your making the same arguement that the court have already said is invalid, that making money automatically means it not fair use.
dozens of case say that but the betamax case said it it explictly and i quoted the passage more than 50 times.

i would not have to keep bringing up the same "Betamax shit" if you would stop making the same bogus arguement.

there is a clear difference between making money by selling access to copyrighted material (selling copies of copyrighted material) and making money off of service that provides a POTENTIAL functional ability to infringe copyright material.

i suggest you actually read the betamax case or at least the supreme court ruling

i have no bias, i make no additional money if tube sites disappear, nor do i make money if they are allowed to continue. As a result i tell only the truth.

You are the one who wants to apply a test for ciminality that is dependent on transfer of ownership to an economic model with no transfer of ownership.

if copyright infringement was theft everyone would be guilty including everyone who explicitly licienced it for use on their tube site.

you are the only person in here who explicitly declare an anology to be wrong and then keep using it yourself. Most people would be smart enough to realize that it can't be wrong and right at the same time.

who wants to see my you tubeeee videos??????????

No I didn't and no I haven't I've already proven that you are a liar and not very observant. Plus I've owned you like my bitch. So please stay out of GFY with your blathering. As I said...NOBODY who is really in any kind of business listens to your armchair lawyering.
Just leave gideongallery. You are wasting your time and every post you make just shows more people who you really are and what your agenda is.

No more Gideon Gallery stuff in here please..

For me the case is pretty simple. If it is found out that Youtube "filters" its content in any way before it is uploaded (other than for length of filesize) than they are no longer just a host and they most likely be able to hide behind DMCA. Also many Youtube users now have partner accounts and make money off of what they post on the site so if it is found that a copyrighted material is being used by others for profit they could be in trouble.

The first one is really the big one. Without DMCA they are like any other site out there that is posting content and they would then become responsible for that content. They would most likely lose the case with viacom and end up either having to shut the site down or make drastic changes to it in order to keep it open. If Viacom wins people will have to wait in line to sue them because media companies will come out of the woodwork to get a piece of the google pie.

?[YouTube will be] sued into oblivion,? Cuban said. ?They are just breaking the law. The only reason it hasn't been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue.?

smart man - and this industry could do the same but nobody with the money is willing to do it.

i don't believe Viacom will be backing down in this fight.

This story is about 6 months old.

It's not utter nonsense. YouTube's users do in fact police the site. They just don't see anything wrong with mainstream copyrighted material being on there, but do have a problem with porn.

Back in the day Geocities had a way to identify nudity in photos being uploaded. They would look for photos that contained a certain % of skintones and they were flagged for review.

That is possibly one of the funniest posts I have read here. Thanks.

really

this is where you attacked me for using your anology

every time you use the term "theft" to describe copyright infringement you are using the anology you disputed.

I don't own a tube site, and i don't pirate content, every bit of content i download from bit torrents (tv shows) i have bought a right to view by paying my monthly cable bill. a make no money from tube sites /fair use being protected.

Your arguement is he does not share our bias so he must be wrong. Which is the exact opposite of the truth.

Sort of like your claim that you did not dispute the anology of purchased items to copyright (which the quote proves you did) and continue to make a claim of criminal likeness (theft = piracy) every time you refer to my statements as a defence of theft (using the same anology)

How dense are you? The car analogy was yours. I replied that you could NOT compare the two.

Are you really that lost gideongallery? Are you reallythis much of a thief? You should go upstairs and tell your mommy and daddy that you have been a bad boy and stay off of GFY.

your arguement during that thread that copyright infringment was theft
even though i repeatedly pointed out that the act of theft had a disqualifying component of denying the owner of possession of his property. You could not do that in a circumstance where ownership was non transferable, so i made an analogy which you would have to agree with to remain consistant with your bogus arguement or
attack me because the law does not make that transfer of ownership.


this is the point i am making every time you say the word thief (or any derivation) you are using the anology you disputed.

