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Viacom Says "YouTube Depends On Us"
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Mar 26, 2007 07:49 AM
from the one-sided dept.
from the one-sided dept.
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.'"
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Technology: Viacom Sues Google Over YouTube for $1 Billion 508 comments
Snowgen writes "Viacom has filed a $1,000,000,000.00 lawsuit for 'massive intentional copyright infringement' against Google over YouTube video clips. '"YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site," Viacom said in a statement. "Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.'"
[+]
Technology: Google to Viacom - The Law is Clear, and On Our Side 290 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Google responded to the opinion piece in the Washington Post by a Viacom Lawyer with a letter to the editor titled 'An End Run on Copyright Law.' Their strong wording sends a very concrete message: 'Viacom is attempting to rewrite established copyright law through a baseless lawsuit. In February, after negotiations broke down, Viacom requested that YouTube take down more than 100,000 videos. We did so immediately, working through a weekend. Viacom later withdrew some of those requests, apparently realizing that those videos were not infringing, after all. Though Viacom seems unable to determine what constitutes infringing content, its lawyers believe that we should have the responsibility and ability to do it for them. Fortunately, the law is clear, and on our side.'"
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There's the real danger of Grokster (Score:5, Interesting)
Double dipping with the same argument should just get a case thrown out on the same day it's filed.
Re:There's the real danger of Grokster (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:There's the real danger of Grokster (Score:5, Informative)
"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..."
I think you misinterpreted the decision. The ruling said that the plaintiffs didn't need to show that the defendants benefited from unauthorized copying by 3rd parties because the defendant's software's primary purpose was to encourage that unauthorized copying. The latter was sufficient to show liability for 3rd-party copyright infringement.
That being said, it's quite a stretch to apply that reasoning to YouTube. In fact, that ruling works in YouTube's favor as YouTube is marketed for the purpose of sharing user-created content. That it is being used (even substantially) for 3rd party copyright infringement is not solely the issue to determine if YouTube is liable for its user's actions. In the Sony case, the Justices noted that VCRs were largely used for 3rd party copyright infringement, but were still protected because they had substantial non-infringing uses. Since YouTube is complying with the DMCA by providing a means for copyright holders to mark their content for removal (and the DMCA requires copyright holders to shoulder the responsibility for finding and marking infringing materials), and assuming that YouTube removes the infringing content upon notification, then I think YouTube will readily prevail.
In the Grokster decision, Justice Breyer noted that the Court cannot possibly decide whether a technology has future non-infringing uses when even professionals in the field cannot agree. As such, it strongly implies that if a reasonable argument can be made for probable substantial non-infringing uses, then it's better to err on the side of the new technology than to decide against it and stifle future commerce.
Grokster is little more than a footnote regarding YouTube, and seems to have very little applicability to it.
Parent
Still valuable without Viacom content (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Still valuable without Viacom content (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Viacom bought ifilm, and other studios are working on their own version
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/22/nbc_newsc
Al gore still... (Score:3, Funny)
Anonymous Cow.
Re:Al gore still... (Score:4, Informative)
Al Gore and the Internet
By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf
Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.
No one person or even small group of persons exclusively invented the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gores contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.
Parent
they know.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:they know.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end, I think YouTube is no different then a web hosting company offering free space, so long as you put up with their ads. They do not directly control what is uploaded and therefore cannot be liable for its uploading. The fact that they make money should have absolutely nothing to do with it, since the DMCA does not say, "if you make money, this clause does not apply." I believe any ruling against YouTube that went against the safe harbor clause would go all the way to the Supreme Court, which might actually agree with what Congress apparently intended with this horrible law.
If any argument saying they make money off of infringement, and are therefore liable, is successful, it would destroy the safe harbor clause.
I'm not convinced of their argument that they are genuinely ignorant either - enough stuff seems to get pulled at quickly for decency reasons makes this seem weak.
