Viacom Says "YouTube Depends On Us"

Anonycat writes "Michael Fricklas, a lawyer for Viacom, has an opinion piece in the Washington Post laying out Viacom's side in their $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube. Fricklas asserts that the DMCA's 'safe harbor' provisions don't apply because YouTube is knowledgeable to infringement and furthermore derives financial benefit from it. He also argues that putting the onus of spotting infringement onto the content providers represents an undue burden on them. Fricklas caps the argument by stating, 'Google and YouTube wouldn't be here if not for investment in software and technologies spurred by patent and copyright laws.'"

There's the real danger of Grokster

[Mateo_LeFou]

Grokster, if you recall, was explicit about saying that the company was guilty of contributory infringement only because they *encouraged unauthorized copying. The argument that "they benefited" from this copying was insufficient to that holding. Now here's the argument again...

Double dipping with the same argument should just get a case thrown out on the same day it's filed.

I don't watch any "big producer" content on YT

[Webcommando]

Top favorites: "Chad Vader", "God Inc.", DoogTunes, "Ask a Ninja".

Strangely, it appears YouTube will continue to be supported by me because of the non-infringing material. Actually, in my opinion, all the Viacom, et. al. material makes it difficult to find the real gems.

Undue Burden?

[Luscious868]

From the summary:

He also argues that putting the onus of spotting infringement onto the content providers represents an undue burden on them.

Oh please. You want an easy solution. Setup a website where users can create an account, provide contact information and then search the web and/or P2P networks to report instances of copyright violation. When a particular instance has been reported a certain number of times have a real person check the link to determine if a violation has occurred and then take appropriate action. Reward the volunteers who are reporting the violation with points for those instances where a verified violation has occurred and after a certain number of points are accrued reward users with a free DVD or CD from the catalog.

The amount of money that the RIAA and MPAA would save if they implemented this kind of system would more than offset the free DVD's or CD's they would be giving away if their own figures on losses due to piracy are real.

With the Internet, you've got a whole army of users who can be the watchdogs for you. All you've got to do is give them an incentive and have a verification system in place to weed out fake entries.

we can test this... go to youtube

[gsn]

click on vieos.
click on All Time under Time.
click on Top Rated on Most Viewed.
Lets all look for Viacom clips shall we.
Hmm, there are a few that *might* be infringing - I'm going on Video names here alone.
Hardly depends on viacom here.

The overwhelming majority of stuff looks like the standard youtube crap.
AHHHH!! I understand Viacom's problem - they cant distinguish their crap from the rest of the crap.

Re:Umm..

[russotto]

Nonsense. The best 30 seconds of the show (or movie, or whatever) is the LEAST valuable part. It's the part they give away, constantly showing over and over again in clips and trailers, trying to sucker you into watching the rest.

And while posting the last 30 seconds of Citizen Kane might be obnoxious, it certainly wouldn't necessarily be a copyright violation. Besides, by now doesn't everyone know that "Rosebud" was Kane's;lAS ){A*R7}}}}}}}}}d}}d}}d

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