At Universal's Request, YouTube Yanks News Podcast Over Music Snippet 287
Snaller writes "Tech News Today does what the name says — it's a podcast reporting on Tech news, Monday to Friday. They, like Slashdot, reported on the Megaupload vs. Universal copyright dispute. But during their coverage, they played a snippet of the music video and immediately Universal Music Group had the news podcast yanked from YouTube. Tech News Today has outlets other than YouTube, but should a music company have the right to have a news podcast removed on copyright grounds, when it's not even clear that said company has had any copyrights violated?"
And this is why SOPA is so terrifying (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt approval from YouTube is even necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
It's quite likely that large corporations like Universal, Viacom, etc. have access to pull things down from YouTube on copyright claims without Youtube's approval.
I assume Youtube assumed these organizations would use their power responsibly. Perhaps that assumption needs to be revisited.
DMCA Gives the Right (Score:5, Interesting)
should a music company have the right to have a news podcast removed on copyright grounds, when it's not even clear that said company has had any copyrights violated?
Should they? No. But the DMCA gives them the right (or at least the ability) to do so. It gives it to you, too. My understanding is that anyone can file a DMCA takedown notice.
I have often wondered what would happen if people started filing DMCA takedown notices by the millions on major websites against the big content producers. There doesn't seem to be any penalty for filing bogus notices.
Re:No more "Fair Use" law? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now if the courts allow for you to turn around and charge for the number of people that would have seen your item if they hadn't used DMCA, now THAT would be interesting to see.
Re:Punish unjust copyright claims (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'd like to see the DMCA amended to add one thing:
"If the claimed infringed work is owned by an incorporated entity, claimant shall post a bond equal to at least 1% of the annual income of that corporation for each claim, and if the claim is found to be false, claimant shall forfeit that bond to the person or entity being claimed against." ...or something similar (and a lot more air-tight).
Make 'em put their money where their DMCA claim is.
Re:Punish unjust copyright claims (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is why I have no problem with this (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is this possible? Because bandwidth is cheap, because storage is cheap, and because there is little risk of legal costs. The US Government has said that as long as a service take down any content that they have been notified violates a copyright, the service is not subject to any legal action. This is good for free services such as Youtube because it eliminates the risk and allows them to accept videos without any filtering.
If one wishes, one can set up one's own video sharing service, pay for the bandwidth, and the legal liability associated with potentially violating copyright. No one is going to stop the setup of such a service, and such a service can be free to ignore takedown notices. It is simply not in the best interest of Youtube, the preeminent distributor of lame and random video, to so do.
Of course many would say why not make the copyright holders for frivolous take down notices. I would support that. But even that would require companies like Google to invest in legal action that may not generate a profit, or at least might generate a greater loss than complying with takedown notices. Also, if policing video got too expensive, then copyright holder might put real money into lobbying congress and buy even worse legislation. This is, after all, the congress that has put more earmarks that funnel tax payer money to their families and buddies than almost any other. And this after a pledge not to so do.
Re:Punish unjust copyright claims (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, but "we" allowed it by not making our representatives in Congress pass a law specifically forbidding it. "We the people" are ultimately responsible for our government, and anything our government does is "our" fault for voting them in.
It's like this in every country. The people of a country are always to blame for its government, no matter what kind of government they have. If the people don't like the government, it's their responsibility to change it, by any means necessary (including violent revolution--see Libya for a recent example of this). If the people don't, then it can be assumed the government operates with their permission. Of course, it's not quite so simple in some cases where a country has multiple ethnic groups that hate each other; Saddam's Iraq was an example of this. In those cases, you can't assume the oppressed minority approves of the government, but you can assume the majority that the government draws its power from does.
Re:Punish unjust copyright claims (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that you could solve the problem pretty well in the following way: If a copyright holder negligently issues a take down for material that is likely to be fair use, the civil damages are no less than 5% of the total revenues collected with respect to that copyrighted work. If the copyright holder intentionally issues such a take down [like Diebold], the damages are no less than one million dollars.
That would pretty well sort it out, and with no help from any prosecutors office: The victims could collect directly in civil court. And copyright holders who find they are unable to tell whether something is fair use are free to request an injunction in court instead of using the take down process, so that a judge can make that determination in an adversarial proceeding prior to the copyright holder subjecting itself to any liability for issuing a fraudulent take down.
Re:Punish unjust copyright claims (Score:4, Interesting)
For the same reason we allow labor unions, the EFF, and any other group to donate to political parties. Groups of people are still people with the same rights they always had even if they were not in a group. Exercising your freedom of association does not strip you of other rights.
Re:And this is why SOPA is so terrifying (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would she want to rip a CD? Youtube is the source of everthing good as far as she's concerned. CDs are for old fuddies like me.
Re:Punish unjust copyright claims (Score:3, Interesting)
“Fully $100 million of the record-breaking $150 million that the Obama campaign collected in September alone came over the internet via credit card donations,” writes Bill Dyer at Hugh Hewitt’s blog. “The Obama campaign has deliberately turned off the anti-fraud mechanisms available for internet credit card transactions. They have no clue how many millions or tens of millions of dollars have been donated to them in violation of federal election law. And now it turns out that the Obama campaign cheerfully takes even contributions from untraceable pre-paid credit cards, a/k/a ‘the pseudo-credit cards you use when you want to conceal illegal activity.’ ”
"The whole “back-end screening” farce is insulting to anyone with a second-grade education. The Obama campaign cannot possibly have any objective measurement to even roughly estimate how many mistakes and how many episodes of deliberate fraud they’re catching versus how many they’re simply missing, even if one is naive enough to presume their good-faith best efforts."
"Moreover, everything the Obama campaign has yet said about this entire issue utterly ignores the key questions: (1) Who ordered the anti-fraud protections turned off? And (2) why hasn’t Barack Obama already fired every such person, and exposed them for criminal prosecution as aiders and abettors of national and international campaign contribution fraud?"
Mark Steyn, writing at the Corner:
"So two-thirds of Obama’s record haul derives from a website that intentionally disabled all the default security checks that prevent basic fraud like fake addresses and no-name matches .Here’s the bottom line: Two-thirds of the record-breaking haul Obama raised for the final stretch of the campaign comes from a racket set up to facilitate fake names, phony addresses and untraceable cards."
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How many RIAA lawyers work for Justice now?