p2pnet.net News:- Remember Chris Moukarbel’s home-made, 12-minute version of Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center?

Hold that thought.

There’s no honour among thieves and the obvious threat linked to YouTube’s acquisition by Google, and GooTube’s deals with major entertainment cartel entities, is the same as the very real danger associated with the cartels: that user names will end up as ammunition for CPAs (corporate persecution agencies) such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and, by devious routes, the BSA (Business Software Alliance).

Kazaa, never overly concerned about users at any point in its existence, BearShare, Grokster and iMesh, together with data from a number of ex-torrent sites, are now effectively in the hands of the entertainment cartels, with all that implies. And GooTube had already demonstrated where its future allegiance would lie when, at the behest of “copyright-related rights organizations,” it trashed 29,549 videos.

Now, “YouTube’s actions in response to a subpoena it received in May show that it has been keeping tabs on users who post copyrighted material to its site - and in one case shared the name of a user with lawyers from a Hollywood film studio,” says MarketWatch.

And Yes, the story refers to Moukarbel who, said Filmthreat.com, had “appropriated” a copy of Stone’s script and shot an extract with student actors.

So Paramount sued him because, said The Washington Post, “the studio is afraid that people will see the student film on the Internet and confuse it with the big-time Hollywood version set to hit 1,500 screens on Aug. 9 and backed up with a $40 million marketing campaign,” says the story.

Sure.

“On May 24, lawyers for Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures convinced a federal judge in San Francisco to issue a subpoena requiring YouTube to turn over details about a user who uploaded dialog from the movie studio’s ‘Twin Towers,’ according to a copy of the document,” the MarketWatch story goes on.

“YouTube promptly handed over the data to Paramount, which on June 16 sued the creator of the 12-minute clip, New York City-based filmmaker Chris Moukarbel, for copyright infringement, in federal court in Washington. That YouTube chose to turn over the data, rather than simply remove the offending video from its site - as it did Friday when it agreed to take down 30,000 videos at the request of a group of Japanese media companies - came as a surprise to copyright experts.”

The easy capitulation may have shocked the unnamed copyright experts, but it won’t come as any surprise to members of the p2p community.

Moreover, YouTube was founded by former executives of PayPal, now owned by eBay, and PayPal’s reputation isn’t exactly sterling.

“YouTube seems to have given up too easily,” said Laurence P. Colton, an intellectual-property lawyer at the firm of Powell & Goldstein LLP in Atlanta.

GooTube users, “who post copyrighted material should not expect the company to protect them from media-business lawsuits,” MarketWatch has Colton, saying, also stating, “The ‘Twin Towers’ episode is reminiscent of the way the entertainment industry vanquished the first version of Napster Inc. and other digital-music sites that made it easy to download copyrighted songs over the Internet.

“Music company lawyers first warned and then sued individual users who downloaded their songs. Now it looks like piracy hunters for the movie studios are using the same technique against YouTube users.”

GooTube’s decision, “to help Paramount track down Moukarbel stands in stark contrast to the philosophy of Google, which has fought the U.S. Justice Department over attempts to access data about consumers who use its search services,” adds MarketWatch.

It is not, however, in stark contrast to the fact Google has long been associated with Net censorship in China.

Meanwhile, “A slew of lawsuits like those filed against individual digital music pirates could change that atmosphere, and perhaps the growth rate, of YouTube’s online community,” says the story, which also has Colton declaring:

“This community was built as a kind of free-for-all, where people could have a lot of fun and do it rather anonymously. You don’t get that kind of community by saying, ‘Here, sign up and at the simplest drop of a subpoena, we’ll give that information away’.”

Also See:
World Trade Center - World Trade Center movie row, June 22, 2006
trashed 29,549 videos - YouTube videos deleted, October 20, 2006
MarketWatch - YouTube shared user data with studio lawyers, October 20, 2006
Filmthreat.com - World Trade Center film extract, June 4, 2006
The Washington Post - Studio Sues Over Internet Film Based On Stone’s Script, June 21, 2006

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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