to keep up her side of the contract?
I thought not..
You need to explain this in far greater detail than you have. Google Inc. is a search engine that, until the recent reorganization into Alphabet and its subsidiaries, owned an interest in YouTube LLC.
The two are otherwise distinct legal and operational entities. In fact, the entire point of an LLC is that the members are not liable for the actions of the LLC above and beyond the value of the members' interest in it, whether the members are natural person investors or conglomerate entity investors. In order to pierce the veil, so to speak, you'd need to show that YouTube was not merely owned by Google but, for example, an alter ego for Google itself.
Since YouTube existed well before the Google acquisition, and YouTube LLC continues to run as a separate service/business, you'll forgive me if I don't blithely accept that conclusory opinion.
Either you ignored the section of the DMCA in the post that you're responding to, or you've decided to make a moral argument that DMCA should be changed. Subjective moral arguments do not supersede unambiguous aspects of existing laws. Show that ContentID satisfies every element of the definition of a "standard technological measure," show that Google Inc. (or Alphabet) is legally responsible for YouTube LLC's practices, and then you can begin to argue that Google must pay damages for infringement.
Non sequitur. Nothing in the DMCA requires that uploaders supply real contact info, whether standard technological measures are involved or not. You don't get to create that requirement yourself, with or without the assistance of the courts. Legislating is a Congressional power.
It is important to music listeners (you?) because income is what motivates many artists to produce music (initially and on a continuing basis),
What percent of people that consider themselves "artists" make a profit? 1%? Less probably. No, artists aren't motivated by money. They are motivated by a love of the art. If money comes they take it like anybody would, and they take measures to increase their profitability like anyone would, but it isn't their motivation.
The proof is the fantastic amount of art out their produced by nobodies be it music, visual, coding, etc. If you shut off payment for art all together there'd still be fantastic artists.
Didn't YT already address this (recently) by holding onto the revenue while a complaint is being resolved, and then sending the accrued revenue to the winning party when the complaint is actually resolved?
http://youtubecreator.blogspot...
Wow. What a mess. I don't think there are any "good guys" here at all.
1. I think that Maria Schneider is actually correct in her main point. Google is absolutely abusing their power to get away with behavior that has been deemed criminal on the part of less powerful organizations, Megaupload being a prime example. I think that she makes a good case for calling their behavior "racketeering".
2. The RIAA (and their individual corporate members) have clearly demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to apply the "takedown" provisions of the DMCA in a non-abusive way, and it would be crazy to give them any more power in this regard. They also whine incessantly about how the artists are getting screwed, and then they turn around and screw the artists as hard as they can get away with.
3. The artists have been complaining for decades now that it is much harder for them to make a living than it used to be, and they are right. But by and large their proposed solution is "let's go back to the way things were", ignoring the fact that the public simply will not put up with that, and ignoring the fact that the Internet has changed the whole enterprise of music irrevocably.
4. The public has now gotten used to getting their music for free (or for almost nothing) without any consideration for how the artists are going to actually make a living. It's not clear how much longer "being a musician" will be a viable career except for a tiny group of superstars, unless people start accepting that they have to actually pay *something* for the privilege of listening to the latest music.
None of these groups seems to have any inclination to compromise, nor is showing any consideration for anybody's welfare except their own. What a mess.