Viacom gets panties in bunch over YouTube - Lawyers deployed

[tazelbain]

I think this just another example where IP is stifling creativity not fostering it.  So the only way, this particular technology would be acceptable would be if 100% guarantee the person posting owned the copyright.  Which is impossible since there is no list of copyrighted works.  So this technology is suppose to die because it doesn't fit well with our old fashioned notations of copyright.  Seems to me it should be the other way around.

[naum]

I bet that a great portion of uploaders Viacom content are indeed Viacom employees themselves… …it's amazing how fast stuff will go up, and at times it appears to me, only someone "on the inside" could possibly be feeding youTube…

[Trippy]

could it be I'm wrong?

Mark Cuban, FWIW

My hope is that this lawsuit is not a negotiating ploy. I dont think it is. Why ? Because there is no downside to Viacom to run this one out to the end. If they win the suit, they make their Billion Dollars, which given this lawsuit could take years, could grow to 10s of Billions in damages if Gootube doesn't take any action to stop the ongoing infringing uploaders. If Viacom loses, they lose legal fees of course, but Google still has to negotiate to get their content. The only real hassle is that Viacom must continue to send takedown notices. Thats such an easy choice, 10mm in legal fees vs the potential for BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars. Its so easy, that I expect many suits to follow this one.Gootube has no earthly idea who their users are. They make no effort to find out. So if someone wants to repetitively upload movies, shows, whatever, they just jump from user id to user id.

I think that last point is at least noteworthy -- there is no user facing data (at least) on who is uploading what consistently, it's all based on the rating of the clip itself, and the 12 other versions of it. 

I haven't being paying attention to what cookies YouTube is setting these days (since I have them mostly turned off) but I'm pretty sure Google has a extremely good idea who uses YouTube. They store every fricking search query that anybody has ever typed into Google and they track that data by cookie, IP and other identifying information. Remember when that AOL search data got leaked out and people were able to identify specific people just based on the search terms? Imagine that except multiplied by orders of magnitude more information. Now of course there are plenty of ways to "anonymizing" yourself on the Internet but how many of the people uploading copyrighted vidoes to YouTube are doing that sort of thing?

[naum]

Lawrence Lessig
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003734.shtml

Ok, so just about 10 years after the content industry got Congress to adopt one of the most sweeping changes in American copyright law (aka, the DMCA), the content industry has decided that it doesn’t like one part of that law — the Safe Harbor Provision that protects sites such as YouTube. But rather than go to Congress to get them to change the law, the content industry, knowing Congress would not change the law, turns to its new best friend — the common law of copyright, as articulated by the Supreme Court. See, e.g., Grokster. Why burden Congress with the hassle of law making when you’ve got a Supreme Court eager to jump in and legislate? At least, that is, when there’s no Constitutional issue at stake. When the Constitution’s at stake, then it is a matter for — you guessed it — Congress. See, e.g., Eldred v. Ashcroft.

[Trippy]

I think this just another example where IP is stifling creativity not fostering it.  So the only way, this particular technology would be acceptable would be if 100% guarantee the person posting owned the copyright.  Which is impossible since there is no list of copyrighted works.  So this technology is suppose to die because it doesn't fit well with our old fashioned notations of copyright.  Seems to me it should be the other way around.

As the saying goes, "He who has the gold, rules." The major copyright holders have been working the copyright laws in their favor for decades now. It used to be that copyrights lasted for a handful of decades. Now it's the lifetime of the creator + 70 years for new works and lifetime + 95 years for older ones. Basically everytime Disney was about to lose the copyright on Mickey Mouse (because of the age of Steamboat Willy) they would go up to Congress, give them the whole song and dance about how America would fall apart if Disney lost control of Mickey, and Congress would grant yet another extension to the length of copyrights. SCOTUS even got involved (Eldred v. Ashcroft mentioned above) and decided that even though the Constitution explicitly says these things should be protected for a "limited time", somehow lifetime + 70 years qualifies.

[Soln]

Lawrence Lessig
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003734.shtml

Ok, so just about 10 years after the content industry got Congress to adopt one of the most sweeping changes in American copyright law (aka, the DMCA), the content industry has decided that it doesn’t like one part of that law — the Safe Harbor Provision that protects sites such as YouTube. But rather than go to Congress to get them to change the law, the content industry, knowing Congress would not change the law, turns to its new best friend — the common law of copyright, as articulated by the Supreme Court. See, e.g., Grokster. Why burden Congress with the hassle of law making when you’ve got a Supreme Court eager to jump in and legislate? At least, that is, when there’s no Constitutional issue at stake. When the Constitution’s at stake, then it is a matter for — you guessed it — Congress. See, e.g., Eldred v. Ashcroft.

well, that's how it works in Canada