Because the simple fact is if i can never own the copyright material, then everyone (including all the people who legally licienced the content) would be guilty.

You don't read much here, do you?

I don't think they are manually checking every upload, even though it might be possible. If they are, they are pretty much doomed legally as such a high level of review would leave them with no excuses as to why they let copyrighted material through.

for the record robbie my analogy was in response to this statment

and was described in the context that gm could make the same claim for every car they produced (the made it they paid for it) including the car you own.

the fact that you made it, or that you own it still does not change the fact that no tube site is denying you possession of your material.

you made the arguement that the analogy was because you can't own the material, which means the analogy is bad if you take it out fo the context it was used (well duh)

The point i made and still make is that your own declaration that the analogy does not apply because "you can't own anything" completely discredits your claim that copyright infringment is theft.

Because of the simple fact that if you can't own the product, then you will never pass the criminality test for theft. Possession of the item (irregardless of if you fully licienced it or not) would make you guilty because you would always have possession WITHOUT OWNERSHIP.

Are they in trouble if the filtering ONLY identifies nudity and how does it identify betwee a girl in a bikini and a nude?

Are they in trouble asking the "Community" to flag porn and not flag obvious piracy like a TV show?

In a way yes. Viacom is going to try to prove that Youtube has some type of filtering/monitoring in place that blocks porn from ever showing up on the site so that the users never see it. If they can prove that Youtube is able to keep most porn from ever even making it onto the site then they will be able to argue that they are also able to screen/monitor for copyrighted material and chose not too. If they prove this it will make it so that Youtube cannot hide behind the DMCA laws anymore because clearly if they are filtering certain content out they are not just a host.

Viacom is also going to try to prove that the most popular content on the site is copyrighted stuff. What they want to be able to tell a jury is that Youtube's most popular content is copyrighted and is being illegally used by the site and that Youtube could choose to block/filter it and never allow it on the site, but they choose not to.

If they Viacom wins those arguments and its case it will probably be the beginning of the end for Youtube. There will be dozens if not hundreds of companies that will then sue because they have had copyrighted material on the site without their permission. Youtube still is not making any profit for Google so any settlements/damages they have to pay is just more bleeding from the site. Also they will have to dump money and manpower into the site to make sure no further copyrighted material gets on it. When it becomes just another site with user created content it will be a lot less popular and they may even consider shutting it down.

If they lose how long the site survives really depends on the how much they have to pay out. If Viacom is awarded 500 million or something huge like that then you know other companies will jump on. I don't know how many huge hits like that Google could take and still afford to run a site that doesn't make a profit.

Thanks Kane.

I thought of this earlier. I'm not a lawyer but it seems logical

If Youtube claim in court that the monitoring is done the "Community" they lawyers for the plaintiff might ask for proof of this. Youtube raise it in court and it would be fair to say prove it.

detecting porn is an absolute, the only way you could do this in the case of copyright is to ignore the fair use rights of uploaders, accepting blindly the declaration that viacomm the DISTRIBUTOR of many of these shows owns the sole right of distribution. To prove that this is not a fair arguement all youtube will have to do is bring out all the artists, original producers who authorized their distribution of the content.

http://torrentfreak.com/travis-defen...hreats-080731/
http://torrentfreak.com/song-of-the-...mazing-080803/




and youtube will counter with the arguement that it not weather it copyrighted or not, since copyright is automatically granted but unauthorized or not. Which leads back to all those artist who authorize the distribution despite the fact they sold distribution rights on tv/dvd to viacomm.

the will further point out that companies and organization claim can't be uniformally accepted without some methodology of dispute because these companies have been proven to be wrong in their claims

and they would point to every fair use win by the supreme court, as well as every lose by associations in countries with piracy tax.