I am pretty sure YouTube works on a reporting system for decency issues. As such, if someone tags an item it gets reviewed and pulled. I do not think many people are going around YouTube tagging infringing content, their reasons could be various. The DMCA puts the responsibility on the copyright holders to provide takedown notices. Viacom is not on good ground with the law in this case.
Parent
Re:they know.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This makes them liable. I'm not convinced of their argument that they are genuinely ignorant either - enough stuff seems to get pulled at quickly for decency reasons makes this seem weak. But that probably doesn't matter.
Probably due to the community clicking the "flag as appropriate button" and selecting the appropriate item from the drop down.
Note that any member of the site can mark any video as offensive; however, there is no way they provide for you to report a video as a copyright infringement, unless you are the copyright owner. There is a separate procedure for that. I believe the flag/'mark as offensive' feature means that Youtube is able to remove offensive content without personally reviewing every video -- in fact, potentially: the site can programmatically remove content, possibly automatically close the uploader's account and wiping out their other videos, without any administrative intervention whatsoever, if enough of the Youtube users clicked "flag as offensive".
For one thing, only the copyright owner can really be sure the content is infringing -- for all Youtube knows, you have made a private deal with the copyright owner allowing you to display the content.
Almost EVERYTHING with any artistic merit that is uploaded to Youtube is automatically copyrighted, without question, the question of whether something is infringing or not is more complicated than "Does your video contain copyrighted material?".
There is a possibility that a video includes copyrighted material, AND the copyright owner DISAPPROVES of its use, and it can still be allowed fair use within copyright law.
Youtube has no way of knowing whether a court would find your video to be infringing or whether it would be protected fair use (free speech).
Parent
If Viacom would ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If Viacom would ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How do you know if a clip is legal to share or not? It could fall under fair use, it could be released to the public domain, it could be completely user created, etc. In some cases, it's obvious, but in most, it's not.
The only one that knows for sure is the content owner, which is why YouTube says that the content owner has to inform them about any clips that gets uploaded without permission, in order to be able to remove them. No one else can.
Pfft (Score:4, Funny)
I don't watch any "big producer" content on YT (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
From the summary:
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Very undue. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now they want to take this a step further and have the ISPs police their own network, without any interference from the RIAA. In short, they want to sit back and have you throw your money at them.
The arrogance in claiming that Google wouldn't exist without Viacoms patents is beyond me.
Parent
Stephen Colbert: Star Defense witness. (Score:5, Informative)
Stretching the DMCA to suit his whims (Score:3, Insightful)
Google may know that, in principle, some of the videos that people have posted are in violation of copyright law. But they don't know which ones, or who the copyright holder is, until they get a DMCA takedown request. This was an intentional feature of the DMCA, to protect service providers from the actions of their users. The sheer fact that this protection is necessary is a clue to any service provider that some of their users will, in principle, post content that violates copyright law.
And yes, Google gets revenues from advertising. But the DMCA requires that the financial benefit that a service provider gains be a direct benefit from the infringement. Numerous free web hosts (Angelfire, Geocities, etc.) have been foisting ads on the people who view their users' web pages for years, and some of the content on those web pages infringes on copyright. This puts those web hosts in exactly the same position as Google, yet those web hosts have never been sued, because the financial benefit those advertisements provide is indirect to the infringing content posted by their users.
The only thing left that the DMCA requires is that a service provider take down infringing content upon receiving a takedown notice, and Google complies with those notices in a timely fashion. Whether Viacom likes it or not, Google qualifies for the safe harbor provision, and this lawyer guy is full of... hot air.
we can test this... go to youtube (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
I propose an experiment (Score:4, Funny)
What this suit really means (Score:4, Funny)
After I wrote a prior piece here, I realized a great (bad pun) quote that sums up Viacom's lawsuit.
Viacom's lawyer, in effect is saying, "All YouTube are belong to us!" [wikipedia.org]