It's not just the Internet -alone- that is encouraging such things as competition and product development. For instance, having a reasonably non-corrupt judiciary to adjudicate commercial disputes, and a flexible economic system that can readily shift labor and resources according to demand, is rather fundamental. Having a reasonably well-educated population that is already sufficiently wealthy in resources that many can afford to take business risks and -fail- is also critical.
If you're in a massively corrupt state, even a potentially fairly rich one, where between mismanagement and outright corruption plus disruptions in critical infrastructure from violent unrest, things are going to be slower whether or not you have Internet access. If you're busy trying to subsistence farm and worrying about both food prices plunging from imported food aid, or bad soil and weather conditions from decades of ecologically destructive practices, you have bigger fish to fry.
Think automated systems and fraud-detection / warning systems. Caller ID identifies the phone in a spoofable manner, if memory serves; it does not identify the person using the phone, nor is it useful if a trusted person is calling from a different phone.
This might be useful for low-security automated systems where having people key in passcodes or account numbers isn't necessarily appropriate. It might also be useful for warning a human recipient when something seems not quite right -- imitating somebody's voice over a "bad connection" -- depending on how well it works....or if you're intercepting calls on a roving wiretap, and need to be able to stop recording ASAP if the people involved are not actually covered by your warrant... or to notify a surveillance team when a particular voice of interest is heard via a particular bug.
Copyright itself would not constitute a 'technological' measure. Copyright only affords protection through the legal system, not through technological means.
- They have no standing to bring suit under this provision. - 'Circumvention' does not mean 'to avoid ever installing'. - 'Circumvention' is only a problem if not authorized by copyright holder. Copyright holder has granted permission for Apple to distribute as is.
Case should be dismissed with prejudice. Plaintiff's attorneys should be sanctioned. Award legal fees to the defendants.
Microsoft itself is fairly insulated from liability issues with their licensing agreements.
A business that knowingly delays deployment of a security-related patch for reasons of convenience, and suffers loss of customer data or other issues that would otherwise have been prevented -- I would not be so certain that the business itself would necessarily be invulnerable to lawsuits from injured third parties.
Are the hundreds of SuSE security announcements sitting in my GMail account illusory? There have been nineteen since the beginning of March, some of which cover multiple issues, and which include problems with the kernel, XFree86, even security-related packages like krb5 and gpg...
And they're not necessary trivial issues. Among the multiple security-related bugs in today's update, for instance, include a potential remote exploit, a privilege-escalation exploit, and a somewhat-remote DOS attack.
- CVE-2006-6106: Multiple buffer overflows in the cmtp_recv_interopmsg
function in the Bluetooth driver
(net/bluetooth/cmtp/capi.c) in the Linux kernel allowed
remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and
possibly execute arbitrary code via CAPI messages with a
large value for the length of the (1) manu (manufacturer)
or (2) serial (serial number) field.
- CVE-2006-5753: Unspecified vulnerability in the listxattr system call in
Linux kernel, when a "bad inode" is present, allows local
users to cause a denial of service (data corruption)
and possibly gain privileges.
- CVE-2007-1357: A denial of service problem against the AppleTalk
protocol was fixed. A remote attacker in the same
AppleTalk network segment could cause the machine to
crash if it has AppleTalk protocol loaded.
It might be noted that, as with a number of other serious illnesses, HIV is far less prevalent in 1st-world countries than it is in the poorest -- ex. sub-Saharan Africa is the general region with the highest infection rates, but they also have little to pay for it.
At least, in this case, there IS some market in HIV treatments among the wealthy. If Third World governments set the precedent that they will ignore patents at will, then why should any pharmaceutical company research diseases that are largely plagues of the Third World, but essentially not a problem elsewhere? For these, the "gouge the first world" approach (which, incidentally, becomes disproportionately "gouge the USA", because of government-mandated price controls common to many other wealthy countries) is inapplicable.
Have you compared the relative wealth and stability of Thailand and Brazil lately?