They will clearly point out that if you bypass the safe harbor provision/take down request process you would prevent people who may want to dispute the false claims of the copyright holder from defending their rights in court. If they are smart they will plop a pvr /vcr on the jury box and if they had changed the rules like this back then you would never had a right to own a vcr. And then just ask them to not destroy all the future technologies that are based on fair use of copyrighted content, by taking away the right of people to dispute the mistaken claim of absolute rights by the copyright holder.


youtube will make a passionate response to all of these claims and tie a ruling in favor of viacomm to a lose of technologies that jury members like to have, and believe they have a right to have. it going to be hard to convince a jury to accept viacomm's arguement that an absolute porn filter (see naughty bits =remove content) should be applied to a fluid condition (copyright , which may or maynot be authorized by fair use, another party in the production chain etc).

The way I understand it (and I'm not lawyer) is that the DMCA allows a site like Youtube to basically say they are just a host and they have no control over the content on the site and that they allow the users of the site to "police" the content and they remove it when asked. If it is found that they can filter out certain types of content before they ever get up on the site then it will show that Youtube does control at least some of the content on the site and that they are capable of controlling the content on the site. Sure, you can argue the semantics of copyright law into the ground but in many cases it is obvious. If Joe Bob from Kentucky is trying to upload the most recent episode of The Daily Show Youtube could pretty easily assume that he doesn't have permission to do that and if he does he could provide that permission to Youtube.

Take for example songs in a movie. I can't just put a Rolling Stones song in a movie I make without either getting their permission or paying a licensing fee. So if I upload a movie I have made to Youtube and it features a Rolling Stones song in it, Youtube can then assume I don't have the rights/permission to use that song. If I do I can provide it to them. I won't say that I know enough about fair use and those types of things but it is a pretty simple case, at least to me. If I upload something I don't have permission/rights to distribute to Youtube the site then provides whatever that is for its users. The serve ads on the site and make money from something that neither I nor they had the rights/permission to use.



I guess to me there is a big difference between a VCR and Youtube. A VCR you can record a movie or TV show and making copies for other people was a pain in the ass. Even if you made 100 copies the amount of damage you have done to the studio is probably pretty small. With TV shows they still would have the commercials in them (unless you owned editing software back then) and I think that is mostly what the studios care about is getting the commercials seen. These days you can easily edit out the commercials and then upload the program and instead of being seen by a dozen or maybe even 100 people it can be seen by millions. You are no longer sharing it with just your friends, you are sharing it with millions.



I'm not so sure it would be that hard to convince a jury. Again I think you can tell them that it is one thing to Tivo a movie or record a TV show and watch it in your house. It is another all together to upload it to a website and let millions of people see it for free and that website is making money off that show/content. Viacom an tell the jury that Youtube didn't have the rights to use this content, they did and they have mad money doing so. I think there are a lot of juries out there that would see that argument and find for Viacom.

In the end it is a complex argument with, at least for me, a pretty simple and basic core. If you don't own the copyright to something or you don't have permission or license to use/distribute it you shouldn't be uploading it to websites or sharing it on torrent sites and the people who do hold the copyrights/rights to that content should have the ability to properly protect it.

The problem is the law on copyright was written in a time when the main piracy was people copying for friends and selling them off a stall in a market. Today the problem is enormous and still the law is 10 years or more out of date.

I still think the law needs to be changed so the uploader is more responsible and the host has to give over the information of the person breaking the law. Rights of privacy end when you break the law.

yep that is true. Before they worried about a guy making copies of a tape and selling a few hundred or maybe a few thousand copies. Now something can be copied , uploaded and shared with millions.

that is irrelevant, just because anyone might think that a 50 cent song is copyright, that is still not legal proof, and if the uploader agrees with the tos that says that the content they are uploading is free and clear for them to upload, then how can you deny them without specific proof?

it could be 50 cent in a video or some 17 year old kid jumping up and down in his own living room, a video is a video and without a specific notification of copyright, I don't think you can legally force a company to assume one way or another, and even worse having the user base make assumptions on copyright :2 cents:

Last I checked ignorance isn't a defense when it comes to the law. If you are driving 60 in a 35 mph zone and tell the cop you thought it was 60mph area chances are he won't let you off. You can't go into court and tell them you didn't know you were breaking a law and expect them to forgive whatever you have done.

this has nothing to do with ignorance of the law.... quite the opposite actually

I'm curious if Viacom wants a judgment or just wants to settle. If they get a judgment, I think like Kane says, I see the flood gates opening and it will be the beginning of the end for Youtube. Although I suppose if they get a settlement the other companies will smell blood and still sue.

