Universal and MySpace Square Off Over DMCA 110
moore.dustin writes "Universal and MySpace look to be on a collision course that could shape the future of media companies and the internet. The article discusses the DMCA's impact on their case, and talks ways in which the law lags behind the realities of technology." From the article: "Yet, as lawyers prepare for battle, they do so on uncertain legal ground. The legislation at the heart of the debate, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, was written years before social networking sites such as MySpace even existed. That fact has injected considerable uncertainty into the matter, according to copyright experts, and helps explain why lawyers from both sides are proclaiming that the DMCA, as it is known, is on their side."
Both sides claming the DMCA (Score:5, Insightful)
Transporter_ii
Are you sure about that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and what of sites like Slashdot? What is the fundamental difference between MySpace and a forum?
Near as I can tell, a Blog is nothing more than a personal forum that allows some media attachments.
The Universally Flawed Argument (Score:5, Insightful)
The basis of their argument is that they are allowing users to post Jay-Z videos, just like I'm sure they allow Universal to request there deletion. The gun manufactures tried this argument before. Guns allow people to kill each other. They also allow people to protect themselves. Allowing a crime is far from facilitating it. Myspace, sucks as it does, provides many with legal entertainment. Just because a few are able to abuse the system, doesn't mean that Rupt owes Univ a tax.
Re:The Universally Flawed Argument (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, wasn't this settled during the Betamax case? If I recall correctly, the movie industry tried the same argument there — i.e. video cassette recorders encourage copying of intellectual property. The Supreme Court there ruled that videocassette recorders were legal because of the many legal uses they had, and the fact that they could be used for illegal purposes did not diminish this.
How is that situation different from this one?
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One and a half cheers for the DMCA!
What's changed. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the major difference is that the movie/music/"content" industry has, since the Betamax case, spent probably close to a billion dollars lobbying Congress and getting laws passed which together change the dynamic of the playing field from what it was like in the 1980s.
They learned from where Jack Valenti failed (from their perspective) and are now a lot smarter when it comes to using the government as a cudgel against their own customers.
In short, the industry is smarter now, and they have had 20-odd years to make the environment more politically receptive to their point of view, on all levels.
Re:What's changed. (Score:5, Interesting)
I just walked in from the car where I was listening to NPR. They had a guy from Youtube and another guy from NBC. During this call-in program (The Diane Ream Show) they were actually quite civil and seemed like they wanted to work together. The NBC guy said they don't want "vast quantities" of their music on Youtube without compensatino, but said they eagerly look forward to haveing some kind of revenue sharing agreement. He pointed to the iTunes deal as a great success and said $1.99 per movie worked great for them. Additionally he pointed out that some of NBC's shows are put online directly on the NBC site. They Youtube guy said they're working with NBC right now and hope they can put together a deal
The bottom line is that it sounded a whole hell of a lot like NBC wasn't purposely trying to be evil. They're not just trying to get politicians to do their biddnig to screw everyone over. They're working with distribution outlets to get their material out there. They just want to get paid for their very expensive programming.
Now I know there's still a lot of badness out there. Copy protection sucks, as well as the fact that it's not like their whole library is available for you to pick and choose from. They still want the broadcast flag so they can force us to pay and then make content disapear.
But at least it looks like they're trying to resolve some of the basics, like giving consumers the choice of ad supported, or pay-to-watch content ("Lost" is available one way on the ABC site and the other way on iTunes, not to mention DVD) and generaly making more material available to watch, without making you pay a bunch of times for the same thing.
We should still fight the bad stuff, but, damn, they're at least starting to come to terms with the fact that consumers need some level of control over the process. They're a little smarter, also, in the sense that they realize they have to move into the internet era. Unlike the record industry, they know that they cant force consumers to keep using the same old business model. For that, at least, I do give them credit.
TW
Different models, different attitudes. (Score:3, Interesting)
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The fact that some industry PR spokeman made some reasonable sounding noises on a news interview says very little about what is actually going on.
If NBC is talking abotu *themselves* putting up some for-pay content, and them getting paid for it, heay fine! And that is exactly what most of your post revolved around. However that has absolutely nothing to do with this conflict. Absolutely nothing.
What this conflict is about is that NBC is claiming/wanting to be able to l
DOH... MySpace! (Score:2)
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In short, the industry is smarter now..."
How does using "a cudgel against their own customers" make them smarter? It sounds mind-bogglingly stupid to me.
They can buy all the laws they want, but it still remains up to each of us to vote with our locale's currency units.
Re:The Universally Flawed Argument (Score:5, Interesting)
If Sony were allowing people to store all their betamax tapes of copied films in a Sony warehouse the case may have had a different outcome.
A better similie to that case would be if myspace was displaying videos playing off my server, at which point they would be protected.
The other difference is of course the laws were different back then.