Brazil -- GDP ~$1.616 trillion, PPP basis
per-capita ~$8,600
national gov't budget ~$244B revenues
relatively stable center-left government
HIV/AIDS prevalence ~0.7% among adults
Thailand --
GDP ~$585.9B (PPP)
per-capita ~$9,100 PPP
national gov't budget ~$40.31B revenues
military coup d'etat, violent Islamist unrest in south
HIV/AIDS prevalence ~1.5% among adults
So the Thais make slightly more money per-person, but have about double the HIV/AIDS infection rate among adults, so on a $/HIV patient they're far worse off than Brazil. And they're in the middle of a military junta AND needing to deal with some violent separatism... and some Buddhist agitation as well. And Brazil's national government has a significantly larger portion of its GDP than Thailand's, as well. So how are these really comparable to the point that the allegedly poor Brazilians have a 'right' to the same price?
One -- the Indian company can save money because it only needs to reverse-engineer already-successful products. A large number of pharmaceutical companies' projects either end up as failures, either because they don't work at all, they're not a sufficient improvement over the products they're supposed to replace, or they're found to have intolerably bad side-effects. That means that Merck, unlike the self-righteous people at Cipla, need to recoup much more fixed cost per successful product.
Two -- the Indian company gets a massive short-cut on the R&D because (a) Merck's already pointed out the path, (b) they've put out a product which can be reverse-engineered, and (c) Merck is forced to disclose a lot of details about the product as part of the patent protection costs. So even for this product, their fixed costs are far lower. Merck also already went through the safety and effectivess trials. They've essentially been given a map to the maze that Merck already created -- no wonder it's cheap for them!
Three -- ignoring fixed costs, completely, like you do in your idiotic proclamation of a 255% return, demonstrates a fundamental stupidity similar to what might be associated with suggesting that no software developer should be paid anything at all because the marginal cost of transmission of the resulting data is approximately zero.
Now, for those that aren't morons, they can educate themselves on expenses and so forth. Merck, being a public company, gets to file thinks like Form 10-Ks that are available on Edgar. Study their balance sheets. Note that they're not making "255%" return. Also note that, if you want to complain about something actually remotely legitimate instead of looking like an absolute twink, that Merck spends more on marketing than research.
A lot of the posters on the thread seem to be forgetting that detailed, public disclosure of the method to be protected is required as part of the process.
No patent protection => no public disclosure; the industry would rely on trade secrets. It would become even more difficult for a small producer to survive, as they would have no legal recourse if a larger producer successfully reverse-engineered their products.
In that case where everything's a trade secret, do you really think that Cipla et al would be able to duplicate the drugs at such low cost now that they'd have to reverse-engineer without knowledge of the patented method?
A machine, however, might be able to detect a pattern under which the metadata for an upload reflects a probable instance of infringement based on previous specifications.
If Viacom informed Google of a particular television series, and supplied --
- the name of the series - the descriptions for each episode - the cast list - the uploaders caught uploading episodes so far, and what channels and tags have been used
You think Google couldn't build a pretty decent classifier that would have a pretty good chance of flagging subsequent uploads as possible further violations?
Let's say that Viacom sends Google a list of their popular shows that have been infringed upon, with URLs leading to specific examples. Note that, for the infringement to have any impact, it must be findable by users -- it must be identifiable via tag, title, description, author, channel, or advertisement elsewhere (blog post for instance). If people are uploading infringing material in ways that are all but impossible to find, than Viacom has little reason to care.
Are you suggesting that once Viacom provides some *specific* examples, Google should be permitted to plead complete ignorance when the very same uploaders re-upload the material using titles and descriptions that clearly match the previous descriptions they've been given as infringing uploads? We're not talking about a generic duty to identify what's being uploaded without authorization; we're talking about matching content metadata against a list of identifiers specifically noted as associated with infringement.
True or false: * Google is incapable of building a system that would parse tags, titles and descriptions against a list supplied to them suggesting infringement, and of flagging possible items that are almost probably infringing (like " ExSy> part N"). * All content owners have a duty to continually scan every single upload of Google's content because Google cannot assume it's unauthorized even if it precisely matches a previous item that was marked unauthorized.
