Music Rights Holders Sue YouTube Again

bennyboy64 writes "NewTeeVee reports on a criminal investigation that has been launched against senior executives of YouTube and parent company Google in Hamburg, Germany over allegations of copyright infringement. The case started after a complaint was filed by German music rights holders. Hamburg's prosecutor has formally requested assistance from US colleagues to compel YouTube to produce log files identifying who uploaded as well as who viewed 500 specific videos."

Performance != Observance

[LtGordon]

Can somebody please explain to me why it is apparently illegal to simply receive or observe a performance that violates a copyright? I was of the impression that only the distributing party would be liable.

If we accidentally watched a German video

[Anonymous Coward]

...can we sue the musician?

Re:Performance != Observance

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I think this is great. The country I live in (Sweden) has made downloading illegal, as well as uploading. Everyone assumes that copyright infringment is something that only takes place on piratebay. Here is an example that shows how unintelligent it is to criminalize the person downloading something since more or less everyone assumes that if it's on youtube, it must be legal.

Imagine the law Nicolas Sarkozys is trying to pass in EU (three accusations of copyright infringment and you're banned from the internet) in conjuncture with ordinary peoples use of Youtube.

But what counts as piracy? If I download the entire Monty Python movie "Life of Brian", I'm definately breaking a law. But what if I want to have a laugh at the Lumberjack song and view it? A copyright holder could definately claim that the uploading of the Lumberjack song is infringement, and thus also the downloading. You can claim it's fair use, but there's no real difference between that and uploading a Britney Spears song to piratebay, right?

We need examples like this to stop morons like Sarkozy. Or otherwise, we need to start mailing Sarkozy youtube clips until we can prove he too is a "goddamned pirate".

-- Lars

i suppose

[Heppelld0]

the way i see it is that there's two types of artist. those that produce works for money, and those that don't and get money anyway. the former tend to be the one's doin' the sue-in'. that doesn't mean to say that they don't produce good works of art, it's more the situation "you WILL pay to enjoy my art" as opposed to "if you like it, pay me to produce more". it just doesn't feel right somehow

Re:Performance != Observance

[Heppelld0]

the copyright owners are trying to support a failing system. the laws and rights that applied years ago aren't relevant any more but they're still stupidly being enforced.

i think the world needs to view the internet as a separate country from the rest of the world. there has to be a set of regulations governing the use of the internet. for that to happen, a group has to be set up to agree what is universally and globally seen as criminal behaviour and then apply it to the internet. it can't be "this country allows this, so as long as the person was in this country, its okay", because that country's resources are accessible from everywhere in the physical world. i believe there's such thing as freedom of speech, and everyone should have a say, but there's just some things that the world would be better without.

its merely a thought exercise, but where better to air a thought than /.

They have no business in knowing who viewed them

[maxwell demon]

They have no business in knowing who viewed the videos. After all, since YouTube explicitly disables videos which are infringing, I have to assume that if I see a video on YouTube, I have the right to do so. If a video happens to be uploaded illegally, that's not my fault as viewer, and I cannot be made responsible for the fact that I was shown that video.

Just for the record: I don't have any idea whether I've seen any of those videos. Since those are just 500 videos, and YouTube has so many more, I suspect I haven't. But even if I have, I have done nothing wrong, and therefore they clearly have no moral right (and I really hope also no legal right, although in these times you never can be sure) to demand to find out whether I've seen any of those videos.

I hope I'll not have to start using anonymous proxies to protect myself when just doing normal, legal activities!

Re:Performance != Observance

[Jarik C-Bol]

The problem with this is, say you watch a video on youtube that someone has put music on. Now, you don't know the song or artist, and you watch your video of some cats doing funny stuff, and go on your way.
Now with what they are trying to do, you might get your happy, cat-loving self sued, because the guy that put the video up was using copyrighted music, and you watched it. Now, i know there is the whole "not knowing the law is no excuse for violating it" thing, but there has to be a practical limit.

At this point, we know that youtube mutes videos with copyrighted music, or replaces it with music that is public domain, or removes the video entirely at times, just to protect grouchy rights holders. Armed with this knowledge, you expect to be able to watch videos on youtube, without the risk of getting in trouble for 'receiving stolen goods' and/or 'pirating music' (Because it got loaded into your ram in a temporary cache?) Who set this stupid precedent anyways?).

Hopefully, this case will set some decent standards so that don't treat the public like guilty before proven innocent criminals.

Re:Because you copy the work into RAM

[Anonymous Coward]

The countries that follow the french copyright tradition also recognize the right for personal use. That means that all citizens have the right to access copyrighted works without the copyright owner's authorization, as long as the access is in the form of personal use only and the unauthorized distribution doesn't have a relevant effect on commercial distribution. You know, because we are supposed to be dealing with culture and not a commercial product and the access to culture cannot be affected by how much money someone has.