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

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

Re:Heard this before

Mod parent back to Ontopic. Here is the YouTube video the parent was referring to. [youtube.com] The Viacommie discussion starts at the 2:00 mark.

rights owners?

The law is increasingly siding with rights owners."

And he who has the bucks tends to be the owner.

Nothing new here?

Re:rights owners?

And the bucks usually go to the ones the law sides with. Resistance is futile!

Re:rights owners?

Because so much of the content on video sites like Youtube is of independent origin, sooner or later the Equal Protection doctrine will become the other edge of the sword. There is a widespread assumption that "production" is strictly a corporate affair, and that the "consumer" never produces anything. This assumption, and litigation based on it, can backfire.

It will be like winning the lottery when some independent producer has his right to his own material challenged in some ham-handed sweep that assumes all content is pirated. Inidividuals have rights and there can be dire consequences for abridging those rights.

It's the golden rule...

The one with the gold makes the rules... or rulings in this matter.

Huh?

What do you mean, "increasingly siding"? Most of this fuss is because of the DMCA, and that was only the latest in a long line of copyright "adjustments" that Congress made in favor if big copyright owners. Congress has been siding with rightsholders for a long time.

Re:Huh?

This isn't about Congress and it's not limited to the US.
From TFA;

Increasingly, however, the courts are siding with rights owners and ruling that Web sites are responsible for illegal submissions.

And;

A French judge ordered eBay to pay Louis Vuitton handbag manufacturer LVMH (LVMH.PA) $61 million in damages. In doing so, the judge rejected eBay's argument that it is not responsible for illegal items sold by users because it provides tools to request removal of infringing goods and takes them down once notified.

Re:Huh?

This isn't about Congress and it's not limited to the US.

From exactly where do you think countries like France are getting their equally bad ideas? The United States has been pushing our skewed ideas of Intellectual Property on most of the civilized world, and that is Congress' fault.

Re:Huh?

Well, where do you think we're getting a lot of our bad ideas? France has long been a source of terrible copyright laws, and the modern method used to push bad copyright laws through the US without serious debate has been to make treaties that Congress feels pressured to comply with by enacting the laws required by the treaty. Again, look to Europe for complicity in this.

The best thing we could do for ourselves and for others is to drop out of all of the copyright treaties, and just worry about our laws, while letting the rest of the world take care of itself. That's our tradition, and it would be best if we got back to it.

Re:Huh?

As TFA points out, the DMCA -- as unlikely as this seems -- is actually on the side of the angels in this one. It's a bad law, but one of the few good things it does is provide a measure of immunity to content-hosting sites, as long as those sites comply immediately with takedown requests. Viacom et al., having managed to get pretty much everything they wanted written into the DMCA a while back, are now arguing against the immunity provisions therein. These bastards just never quit.

"rights owners"?

For user-generated content, the users are the "rights owners". So it's wrong to say that the law is increasingly siding with rights owners.

What the article is perhaps trying to say is that the law is increasingly (?) siding with big business to keep smaller competitors out of the market.

Note, however, that the Viacom decision really has nothing to do with that. The Viacom decision is about determining what viewers actually view, and whether big business content is more (or less) popular than other content.

bad precedent

A French judge ordered eBay to pay Louis Vuitton handbag manufacturer LVMH (LVMH.PA) $61 million in damages. In doing so, the judge rejected eBay's argument that it is not responsible for illegal items sold by users because it provides tools to request removal of infringing goods and takes them down once notified.

Sounds like eBay was trying to work on the same level as the DMCA crap, where as long as they offer the tools to get things removed (takedown notices) and don't try to police it themselves, it's a bit network-neutralics/safe harbor/etc. Either let it police itself and be held harmless, or police it yourself but don't screw up because you're now responsible.

Sounds like they want it both ways now? Police it yourself and miss one, lawsuit. Let them police it and issue takedowns, lawsuit. Just lovely. Doesn't leave them with much for options eh? But then I suppose the plaintifs would just suggest "you could always close your business". That's probably their end goal. eBay is bad for business in those markets, and there's no 'fix" for that besides getting rid of eBay.

Gets us back to the idea that if you have an outdated business model that doesn't work in today's world, you can either adapt, or try to warp the world to operate in a way you can still make a profit the old way. And of course we know what they always seem to pick... hah, silly picture enters my mind, a bunch of dinosaurs gathering wood to start fires, to combat the oncoming ice age.

Grossly exaggerated

> As Viacom is granted access to YouTube user records...

Viacom has not been granted access to YouTube user records. Experts to be hired by their outside attorneys have. They are under court order not to disclose any user identifying information to any one, including Viacom. They, the lawyers, and Viacom are also under court order not to use any of the information for any purpose other than that specified in the order (which excludes using it to identify people to sue).

