Viacom, YouTube and the DMCA
p2pnet.net news:- Viacom is suing Google over allegedly “massive” copyright breaches for almost as much as it paid for YouTube in the first place. Well, almost. Something more than $1 billion.
It says GooTube clips, around 160,000, are from shows that air on TV stations it owns, such as MTV Networks’ Comedy Central and Nickelodeon and according to The New York Times, Viacom clains, “YouTube deliberately built up a library of infringing works to draw traffic to the YouTube site, enabling it to gain a commanding market share, earn significant revenues and increase its enterprise value.”
The lawsuit also begs the question, how does a “1998 law that was supposed to retrofit copyright protection for the digital future applies in the YouTube age?” – says The Wall Street Journal.
The law it’s referring to is, of cource, the entertainment cartel-inspired DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).
“Calls to pull videos from YouTube are reminiscent of the music industry’s largely unsuccessful attempts to stamp out peer-to-peer song-sharing services,” says the NYT, adding another nail to the coffin of Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) which is still trying to sue Big 4 customers into buying ‘product,’ one of their latest victims being a man who’s partially paralyzed.
“If a video is deleted, the person who posted it or copied it can make a few changes to the file and repost it,” the story points out, going on:
“On Tuesday afternoon, a search on YouTube for “daily show” turned up 2,800 clips, but only a handful actually featured Stewart’s program, with the rest being commentaries or unrelated videos using those keywords to lure viewers. Similar searches for the network’s crude animated hit South Park and faux-conservative talk show The Colbert Report showed that nearly all actual footage of those shows had been taken down.
“But a search of Fox’s ‘Family Guy’ showed 18,000 results, with the top listings being actual clips from the show running from 35 seconds to more than 7 minutes.”
YouTube says it qualifies for protection from liability because it takes clips down when copyright holders ask, as per the DMCA which, “also contained important so-called safe-harbor clauses, provisions designed to protect access providers, search engines, Web-hosting services and others from liability for copyright claims if they met several conditions,” according to the WSJ, which goes on:
“But now some legal experts say there is little consensus or precedent on how that protection applies to video-sharing sites like YouTube. The safe-harbor dispute could hinge on several key issues, such as the extent to which YouTube has direct knowledge of copyright clips posted on its site without permission and whether it profits directly from them. The safe-harbor issue is at the core of several other pending copyright cases, including Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group’s suit against News Corp.’s MySpace.
“The DMCA safe harbor covers a lot of businesses, and it’s hard to see how you could go after YouTube without threatening all of the others,” the story has the famed EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) lawyer Fred von Lohmann stating.
However, cynics believe this is nought but posturing while the two companies figure out how to best to profitably cash in on users’ enthusiasms to their mutual and individual interests; and, that Google and Viacom will announce an accord in the near future.
Also See:
The New York Times – WhoseTube? Viacom Sues Google Over Video Clips, March 14, 2007
copyright breaches – Viacom nails Google for $1 billion, March 13, 2007
The Wall Street Journal – Viacom v. Google could shape digital future, March 14, 2007
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