YouTube Hands Over User Info To Fox 396
An anonymous reader writes "Tech Crunch has an article about YouTube identifying and handing over a user's information after a request from Fox. 'Three weeks after receiving a subpoena from the U.S. District Court in Northern California, YouTube has reportedly identified a user accused by 20th Century Fox Television of uploading episodes of the show 24 a week prior to their running on television. That user, named ECOTtotal, is also alleged to have uploaded 12 episodes of The Simpsons, some quite old. Apparently Google and YouTube were willing and able to identify the owner of the username ECOTtotal, according to a report on InternetNews.com.'"
What's Google/YouTube doing with PID anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
How/why would Google/YouTube have personally identifying information about a user anyway? (Or was the user stupid enough to not anonymize himself before trying this?)
I'll bet this turns out to be the cousin/friend/lover of a TV critic; they have access to advance copies that aren't supposed to get spread around. (Yes, it's happened before.) Something tells me the average Fox employee isn't bright enough to fire up his/her own browser.
Re:This really is theft (Score:1, Interesting)
Nope, still not theft. Some people may still think it wrong, and I'd agree it's different to copying alread-published data (but not that it's hugely wrong - in fact, since it hurts a corporation, I'd consider it right - I disagree with limitation of liability and corporate personhood in general).
But the only way you'd get me to even consider calling something information-y "theft" is if he *erased* fox's copy of the data. The "theft" aspect of "theft" hinges on that - fox wouldn't have the data anymore.
Falsely Believing You are Anonymous... (Score:5, Interesting)
How public is public? (Score:3, Interesting)
That may depend on whether or not you consider an unencrypted satellite uplink transmission "in the public". First-run syndicated programming is often like this. Hell, I saw the first episode of Viper on my cable, without commercials, well before its premiere and well before I'd even heard of the show. I've even seen rough storyboarded commercials before they were finalized, in 10, 15, 20, and 30 second versions. (That may have been before our local CableVision become Time Warner Cable. I'd have to research the dates.)
I wouldn't expect network programming to be in the clear on satellite like that however. But then I don't have the hardware to pick up those signals.
However, reading the article (and the article linked to by the article), it appears to only be the first four episodes of 24 [amazon.com] that were made available in advance, again pointing to someone getting ahold of the DVDs of the first four episodes prior to their street date (the day after the two-day premiere).
And this "ECOTtotal" probably wasn't even the ripper nor could identify who was. As reported, the episodes were available elsewhere before they were available on YouTube. So if they do succeed in tracking him down, he's screwed.
As others have pointed out, rental stores also got them early and some Blockbuster employees were permitted to rent them before they were made available to customers. So how public is public? A privileged group had access early, but who had the privilege was not under control of Fox. It just wasn't broadcast-televised.
(Huh, my Firefox installation's dictionary didn't include the word "ahold".)
Re:how does this work? (Score:2, Interesting)
Answer:. .
Have you got any other questions you'd like to answer before you pose the question?
Oh, I know how you're going to respond, but I just couldn't resist taking that whack at you; you stuck your head up for it, but. . .
The answer is still the same: It's up to the copyright holder how to deal with it. If the copyright holder is content with the content being taken down then that's as far as it will go. If they want a bit of blood, they will demand it.
Why are they asking for a bit of blood in this case, but not others? Because the source was not just some random punk who ripped something from the TV and uploaded it; it was one of their own. Someone who by virtue of being employed by them or one of their agents to look after their interests went against them.
They were happy enough to take Caesar's coin, but then rendered unto someone else. That is a hanging offense.
KFG
Re:Do no evil... (Score:2, Interesting)
You're a troll. But what the hell. I haven't posted in a while.
Let's say it's true that they contribute very little back. I don't see the problem; charity is, by definition, not an obligation and they should be able to enjoy the wealth they created as they see fit within the confines of the law. If they want to buy a 747 or use $50 bills as kindling for the next "Google Company BBQ' they should be able to do just that.
Re:Willing and able (Score:3, Interesting)
In the case of Verizon, a big yes. In the case of YouTube, a big no.