Yes, patterns exist. There are people who systematically upload entire television series with very specific title patterns, appropriate tags, and accurate descriptions. Do you really think that Google -- whose whole business depends on information management -- bears no responsibility at all for making even a slight effort at detecting these?
If it's a DMCA takedown notice, for immunity (from the uploader, not the one claiming infringement) the service provider is supposed to notify the uploader so that the uploader can file a counter-notice. At that point, it's between the uploader and the one alleging infringement.
If somebody's uploading entire TV series -- and this does happen -- episode by episode, breaking down each into pieces, and accurately describing them -- it doesn't really seem necessary to watch each individual piece. Identify the bulk-uploader, take a look at a couple, flag the entire series of uploads as infringing.
Same way the users are likely to find them. Search. Subscriptions. Channels. And realizing that a single uploader may be responsible for a large number of obviously infringing videos -- if he's uploading entire seasons of television shows, with multiple parts per episode, labeled as such, it's probably unnecessary to watch every single video that matches the pattern.
I just tried a search for 'season episode'. 21,500 results reported. The first page includes 'Everybody Loves Raymond'. I look at the user's page -- Yoshi118. He's listed the episodes he's uploaded and appears to post a bulletin on next uploads. If it's easy for users to find, why would it be difficult for Viacom to find?
Actually, the user should probably sue Google in this case. Viacom is only liable if it's a bad-faith notice or improperly field; an honest mistake where they actually believed that it was infringing on their IP rights is permissible.
*Google/YouTube*, on the other hand, is only shielded from a lawsuit by the uploader if the takedown procedure was followed and Google/YouTube notifies the uploader in a timely fashion and accepts and properly handles any valid counter-notification letter provided by the uploader before the deadline expires. If they didn't notify the uploader, their bad -- not Viacom's. If the subscriber was notified but failed to send a proper counter-notification letter, no lawsuit. Well, one more case -- if the subscriber was notified, sent a valid letter, and Viacom followed up with a lawsuit against the individual -- OK, then Google/YouTube is shielded from subscriber suits.
Of course, surely you realize that demonstrating the ability to do this would mean that Google knows how to identify it, which means that they're probably not qualified for the Safe Harbor provision.
Fair use defenses are going to be largely obliterated by public-performance, commercial impact, and general lack of anything that qualifies as fair-use (such as transformation or criticism).
Also, do you really need an algorithm to decide that something tagged "" "ExSy" might possibly be Episode X of Season Y of PTS when the title also says "Popular Television Show - Episode X, Season Y, Part 1" ?
What happened to "Fair Use"? If there's a relevant passage in a book, can I not quote it? Is Viacom complaining about entire episodes or just small portions. For example, if there's a bit about John Stewart ripping on D. Chaney, I don't see the difference between that and quoting a Shakespeare soliloquy (well... one is written better...)
Entire. And uploading content to a popular public network is wide-scale distribution and public performance. "Fair use" has some limits, you know -- it's not a blanket license to do anything so long as you're not directly charging money, despite the fact that many Slashdotters think otherwise. Go see Stanford's site on it.
Besides, if it's a good bit, wouldn't I want to see more? Isn't that free advertising?
It's not really legal to rip the fourth consecutive hamburger out of the hands of a morbidly obese stranger and throw it on the floor, either, even if it's good for them.
Whether it's 'clear' depends on what your definition of 'apparent' is.
There seems to have been a user who was uploading content titled things like
"Survivor - Fiji - Series 14 - Episode 1 - Part 4", tagging it with 'survivor', 'E1S14', et al. Parts 1..4 in length appear to add up to a plausible single episode. Does this make it apparent infringement?
c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks At Direction of Users. -
(1) In general. - A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider -
(A)
(i) does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing;
This part might burn YouTube. First, let's note that it is pretty much CERTAIN that YouTube has accumulated enough take-down requests that they probably have a pretty damn good idea of what kinds of TV shows might be replicated in full, unauthorized, on their service. So it shouldn't be easy to find them, right? In other words, they have knowledge that people are uploading episodes of popular shows...