Based on the records the Judge has forced Youtube to release, I would say Viacom is in the dominant position, at least for now.

This could end up being a historic failure.

but maybe a better real life analogy could be a bar owner that looks the other way while bar patrons sell drugs in his bar...... would the bar owner then be breaking the law by looking the other way? is there a responsibility to the point of legal trouble if one doesn't police the actions of guests within their property? or should the guests alone be completely liable?

Youtube are totally ignorant of what they get their traffic to, what their surfers really want to see and everything else their surfers and uploaders do. They just put up this massive site with millions of people coming to it every day, if not hourly, and sell advertising. Completely clueless of what people are looking at and others are uploading.

How did these guys ever get past programming HTML? </sarcasm>

Maybe they should be forced to give over the ID of the uploader and the person breaking the law should be sued into poverty. Make the people breaking the law an enormous cash cow. Because obviously as I point out poor old Youtube don't have a clue. :1orglaugh

jetjet You are spot on with the bar owner analogy. Yes the bar owner is responsible for what people do in his bar. He would lose his license and might be charged with

I guess I disagree. Above you argued "that is irrelevant, just because anyone might think that a 50 cent song is copyright, that is still not legal proof, and if the uploader agrees with the tos that says that the content they are uploading is free and clear for them to upload, then how can you deny them without specific proof?" If the person agreed to the TOS yet still uploaded a copyright protected video that they didn't have legal right to upload then they are breaking the law even if they didn't realize they were breaking the law. So they can claim that they were ignorant of the law, but that doesn't excuse the action

I actually just asked a cop friend of mine this question. The answer might vary from state to state but the basic answer is that if the bar owner knows his establishment is being used as a place where people sell drugs and he does nothing about it he can be arrested and charged with aiding in a criminal enterprise. The same could be said if you were sharing a house with someone and you knew they were selling drugs out of it and did nothing to stop it. By not acting you are, in a way, endorsing the activity and you can get busted for that.

Ideally you're right, if anyone is to be held to account it is the uploader. Problem with that though, is that won't work. Is viacom going to sue 150k college kids with no money? They can try, but it hasn't worked out for people doing it in the p2p field. And as for the rest, as far as I am aware it doesn't show they have control over the site by automating filtering of pornography. Obviously none of us know enough on the issue, and I guess it will be decided in court, but Google has always maintained that it was going above and beyond what DMCA required with their filtering software (which now detects some music, clips which have been uploaded to the software, etc).

If I remember correctly the big argument was over whether google/youtube should use their proprietary software (which they also use for monetization) or whether they should partake in a central fingerprinting software/database project that the big media companies were working on. Google decided they wanted to stick by their system and a few companies weren't happy about that. But even if they used the central database, or their own was widely used and effective, inevitably some infringing material would still make it on the site. So does making a legitimate effort at preventing infringement, now mean they are going against the law on the stuff that does make it on there? I don't think the DMCA is clear on that, and I don't think a company going beyond what the law requires will be punished for doing such.

And on the bar analogy... Comparing selling drugs to this is a bit rough. But in any event, ask yourself this. If the bar owner runs a bar, and he knows that fights happen in there every couple of weeks, but he does what he can to stop them (by trying to not serve any one patron too much liquor, having security) is he still responsible for the fights when they do break out?