That's pretty subjective. The RIAA wanted to know who was downloading free music (i.e. stealing) while fox wanted to know who was leaking copyrighted videos (i.e. stealing) How is it any different? Because one is google who can do no wrong, while the other is the big bad RIAA?
Re:Willing to identify? (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay just STOP THERE. You do NOT know what you are talking about.
Media is often distributed to certain individuals before it is aired on TV or released in theaters, as the case may be. Fox has not publicly made the assertion that he stole the discs. He MAY have done this, but there is NO reason to believe that it is the case. And to claim that someone stole the discs from a Fox production facility is just ignorant until Fox tells us that is true. Otherwise, it's safer to assume that someone had them for a legitimate reason, and either allowed them to make a copy, or they are "them" and uploaded it themselves. Telecine releases of movies are often made in the theater where the movie will be shown and most screeners you can download are made from screening copies intentionally distributed for review.
Finally, someone who was in the production facility wouldn't necessarily need to actually take any discs anywhere. They might conceivably have copied them while onsite, one disc at a time (per visit?) with a computer on the site, or one they brought with them. This is almost more likely than stealing it, because stealing the masters or screening duplicates would be detected far more rapidly than copying them.
Yes, for dissemination of private information that does not belong to you. Guess what? It's still not called theft unless you physically remove them from the enterprise. You CAN steal a copy of data. You cannot steal the data without stealing all of the copies.
You could repost the figures, but copying and pasting the data in its entirety, including the presentation (formatting etc) would be a violation of copyright. The first part is because no one owns facts. The second part is because it's not your copyrighted information. Putting information on the web (or in a quarterly report) doesn't revoke its copyright.
All you are doing is speculating wildly. I realize this is a favorite slashbot pastime, but give it up already. You don't know shit about what happened, and neither do the rest of us.
I wonder - (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Google (Score:3, Interesting)
This happened in the US and presumably the man will be tried here, so I was running under the assumption that it will be under a relatively fair court. I took a situation and changed a couple variables to illustrate a point. If you want to change more variables, you can find a variety of "correct" answers to the situation but you'll also find that those answers aren't as applicable. If you think that the man will be tried in courts that resemble some totalitarian regime, that's fine, but then we aren't talking about the same thing anymore. To illustrate this point, what if we take your situation, but change it a little so the guy you see jaywalking is actually a mass murdered who you saw kill your family and ten thousand other people but beat the case, are you evil for giving this guy up on the jaywalking charge? I'm not saying I don't agree with your hypothetical situation, I'm just saying that I don't think it is closely related to the subject anymore than my mass murderer scenario is related to yours.
Re:Choose your battles (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not? If you accept, at face value (ha!), their price for a CD then why can they not accept, at face value, that people have the technology to copy and share music?
Metallica, Madonna, Nirvana, and Michael Jackson made it big because their fans could freely share their work by dubbing cassette tapes. In today's networked world the major media companies flood us with "sharing is bad" but, at the same time, the business speculators know darn well that free advertising saves them more money than sharing ever could take away.
People steal. Choose your battles. Your employer steals from you. Your government steals from you. Your supermarket steals from you. Like most of today's population you only see half of the stealing reality.
Re:Choose your battles (Score:3, Interesting)
And I definitely believe the fact that some people who pay too much for software encourages software companies to keep prices high. But what we believe may or may not be the truth.
I diagree with Microsoft's pricing of certain products. Office is a big issue IMHO for home users. Works is priced on a home user level, but Works doesn't really work, not to read other people's Word or Excel documents. Heck, Excel can't read Works documents. A $500 version that reccomends 2.5gigs of ram? The new Vista prices are bordering on insane.
People who choose to disobey the law, whether it be murder, or uploading copyrighted material, cause material damage to those of us who choose to obey the law.
Bill Gates himself said that if a user has to pirate a product, he hopes they pirate a microsoft product. In the early age of computers, one reason MS-Dos took hold of the market was the fact that you could get a system without dos and save alot of money. IMHO the propagation of this product without compensation offered more benifits than any possible material harm. Them the user's hooked, then find a way to make them pay for it.