Yry a search for, say, '24 Season 4'. I just got 276 hits. The very first one appears to be a TWO HOUR SEASON FINALE episode according to the metadata. It's even tagged '24'. Yeah, I know it's Fox, not Viacom. Doesn't matter unless Fox has authorized uploading.
That says that they're not even trying to filter searches, to prevent content from reappearing with completely honest and easy-to-find descriptions, or to notice when a tag refers to content that they've almost certainly been warned about.
It's even described
After Jack fakes his own death, he is forced to go into hiding. In the final moments of Season 4 Episode 24, he has what will become his final conversation with Palmer in an emotional scene, before walking into the sunrise and ending the season. (more)
Google parses and classifies content for its core business. The user has just explicitly told them that this is 'Season 4 Episode 24' and tagged it '24'. This isn't some video with a misleading description with the uploader posting links to it on his personal web page. Can they plausibly claim ignorance if
(a) they've been notified that full episodes of '24' are being uploaded, (b) users are tagging content '24' and accurately describing it (c) it's a 2-hour recording?
(ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or
The above may well cross 'apparent', considering that the uploader has accurately and sufficiently described the content.
(iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;
They're still allowing searches that trivially find infringing content.
(B) Does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity; and
It might be argued that they're financially benefiting from people viewing the content and building up their DoubleClick profiles and getting ad content.
(C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.
This they do reportedly do -- for a particular instance. But clearly, they're not making any effort to disable access to other instances. It might be argued that 'material' would include essentially identical uploads of the same original content, or that the 'disabling access to' might include tinkering with the search. It might also be argued that re-uploading of the same video basic content (ex. similar length video, similar description, tags suggesting infringing...) once they've been notified that it's infringing, might be considered 'apparent'.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just the Internet -alone- that is encouraging such things as competition and product development. For instance, having a reasonably non-corrupt judiciary to adjudicate commercial disputes, and a flexible economic system that can readily shift labor and resources according to demand, is rather fundamental. Having a reasonably well-educated population that is already sufficiently wealthy in resources that many can afford to take business risks and -fail- is also critical.
If you're in a massively corrupt state, even a potentially fairly rich one, where between mismanagement and outright corruption plus disruptions in critical infrastructure from violent unrest, things are going to be slower whether or not you have Internet access. If you're busy trying to subsistence farm and worrying about both food prices plunging from imported food aid, or bad soil and weather conditions from decades of ecologically destructive practices, you have bigger fish to fry.
Think automated systems and fraud-detection / warning systems. Caller ID identifies the phone in a spoofable manner, if memory serves; it does not identify the person using the phone, nor is it useful if a trusted person is calling from a different phone.
...or if you're intercepting calls on a roving wiretap, and need to be able to stop recording ASAP if the people involved are not actually covered by your warrant... or to notify a surveillance team when a particular voice of interest is heard via a particular bug.
This might be useful for low-security automated systems where having people key in passcodes or account numbers isn't necessarily appropriate. It might also be useful for warning a human recipient when something seems not quite right -- imitating somebody's voice over a "bad connection" -- depending on how well it works.
Copyright itself would not constitute a 'technological' measure. Copyright only affords protection through the legal system, not through technological means.
Indeed. Plaintiffs have no case.
- They have no standing to bring suit under this provision.
- 'Circumvention' does not mean 'to avoid ever installing'.
- 'Circumvention' is only a problem if not authorized by copyright holder. Copyright holder has granted permission for Apple to distribute as is.
Case should be dismissed with prejudice.
Plaintiff's attorneys should be sanctioned. Award legal fees to the defendants.
Microsoft itself is fairly insulated from liability issues with their licensing agreements.
A business that knowingly delays deployment of a security-related patch for reasons of convenience, and suffers loss of customer data or other issues that would otherwise have been prevented -- I would not be so certain that the business itself would necessarily be invulnerable to lawsuits from injured third parties.