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How would Sony know that a betamax tape in a crate being shipped in for storage was a copied film or not, short of watching every single minute of every single tape? That's the very point of the Safe Harbor provision of the DMCA. Companies can go about their business regarding user-posted content, and if they meet certain criteria then they have no responsibility for
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Yes it would, but that's not really what MySpace is doing. MySpace isn't Napster in that it's specific use is for sharing media. MySpace is basically for blogging, at its core. (They've diversified, but that's still MySpace's big thing.) Just so happens that many
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This is all about law. It isn't supposed to make sense and it rarely relates to the real world.
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This is all about law. It isn't supposed to make sense and it rarely relates to the real world.
Well, precedent is an important part of law. Apparently the DMCA obviates the precedent set by the Betamax case.
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How is that situation different from this one?
That assumes that once a matter is decided by the Supreme Court t
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Exactly. A White Pages book could technically allow a murderer to find his victim's address. Does that mean Ma Bell is an accomplice to murder??
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Time to feed the troll... (Score:2)
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The case (Score:5, Informative)
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There is one good way: The author of the content identifies it.
>and relying on MySpace to police this manually would shut down the whole place.
And your point? You think the folks at Universal would not be perfectly satisfied with that result?
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Sorry to nitpick, but copyright is automatic so it can be presumed that ALL video or music clips on there are copyrighted (expired copyrights aside).
Now, what one needs to do is detect whether or not one has permission to post the copyrighted materials but that is darn near impossible.
What they ought to do is apply Fair Use guidelines then they would be pretty much in the clear. Entire music videos? Probably not fair use. Music video paro
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The only winners are the lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
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It takes away from Universal the ability to control what becomes popular. If they can't control what music becomes trendy, they'll actually have to cave to the demand of peoples taste in music, instead of force-feeding whatever crap group they decide to prop up. Either that or being able to demand money for getting free advertising.
Why Universal Bothers (Score:3, Interesting)
CBS and Universal operate in fundamentally different modes within the entertainment/'content' business. CBS basically responds to consumer and viewer demand -- delivering news and less-than-cutting-edge television entertainment -- while Universal has made a killing by staying on the bleeding edge. Universal doesn't follow demand, they manufacture it.
Thus while CBS is perfectly fine having
The DMCA does cover this (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that to deny responsibility, the ISP is better off not policing their network is hardly the ISP's fault. It's a badly drafted law. Perhaps Universal should have thought about thiswhen lobbying for it.
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I can't wait (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:I can't wait (Score:4, Interesting)
I know the current system is useless, but how do we replace it and still have content be worth something so that creators can make a living?
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I think if we totally abolished copyright, some artists/creative talent would indeed not get paid/give up, but I think the total benefit outweighs the negatives.
And a middle ground in which copyright is not totally abolished but just brought back to the realm of the reasonable would be even better.
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The RIAA, MPAA, and in this case Universal has forgotten the fact that to make money they have to sell something that people want. Instead they think they can make money by forcing people to buy their prod
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In this case however MySpace is clearly an isp, so should be safe, Universal can argue that it's more than an isp, and it facilitates violations in the same way youtube does (zomg, they're posting videos, the doom!) They've gotten a
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There are many possibilities:
Then, of course, there's also the final possibility: they don't. After all, what makes you so sure content has to be "worth something?" Who says that having people "make a living" doing this stuff is necessary? Isn't it possible that making people keep their day job and do this stuff in their free time if they want to is good enough?
These sorts of models are working for Free Software, after all...
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a few points. content has to be worth something because people are willing to pay for it. i think that your bulleted list of possible ways to fund things is a good start, and
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I disagree. Leonardo Da Vinci, for example, spent a lot of time on things which are not art -- engineering, for instance. In fact, he's the archetypal "Renaissance Man" specifically because he did so many varied things!
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yes, this is true. also true is the fact that, compared to his contemporaries, he produced very little art, and, though he drew designs for a great many things, actually built few of his inventions. he also was fairly poor.
Why not? Einstein was a patent clerk when he came up with the theory
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The problem is that manufacturing of non-tangible products of the mind IS the day job of many people in our modern world. I would they even are the majority. In our modern world, people are not paid for what they do, but for what the KNOW. Very few here on
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Well, apparently the first thing is to avoid being associated with record companies that belong to the RIAA:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2002-09-1
That's probably 90% of the battle right there.
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It's not about the creatives, it's about their agents. Perhaps a better question is, why are some content creatives more protected than others - how can we generate income for artists without parasites skimming their pound of flesh?
For example, most painters and sculptors cann
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How are content creators supposed to support themselves? I mean writers, actors, singers.
I know the current system is useless, but how do we replace it and still have content be worth something so that creators can make a living?
It may actually make it easier for "writers, actors, singers" to support themselves by lowering the gateway of entry into the field. In the current system a few people in a few companies have compete control over which "writers, actors, singers" are going to make a living and how well of a living they are going to make. A system with decentralized control will hopefully allow the people buying the content to determine who makes a living rather than the assholes in charge of the companies make that up the
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A post-copyright economy will somehow survive (Score:2)
The short answer is, "have faith in the invisible hand."
