Viacom Vs. YouTube, Beyond Privacy

Corrupt writes "As Viacom is granted access to YouTube user records, a bigger threat to user-generated sites emerges: The law is increasingly siding with rights owners."

Heard this before

[BeerGood]

Anyone here watch sxephil on YouTube? Now there's an opinion.

Re:Hmm

[DiarmuidBourke]

The "law" is increasingly siding with "rights owners."

So?

So the law should be neutral, it should not side with either party. Thats how you are supposed to get fair rulings.

mod parent up. The law should always be neutral.

Re:Heard this before

[BeerGood]

This not offtopic! Watch the video F*CK VIACOM. Someone was pissed about this a week before it was posted on /.

Re:Hmm

[Timothy Brownawell]

The "law" is increasingly siding with "rights owners."

Could be scary... if sites that host other people's speech are liable when that speech isn't allowed (whether for copyright, or libel, or posting classified stuff, or ...) instead of just being required to remove it and possibly ID the poster, it's going to be even more difficult to find online "public" spaces [slashdot.org] that allow free speech, or maybe just harder to find any sort of online "public" space at all.

Re:rights owners?

[Original Replica]

Inidividuals have rights and there can be dire consequences for abridging those rights.

Sadly that is where you are wrong, the consequences would be dire if they happened to a private individual or small business, but a few million dollars punitive damages is just a business expense to the like of Viacom. From an artcle in 2007:Viacom, parent of cable TV's MTV Networks and the Paramount Pictures movie studio, reported quarterly net income of $641.6 million....Reflecting last year's acquisition of the DreamWorks SKG studio, Viacom's filmed entertainment division logged an operating profit of $71.7 million. [latimes.com] So if some independent producer wins $10 or $20 million, it would hurt Viacom, but would hardly break them. By contrast if an individual must pay $100K in damages to Viacom, that pretty much breaks that person. They lose their house and car and hope for a decent life. That's why big corporations can fuck with individuals, but not vice versa. The only way individuals can take on a large corporation is to unionize, so if people want to protect privacy in their YouTube usage then there needs to be a YouTube Contributors Union, because a strike that involved every private contributor taking down their postings would break YouTube in less than a month.

Re:Hmm

[Tjebbe]

you know, i actually read 'rights owners' in the original line as the users. Where did their rights go?

Re:Hmm

[Lunarsight]

Slashdotters, otherwise generally intelligent, have a subset who are unable to see this for what it is and believe that copyright should not be respected.

It's not so much that we believe that copyright shouldn't be respected, but we also see when the legal system is being blatantly manipulated.

In the case of Viacom, one must ask if they truly need all the data they are asking for, or if a more limited data set would have been sufficient. I think the judge here could have done a better job giving Viacom the tools they needed to make their case without blatantly infringing on the privacy of every Youtube user.

I can't speak for others, but I personally don't trust Viacom with the data they are requesting. Regardless of what stipulations the judge may have put on the usage of the data, I think it creates a dangerous precedent letting them have it. The RIAA has historically been known to bend and break the rules to get what they want - what's to stop Viacom from doing the same?

I work in the healthcare industry, and the general rule of thumb is you give the external party the bare minimum amount of data in order to do what they need to do. Any fields that they don't need - you remove them. It's that simple.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I look at it this way. It cannot be right to appoint a distribution service judge, jury and executioner in a dispute. However, if the presumption prior to a proper court decision is that material may be freely distributed, then a lot of damage can potentially be done very quickly, and never undone regardless of the court's decision.

The fact is that the same is true in reverse: If someone is posting some time-sensitive information, such as that relevant to an upcoming election, allowing just any fool to have it removed and only put back up after it's too late (ie the election is over) is a substantial infringement on speech. When copyright conflicts with speech, speech has to win.

Re:Hmm

[Toll_Free]

You forgot your IANAL, and it would have well served you.

Theft of a service can also be considered civil. Go enter a motel room illegally and see what happens if you stay the night.

Or hop in a cab and see where it gets you when you can't pay.

You state that copyright infringment can't be akin to someone stealing, but then explain how outright theft of a service is considered civil as well?

IANAL as well, but theft, criminal theft, is when you deprive someone the item itself. Civil opens up an ENTIRELY different can of worms.

--Toll_Free

Re:Hmm

[cytg.net]

Amen. But really, who will fight the fight? Then only political party here in denmark wich would is also pro-drugs for everyone, retire the army and do 60'ies singalongs for everyone. but im so tired of my privacy being raped. Speaking of(pun), most of my friends are enganged in facebook activities of some sort and while im usually the first to step where non of my friends have steppen' before, facebook just sets off sooo many privacy alarm bells in my head.. i cant bring myself to use it. at all. I could use an alias, sure, but that alias would engage other profiles with true irl credentials, wich again points back to me. Facebook is suspect imo.