There's one thing that got lost somewhere

Lawsuits, court orders, bazillions of dollars in damages, ruined lifes, bizarre legal actions, etc, etc.

Sounds like it was about something damn important.

Well, it's about DAMN ENTERTAINMENT. And it's getting more and more, er, entertaining every day. Or maybe not. What the hell is going on and why no one is able to see the biggest absurdity in there?

Re:Hmm

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.

Re:Hmm

I disagree strongly. The "law" is always picking winners and losers. Often we all agree: muggers should be the losers and their victims should be the "winners," albeit not the best win you'll ever get seeing a guy who robbed you sent to prison. It's the best the legal system can do for you.

But, as you get into more commercial areas, the law is picking winners and losers all of the time in ways that there is not so much general agreement as to who the winners and losers should be, often skewing things in favor of existing players. I meant who writes the law? Politicians. And, as near as I can figure, it's axiomatic here on /. that they're all as corrupt as humanly possible. So the "law" favors whoever gives them the most money.

Now I do tend to agree with you that we still do a pretty good job when it comes to the adjudication of the law that judges should be, and are usually neutral. And they with usually result in fair rulings under the law. But the laws were written by politicians and that is the problem.

Re:Hmm

I should think that the law is what it is... it does not choose sides, favor one party over another, nor does it pick "winners and losers." It exists. It provides a baseline, a boundary if you will, from which a blind justice system works its magic.

The court system is set up that (ideally) you are innocent until proven guilty, you have a right to a speedy and public trial, and you are not required to incriminate yourself. (And not taking the stand doesn't admit guilt or innocence... SO many jurors need that hit into their heads with a big hammer.) Yes, things have come to pass that call those things into question, but for the most part, we're _supposed_ to get that regardless of our accusations or status in society.

The cases that we see the most abuse of the built-in legal fairness (that's taken many hundreds of years to get "stuck"... and should not be taken lightly) are when a "vested" interest (i.e. an entity with loads of cash) dictates the "reasonable" tests and information requests that usually precede a case. (We can see examples of this with the MPAA/RIAA, and now Viacom.) We also see this as an issue in terms of criminal cases where the defendant is loaded to the gills with disposable income. So, I'm guessing that "money" (in all its forms) is the factor in our legal system that makes the law "choose", and creates inequality.

What we need is many improvements, but you get the gist of the problem with this case w/r/t Viacom. The only difference here is Google's got a stack of cash that is probably making Viacom have a wicked case penis envy. :)

You are correct, in that the laws are written these days with the built-in bias favoring the last asshole who gave said politician cash (Fritz Hollings was a crystal clear example of appeasing his greatest benefactor, and that sure as shit wasn't the people of South Carolina.)

The court system is supposed to have a built in filter for the abuse, but it appears we are missing the primary component to fix the problem (lawyers need to stop looking at the money and start redeeming themselves for centuries of ass-reaming and start CHALLENGING the unconstitutional and pathetically biased laws that get passed.) Trouble is, they are on the take just as much as those who write the laws. So if we can't get the unfit law _to_ the court, we can't rely on the court to strike it down. And in recent days, obviously unconstitutional laws are a hit and miss affair. (some getting their just desserts, while others are still there and bloody well sanctioned by SCOTUS).

I apologize for the rambling... but I haven't eaten breakfast yet. ;)
     

Re:Hmm

Perhaps it should have read "the law is more frequently deciding in favor of rights holders."

Re:Hmm

The law is not neutral. The law is not intended to be neutral. Laws permit or forbid certain forms of conduct according to legal, moral or ethical principles as the case may be. That's not neutral. If the law was neutral and did not side with either party, you would get a ruling based on the proclivity of the judge and not on the law.

The law frequently protects certain people, and one set of such people are the owners of copyrighted content. The law sides with them to prevent the unauthorized duplication of their content. Fair use allows you to make copies for private use, which is the primary exception. Fair use does not and never has provided a right to make copies for others and that includes posting copies of songs, videos, etc. to sites like YouTube. That is illegal and Viacom et al are within their rights to go after that illegal distribution of their content.

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. Consider that there are tens of thousands of illegal clips posted to YouTube, the cumulative financial effect of which could conceivably be millions of dollars. Viacom and other content owners are within their rights to get those taken down and to consider pursuing prosecution against the people who posted them.