Copyright was a government granted monopoly in the first place. If one really believes that the free market works it's silly to worry that an artificial market created by government intervention won't be replaced by something more efficient in the absence of that intervention. I have money and want the next Harry Potter novel. Rowling wants money and is capable of writing the next Harry Po
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Patent and copyright laws are something the federal government explicitly has the power to do under the Constitution, unlike many other things the federal government does.
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Don't hold your breath, you'll likely turn blue. Until the day comes when lawyers no longer run the US, that will not happen, neither will meaningful tort reform. People have been having property disputes since there have been people. Using laws and courts is only a less bloody way of solving these, rather than muscles and clubs. The notion that knowledge and ideas are "property" however arose when knowledge and idea
Not MySpace (Score:3, Insightful)
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Precisely what the DMCA was enacted for (Score:5, Insightful)
While a lot of aspects of copyright are detestable -- such as the DMCA's prohibition against format shifting and the extension into perpetuity of copyrights, if the DMCA makes a special exemption for "common carriers" like MySpace (whose main purpose is social networking, not copyright infringement), then that is a good provision of the DMCA -- and it would be a farsighted one based on then-existing technologies such as UseNet, not a provision created in the "different world of 1998" as the ft.com article asserts.
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One more step in the slippery slope that leads to an orwellian surveillance society.
God is on the side of the winner (Score:2)
The law, likewise, is on the side of the winner. Though both sides claim to have the backing of the law in this case, only one can be ruled as such by virtue of victory in the matter.
I'm hopeful that at some point, someone will set precedent on the notion that facilitating d
If Universal wins, /. closes (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Create and sell copyrightable junk on e.g. www.lulu.com for an inflated price.
2) Post it as an Anonymous Coward on
3) Sue
A win for Universal would mean all user generated content on all sites would have to be pre-approved, which would be economically infeasible for most hobbyist or ad-based sites. Control of the information stream would fall back in the hands of a few large media companies, and most of the democratic potential of the Internet would be lost.
Yes, and... (Score:2)
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Not only that, you would have to know which things are copyrighted, and which are not. How are you supposed to know that for some random video or bit of text?
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... in America.
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
merchants vs. creatives (s vs. n) (Score:3, Informative)
FTA - "Its part of the continuing struggle between content owners and developers of technology, he said. People are trying to find out where the line is."
This is a very basic concept - the same people who invent technology are the types that create content. Broad-thinking creative types. The other type of people are the merchants: traditional business owners.
The battle between these SAME two factions drove founding of America. It was the traditional merchants who did not have enough power in 'old culture' Europe - so they left and came to the new world. They have been running things, yoking and squeezing the creative types ever since.
It is the same factors that drive the Shiite and Sunni conflict. It has lead to the most significant ideological gaps in human history.
Interestingly, the tide turned in the USA in November 2006. No longer is there any need for the small-minded, traditional merchants to run the system. Global communication, Web 2.0-mentality, and the empowering of the individual are all working together to eliminate the entrenched foothold by the merchants.
It will be great to see if the courts follow suit.
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Wait... I thought it had to do with the succession of rule after Mohammad died. So which are the traditional merchants and which are the artist? I'm going with the Shiites as the merchants since they're the current bad guys.
Forward-looking legislators (Score:3, Insightful)
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Just like every other lawsuit and piece of legislation they've fought for since they started doing business.
Free advertisement rather than copyright? (Score:2)
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The other part of this is that the content is being removed from its context with the advertisements that it was shown with originally. Now, if you had a 5-minute video with some ads in it and some David Lette
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For the case of TV shows, etc, yes, I skipped over that in my original posting... However, this can also be addressed using the suggestion I made as well: require a specif
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Napster (Score:1, Insightful)
Couldn't Napster have claimed the same "safe harbour" that MySpace is trying to claim?
uninventing the printing press (Score:2, Interesting)
But for the companies that used a business model based on controlling media, the freedom of information was a threat to profits.
So these companies paid/lobbied/bribed the government to get some new laws passed. One that extended the copyright to 95-120 years. And another specifically written to control publishing digital information and override past "fair use" clauses that allowed things like VCR's and Tivo's.
But e
I'm waiting for innovative and creative answers (Score:2)
If each video
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1. the content copyright holders aren't the artists, it's the riaa/mpaa.
2. what happens if someone DOSes a MySpace page and causes financial harm to the person that had it posted on their page?
3. What happens if someone comments and posts a video? Who pays for that?
I never thought I'd say this, but... (Score:1)
It's time... (Score:2)
Everybody saw this coming. We've already seen it happen to various services and software applications. As a software developer, I find it ridiculous that an application I write with the best intentions could be used as a metaphorical crowbar, and subsequently finding myself accused of providing metaphorical burglar tools.
I think it's a lazy, opportunistic strategy that's being deployed here. Why can't th
No court decision... (Score:1)
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