Are the hundreds of SuSE security announcements sitting in my GMail account illusory? There have been nineteen since the beginning of March, some of which cover multiple issues, and which include problems with the kernel, XFree86, even security-related packages like krb5 and gpg...
And they're not necessary trivial issues. Among the multiple security-related bugs in today's update, for instance, include a potential remote exploit, a privilege-escalation exploit, and a somewhat-remote DOS attack.
- CVE-2006-6106: Multiple buffer overflows in the cmtp_recv_interopmsg
function in the Bluetooth driver
(net/bluetooth/cmtp/capi.c) in the Linux kernel allowed
remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and
possibly execute arbitrary code via CAPI messages with a
large value for the length of the (1) manu (manufacturer)
or (2) serial (serial number) field.
- CVE-2006-5753: Unspecified vulnerability in the listxattr system call in
Linux kernel, when a "bad inode" is present, allows local
users to cause a denial of service (data corruption)
and possibly gain privileges.
- CVE-2007-1357: A denial of service problem against the AppleTalk
protocol was fixed. A remote attacker in the same
AppleTalk network segment could cause the machine to
crash if it has AppleTalk protocol loaded.
It might be noted that, as with a number of other serious illnesses, HIV is far less prevalent in 1st-world countries than it is in the poorest -- ex. sub-Saharan Africa is the general region with the highest infection rates, but they also have little to pay for it.
At least, in this case, there IS some market in HIV treatments among the wealthy. If Third World governments set the precedent that they will ignore patents at will, then why should any pharmaceutical company research diseases that are largely plagues of the Third World, but essentially not a problem elsewhere? For these, the "gouge the first world" approach (which, incidentally, becomes disproportionately "gouge the USA", because of government-mandated price controls common to many other wealthy countries) is inapplicable.
Have you compared the relative wealth and stability of Thailand and Brazil lately?
s /th.htms /br.htm
Brazil -- GDP ~$1.616 trillion, PPP basis
per-capita ~$8,600
national gov't budget ~$244B revenues
relatively stable center-left government
HIV/AIDS prevalence ~0.7% among adults
Thailand --
GDP ~$585.9B (PPP)
per-capita ~$9,100 PPP
national gov't budget ~$40.31B revenues
military coup d'etat, violent Islamist unrest in south
HIV/AIDS prevalence ~1.5% among adults
So the Thais make slightly more money per-person, but have about double the HIV/AIDS infection rate among adults, so on a $/HIV patient they're far worse off than Brazil. And they're in the middle of a military junta AND needing to deal with some violent separatism... and some Buddhist agitation as well. And Brazil's national government has a significantly larger portion of its GDP than Thailand's, as well. So how are these really comparable to the point that the allegedly poor Brazilians have a 'right' to the same price?
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo
One -- the Indian company can save money because it only needs to reverse-engineer already-successful products. A large number of pharmaceutical companies' projects either end up as failures, either because they don't work at all, they're not a sufficient improvement over the products they're supposed to replace, or they're found to have intolerably bad side-effects. That means that Merck, unlike the self-righteous people at Cipla, need to recoup much more fixed cost per successful product.
Two -- the Indian company gets a massive short-cut on the R&D because (a) Merck's already pointed out the path, (b) they've put out a product which can be reverse-engineered, and (c) Merck is forced to disclose a lot of details about the product as part of the patent protection costs. So even for this product, their fixed costs are far lower. Merck also already went through the safety and effectivess trials. They've essentially been given a map to the maze that Merck already created -- no wonder it's cheap for them!
Three -- ignoring fixed costs, completely, like you do in your idiotic proclamation of a 255% return, demonstrates a fundamental stupidity similar to what might be associated with suggesting that no software developer should be paid anything at all because the marginal cost of transmission of the resulting data is approximately zero.
Now, for those that aren't morons, they can educate themselves on expenses and so forth. Merck, being a public company, gets to file thinks like Form 10-Ks that are available on Edgar. Study their balance sheets. Note that they're not making "255%" return. Also note that, if you want to complain about something actually remotely legitimate instead of looking like an absolute twink, that Merck spends more on marketing than research.
