03-20-2010, 01:51 PM
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I help you SUCCEED
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Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: The Pearl of the Orient Seas
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You think YOU have tube / piracy problems?
ArsTechnica discusses the recently released court documents in Viacom's ONE BILLION DOLLAR LAWSUIT against Youtube for copyright infringment. Smoking gun?
Regardless, this lawsuit might shed some light on many of the "gray areas" of the DMCA law which spawned tube sites. This case, if it goes all the way to full court resolution, may settle many of the issues that digitial media currently faces. In essence, the DMCA protects sites from prosecution for merely "storing" user generated content as opposed to being an active participant/beneficiary of copyright infringement. This lawsuit tries to make the case that merely showing ads along with infringing materials takes the site out of the 'storage' protection of the DMCA
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But there's a second argument. Viacom also claims that YouTube is not covered by the law for a more fundamental reason: it is not engaged in "storage," as a file locker might be, but is in the business of displaying and broadcasting content, which also includes making numerous back-end copies. This behavior involves YouTube in "direct infringement of copyrights."
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...om-filings.ars
Quote:
did Viacom have "smoking gun" evidence that YouTube was deliberately profiting from 62,637 Viacom clips that were watched more than 507 million times on the site? Was Google aware of the copyright infringement problems when it purchased YouTube in 2006? Were YouTube's own founders involved in uploading unauthorized materials?
On all three counts, Viacom says yes?and it offers up a host of e-mails to prove it:
* "In a July 19, 2005 e-mail to YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen wrote: 'jawed, please stop putting stolen videos on the site. We?re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we?re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn?t put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it.'"
* "Chen twice wrote that 80 percent of user traffic depended on pirated videos. He opposed removing infringing videos on the ground that 'if you remove the potential copyright infringements... site traffic and virality will drop to maybe 20 percent of what it is.' Karim proposed they 'just remove the obviously copyright infringing stuff.' But Chen again insisted that even if they removed only such obviously infringing clips, site traffic would drop at least 80 percent. ('if [we] remove all that content[,] we go from 100,000 views a day down to about 20,000 views or maybe even lower')."
* "In response to YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley?s August 9, 2005 e-mail, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen stated: 'but we should just keep that stuff on the site. I really don?t see what will happen. what? someone from cnn sees it? he happens to be someone with power? he happens to want to take it down right away. he get in touch with cnn legal. 2 weeks later, we get a cease & desist letter. we take the video down.'"
* "A true smoking gun is a memorandum personally distributed by founder Karim to YouTube?s entire board of directors at a March 22, 2006 board meeting. Its words are pointed, powerful, and unambiguous. Karim told the YouTube board point-blank: 'As of today episodes and clips of the following well-known shows can still be found: Family Guy, South Park, MTV Cribs, Daily Show, Reno 911, Dave Chapelle. This content is an easy target for critics who claim that copyrighted content is entirely responsible for YouTube?s popularity. Although YouTube is not legally required to monitor content (as we have explained in the press) and complies with DMCA takedown requests, we would benefit from preemptively removing content that is blatantly illegal and likely to attract criticism.'"
* "A month later, [YouTube manager Maryrose] Dunton told another senior YouTube employee in an instant message that 'the truth of the matter is probably 75-80 percent of our views come from copyrighted material.' She agreed with the other employee that YouTube has some 'good original content' but 'it?s just such a small percentage.'"
* "In a September 1, 2005 email to YouTube co-founder Steve Chen and all YouTube employees, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim stated, 'well, we SHOULD take down any: 1) movies 2) TV shows. we should KEEP: 1) news clips 2) comedy clips (Conan, Leno, etc) 3) music videos. In the future, I?d also reject these last three but not yet.'"
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