I know establishments can loose their license if there are regular problems at their premises, but I guess it is a question of how much, and to what extent are they responsible. There isn't an automatic responsibility there.

interesting, I wonder then where the onus of proof of knowledge of the activity begins and how far the "owner" has to go in stopping the activity

can he say "well, they didn't look like drug dealers to me, I didn't know" and can the cop then come back and say "bs, it is obvious to us that they are drug dealers, therefore you must have known cuz no one could be that oblivious".... obviously in law, common sense can't be precisely defined and used as a measure for prosecution, can it?

how far does the owner of a bar have to go to stop the drug dealing, do they have to strip search everyone? it just seems like it should be unconstitutional to me that a business owner be liable for the free actions of members of the public that happen to be in his establishment

should all bars be closed because some people might go in and sell drugs in them and the bar owners should realize that? should youtube be shutdown or forced to "stripsearch" every upload to ensure that the public is not uploading something that doesn't belong to them?

I agree with you Chief

obviously, the cut and dry guilty one is the uploader, I think it is unfortunate for the producers of content, but realistically that is where the enforcement has to take place, not with the filehosts and the indexers

The way it was explained to me is that the bar owners would have to make a "good faith" effort to stop illegal activity. Obviously if two guy go into the bathroom and do a one time drug deal it is almost impossible to know that is happening and to stop it from happening.

A few examples of this he gave me were that the bar owner would have to start and maintain a list of people they wouldn't allow in. For example if you went in and they saw you selling drugs they would not allow you to go back inside the next time you were there and if you got belligerent they would call the police. Also if they knew someone was doing something illegal they would have to call the police about that person/situation. The way I understood him was basically if you are trying to keep people from breaking the law when they are in your bar you are good.

I guess if you applied it to Youtube the argument would be that they are trying to keep copyrighted material off the site, but they can't be 100% sure on every video. However if they use that defense then it makes them seem like they are more than just the "host" that they claim and they probably don't qualify for the safe harbor protection of DMCA.

Ultimately you are pretty much correct. There are many legit uses for torrent software and files, but if I choose to use them to share pirated software/music/movies then I am the one who is breaking the law and should be help accountable. The problem is the music and movie industries can't keep up with it. The RIAA has sued over 22,000 people for illegally downloading music yet it is more widespread today than ever before. The same goes for movies and TV shows. Most TV studios have given up and joined the crowd and you can now watch full episodes of their shows online with very limited commercials.

I think they figured if you sued a few people and got big judgments against them then it would deter others from downloading. That hasn't been the case so I think the big media companies are now going to start going after the sites that make sharing/download this stuff easy and try to cut off the source.

I actually think they are after a judgment. If they get the judgment they will get some damages with it and those damages could be huge. if they get an agreement of some kind and a settlement they might be happy though. Either way Youtube has to fight and win this because even if they settle they open the flood gates. There is already a second company the filed a 500 million Euro lawsuit filed against Youtube from an Italian company. If they settle with Viacom they will probably have to settle with this company and then the line will start to form. The question then will be how many settlements can they take before they call it quits. Also if they settle, I would assume as part of the settlement they would have to agree that they will not allow that companies clips on the site in the future. If they agree to that, then they will have to "filter" for those clips and that removes them from the DMCA safe harbor which would then open them up to even more potential lawsuits.

To answer the question, yes. Usually such cases or charges are bought on the basis of whether a 'reasonable person' would of known. I.e. buy a stolen xbox, get caught with it, claim you didn't know - if the circumstances in which you bought it (say you bought it at the local pub/bar one night from an individual you never met before, who had it there in his car) are circumstances which would of alluded a reasonable person to assume it was stolen than you are committing an offense. But with regards to youtube it doesn't really apply, clearly Google knows the site is being used for copyright infringement, just as ISP's know their clients use p2p, the question is whether Google can reasonably be expected to identify which individual clips are infringing - the answer I think will be no.

They just got hit by another suit. This time 500Mill Euro or about 800Mill USD

Italy's largest private broadcaster, said Wednesday it has filed a lawsuit for at least EUR500 million against Google Inc.'s (GOOG) YouTube for the unlawful use of the Italian company's audio and video files

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/...4_FORTUNE5.htm