A lot of the posters on the thread seem to be forgetting that detailed, public disclosure of the method to be protected is required as part of the process.
No patent protection => no public disclosure; the industry would rely on trade secrets. It would become even more difficult for a small producer to survive, as they would have no legal recourse if a larger producer successfully reverse-engineered their products.
In that case where everything's a trade secret, do you really think that Cipla et al would be able to duplicate the drugs at such low cost now that they'd have to reverse-engineer without knowledge of the patented method?
"Empires in Arms", Grand Campaign, 7 players.
If memory serves, the estimated playing time is either 100 or 200 hours. That's a pretty good estimate...
If it's hard to find for Google and Viacom, it's going to be hard to find for users, and therefore it matters less.
No.
A machine, however, might be able to detect a pattern under which the metadata for an upload reflects a probable instance of infringement based on previous specifications.
If Viacom informed Google of a particular television series, and supplied --
- the name of the series
- the descriptions for each episode
- the cast list
- the uploaders caught uploading episodes so far, and what channels and tags have been used
You think Google couldn't build a pretty decent classifier that would have a pretty good chance of flagging subsequent uploads as possible further violations?
*sigh*
It's an ongoing situation, not a one-time one.
Let's say that Viacom sends Google a list of their popular shows that have been infringed upon, with URLs leading to specific examples. Note that, for the infringement to have any impact, it must be findable by users -- it must be identifiable via tag, title, description, author, channel, or advertisement elsewhere (blog post for instance). If people are uploading infringing material in ways that are all but impossible to find, than Viacom has little reason to care.
Are you suggesting that once Viacom provides some *specific* examples, Google should be permitted to plead complete ignorance when the very same uploaders re-upload the material using titles and descriptions that clearly match the previous descriptions they've been given as infringing uploads? We're not talking about a generic duty to identify what's being uploaded without authorization; we're talking about matching content metadata against a list of identifiers specifically noted as associated with infringement.
True or false:
* Google is incapable of building a system that would parse tags, titles and descriptions against a list supplied to them suggesting infringement, and of flagging possible items that are almost probably infringing (like " ExSy> part N").
* All content owners have a duty to continually scan every single upload of Google's content because Google cannot assume it's unauthorized even if it precisely matches a previous item that was marked unauthorized.
Yes, patterns exist. There are people who systematically upload entire television series with very specific title patterns, appropriate tags, and accurate descriptions. Do you really think that Google -- whose whole business depends on information management -- bears no responsibility at all for making even a slight effort at detecting these?
Look up the "No Electronic Theft Act". Copyright infringement can be a criminal offense resulting in prison time.
If it's a DMCA takedown notice, for immunity (from the uploader, not the one claiming infringement) the service provider is supposed to notify the uploader so that the uploader can file a counter-notice. At that point, it's between the uploader and the one alleging infringement.
Depends what it is. I could see an uploader being pissed if it's
(a) his content, and
(b) he's deliberately uploading it there for a promotional effort -- like teasers for content he's offering for $
If somebody's uploading entire TV series -- and this does happen -- episode by episode, breaking down each into pieces, and accurately describing them -- it doesn't really seem necessary to watch each individual piece. Identify the bulk-uploader, take a look at a couple, flag the entire series of uploads as infringing.
Same way the users are likely to find them. Search. Subscriptions. Channels. And realizing that a single uploader may be responsible for a large number of obviously infringing videos -- if he's uploading entire seasons of television shows, with multiple parts per episode, labeled as such, it's probably unnecessary to watch every single video that matches the pattern.
I just tried a search for 'season episode'. 21,500 results reported. The first page includes 'Everybody Loves Raymond'. I look at the user's page -- Yoshi118. He's listed the episodes he's uploaded and appears to post a bulletin on next uploads. If it's easy for users to find, why would it be difficult for Viacom to find?
Actually, the user should probably sue Google in this case. Viacom is only liable if it's a bad-faith notice or improperly field; an honest mistake where they actually believed that it was infringing on their IP rights is permissible.