The interesting thing is the issue of fining YouTube, eBay etc. is whether these Web sites are common carriers or not. The phone company is not held responsible for the content of phone calls nor is the Post Office held responsible for the contents of packages, because they are common carriers. Is eBay a common carrier? If so, they are not responsible for the sale of knockoffs on their Web sites. Ditto YouTube. This could conceivably end up in the Supreme Court for final adjudication because it is a critical, defining issue- and Google and eBay have the money to go there.

To take the case to the absurd and yet logical conclusion, let's imagine Louis Vitton suing the City of New York because it doesn't stop the same of cheap knockoffs in the subway system, or Viacom trying to get the names from the NYCPD of anyone who bought duped DVDs from the same hucksters. Both would be impossible and yet those are the brick-and-mortar equivalents. In these cases it's a matter of shooting at the easy targets because of the nature of the Internets and IP addresses reducing anonymity.

Re:Hmm

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:Hmm

Making a copy of something does not deprive the content holder of anything unless you intend to sell it to undercut their profits. Distributing something on the internet for free gives the content holders free publicity and they still own the copy.

Well, first, distributing something for free could be considered selling it for $0.00, therefore you are undercutting their profits. But we'll put that aside for a moment.

I don't necessarily disagree with you--distributing free samples via the Internet is a good business strategy, much like giving free copies of songs to radio stations was a good strategy in the past. However, shouldn't the content holder have some say in this?

You go buy my CD with 6 tracks on it. You think tracks 3 and 5 are the best music you have ever heard and you decide that you will let everyone on the Internet download these tracks as a favor to promote my music. Someone else buys my CD and believe tracks 4 and 6 are the best music they have ever heard and do the same as you. Someone else buys my CD and believes tracks 1 and 5 are the best music they have ever heard and do the same as you.

So anyone can get 5/6th of the CD for free. Why buy the CD for that 1 song that, really, nobody seemed to like anyway?

If I create it, I should at least have some say in how it gets distributed. I might agree with distributing some songs for free via the Internet, but I might want to limit it to a couple of tracks. Since I created it, shouldn't I have the right to determine how it gets promoted, etc.?

Re:Hmm

How about those who own the right to privacy?

We have lost that right by failing to practice due diligence in protecting it. It's like a right-of-way footpath in the UK. If you let people walk across your land often enough, they develop a legal right to walk across your land. This is what is happening with our privacy; it is being trodden on but we are failing to take effective action to prevent that, so precedent is being set to allow more corporations and government agencies to walk all over our right to privacy.

Now the courts have spoken in regards to our privacy on YouTube, so that particular video sharing sight should be avoided or we should stop talking about a right to privacy because we will have willingly abdicated that right. No you cannot have it both ways. If you have anything posted on YouTube, I suggest you pull it and post it somewhere else. Because this isn't just giving them a footpath over your privacy be over the marketing possibilities of your video IP. If you stay on YouTube, get used to the idea that Viacom will be pinching your ideas if you get good traffic.

Re:Oh no, the owners

But not everyone on Youtube is a violator, but everyone is being treated like one. Why should those who don't violate copyright laws have their records and data shuffled around to a third party?

I understand that Viacom is trying to take a stand to protect the future of copyright, but does that mean they have more rights than Youtube users who are abiding the copyright laws?

Re:user-generated sites?

You're right that Viacom doesn't care about user-generated content, and they're perfectly willing to shut down any place that'll host user-generated content. That's the problem here.

Viacom is, basically, trying to hold YouTube responsible for any videos on it that have Viacom-represented copyrights. What that means, in practice, is that YouTube cannot continue to operate. In a site that permits users to post anything, be it videos, pictures, or text, it is impossible for the site owners to screen everything successfully. Therefore, any site that hosts any user-provided copyrightable material will be sued to oblivion when they slip up.

The DMCA safe harbor provision, as long as it is enforced, allows sites like YouTube, or, for that matter, website providers, to continue without disastrous legal consequences. Heck, what's Sourceforge supposed to do, if somebody claims some project contains code they copyrighted? Get sued into oblivion, most likely.

In other words, litigation like this, if successful, will devastate the internet as a source for anything not provided by large corporations.

The law isn't 'increasingly siding with rights owners', it's increasingly applying pre-existing laws.

Except for that part of the DMCA that allows sites like YouTube to function. Viacom wants to enforce every law it likes, and ignore every law it doesn't.

That said.. Viacom et al blundered when they left the safe harbor provisions in as they are,

Last I looked, Congress had some responsibility for making laws, and Congress put the safe harbor provision in there. It's there, for all the complaining Viacom does, and it does apply to Viacom's materials.

Seriously, the proper organization to monitor copyright infringement here is Viacom. YouTube presumably doesn't have a complete list of Viacom's copyrights, and can't tell if something from that list was posted legitimately or not.