*Google/YouTube*, on the other hand, is only shielded from a lawsuit by the uploader if the takedown procedure was followed and Google/YouTube notifies the uploader in a timely fashion and accepts and properly handles any valid counter-notification letter provided by the uploader before the deadline expires. If they didn't notify the uploader, their bad -- not Viacom's. If the subscriber was notified but failed to send a proper counter-notification letter, no lawsuit. Well, one more case -- if the subscriber was notified, sent a valid letter, and Viacom followed up with a lawsuit against the individual -- OK, then Google/YouTube is shielded from subscriber suits.
Of course, surely you realize that demonstrating the ability to do this would mean that Google knows how to identify it, which means that they're probably not qualified for the Safe Harbor provision.
Fair use defenses are going to be largely obliterated by public-performance, commercial impact, and general lack of anything that qualifies as fair-use (such as transformation or criticism).
Also, do you really need an algorithm to decide that something tagged
"" "ExSy" might possibly be Episode X of Season Y of PTS when the title also says "Popular Television Show - Episode X, Season Y, Part 1" ?
What happened to "Fair Use"? If there's a relevant passage in a book, can I not quote it? Is Viacom complaining about entire episodes or just small portions. For example, if there's a bit about John Stewart ripping on D. Chaney, I don't see the difference between that and quoting a Shakespeare soliloquy (well... one is written better...)
Entire. And uploading content to a popular public network is wide-scale distribution and public performance. "Fair use" has some limits, you know -- it's not a blanket license to do anything so long as you're not directly charging money, despite the fact that many Slashdotters think otherwise. Go see Stanford's site on it.
Besides, if it's a good bit, wouldn't I want to see more? Isn't that free advertising?
It's not really legal to rip the fourth consecutive hamburger out of the hands of a morbidly obese stranger and throw it on the floor, either, even if it's good for them.
Whether it's 'clear' depends on what your definition of 'apparent' is.
There seems to have been a user who was uploading content titled things like
"Survivor - Fiji - Series 14 - Episode 1 - Part 4", tagging it with 'survivor', 'E1S14', et al. Parts 1..4 in length appear to add up to a plausible single episode. Does this make it apparent infringement?
(1) In general. - A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider -
(A)
(i) does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing;
This part might burn YouTube. First, let's note that it is pretty much CERTAIN that YouTube has accumulated enough take-down requests that they probably have a pretty damn good idea of what kinds of TV shows might be replicated in full, unauthorized, on their service. So it shouldn't be easy to find them, right? In other words, they have knowledge that people are uploading episodes of popular shows...
Yry a search for, say, '24 Season 4'. I just got 276 hits. The very first one appears to be a TWO HOUR SEASON FINALE episode according to the metadata. It's even tagged '24'. Yeah, I know it's Fox, not Viacom. Doesn't matter unless Fox has authorized uploading.
That says that they're not even trying to filter searches, to prevent content from reappearing with completely honest and easy-to-find descriptions, or to notice when a tag refers to content that they've almost certainly been warned about.
It's even described
Google parses and classifies content for its core business. The user has just explicitly told them that this is 'Season 4 Episode 24' and tagged it '24'. This isn't some video with a misleading description with the uploader posting links to it on his personal web page. Can they plausibly claim ignorance if
(a) they've been notified that full episodes of '24' are being uploaded,
(b) users are tagging content '24' and accurately describing it
(c) it's a 2-hour recording?
(ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or
The above may well cross 'apparent', considering that the uploader has accurately and sufficiently described the content.
(iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;
They're still allowing searches that trivially find infringing content.
(B) Does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity; and
It might be argued that they're financially benefiting from people viewing the content and building up their DoubleClick profiles and getting ad content.
(C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.
This they do reportedly do -- for a particular instance. But clearly, they're not making any effort to disable access to other instances. It might be argued that 'material' would include essentially identical uploads of the same original content, or that the 'disabling access to' might include tinkering with the search. It might also be argued that re-uploading of the same video basic content (ex. similar length video, similar description, tags suggesting infringing...) once they've been notified that it's infringing, might be considered 'apparent'.