YouTube & Copyright
 

So by now everyone has heard that Google has acquired YouTube for more than $1.6 Billion buckaroos. They see all those eyeballs, more than 40 million/month (I believe), and they're ready to revolutionize on-line video.

But wait...what about the huge breaches of copyright that I see all over the place on this site(YouTube). I know that the music companies have worked out a deal for revenue sharing, but what about broadcast television/movies/ games etc.. I mean I see people posting, re-edited versions of the Daily Show with their own psuedo production company bugs actually covering Comedy Centrals. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

You cannot do that, it's a blatant plagerized breach against a copyrighted show.

I think Google has made a huge mistake. The potential for huge pile-on litigation from the broadcasters and then stock holders is very apparant to me.

I don't think most people realize that individuals may also be liable for "reproduction" breaches of copyright.
Copyright suits are defended and awarded to the plaintiff and copyright holders 98% of the time. Huge legal precident is involved.

What do you guys think???

David,

I agree with you 100%. Just browse thru about a dozen random videos on either youtube or google video and several will probably have copyright issues and blatant ones at that. I can't wait for google to get slamed just to see what happens in the courts. What they and the some of the posters are doing is very wrong. Don't get me wrong the "concept" of having a free avenue to post videos is great but with that comes the responsibility of abiding by the law. I'm just hoping that google dosen't also gobble up putfile which is my favorite place to host videos because they do not recompress what you submit.

my wishful thinking is that this may be the powerhouse combo that convinces the recording industry to re-think the ways in which they structure royalty fees. most of us would be fine paying for the privilege of using music, but gaining access to publishers is a PITA, and they charge you as if you were Dreamworks or somebody...wouldn't it be great to have an online clearing house for music rights with an equitable pay structure??

David,

Federal law protects the creators of on-line communities from infringement by it's members so long as that infringement is not the main purpose of the site. Napster and places like that got in to big trouble ultimately because it was basically the only purpose the site had. YouTube, if you listen to it's creators, is a place for people to upload their videos from their cell phones and their own productions and share them. The founders even say the idea came to them the day after a party when everyone was posting their photos to photo-sharing sites, but they had nowhere to post their videos. Hence YouTube (notice the You).

That said, certainly there is a lot of violation going on, and ultimately they do benefit from that. They are very good, however, at pulling down videos when the copyright owner protests.

Largely, the owners have had the sense not to protest. I don't know for certain, but I don't think that Comedy Central is against the posting. It is publicity for them. Certainly, they could have them all pulled down if they wanted... it would not be that tough. I know that I, for one, became a fan of Stephen Colbert because of YouTube and now I pay my $10/month to iTunes to get the whole show. Producers are working with it, not against it. The 10 minute upload limit (for non-directors) does help there.

Fox News initially asked them to remove footage of the recent Clinton interview with Wallace. After a day of thought, however, they backtracked and allowed it to be reposted. They decided that they gain more from people seeing it than they lose.

There is no place on line, and will never be a place on line, where there is 100% non-pirated material. It happens, and it will. I believe that the content owners have moved on from the RIAA's initial stop-the-wave mentality and decided that they might just ride it for a little while.

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act specifically holds sites like YouTube liable IF THEY KNOW of the infringement, or if they are asked by the copyright holder to remove it, and fail to do so.

[QUOTE=Barry Gribble]David,

Federal law protects the creators of on-line communities from infringement by it's members so long as that infringement is not the main purpose of the site.


I'm not a lawyer, but I agree with Richard, the DMCA still doesn't seem to grant complete safe harbor to anything on-line.

In my past experience, I can tell you that companies like Disney protect their brand and intellectual property like it was their own blood. And it still leaves open the possibility of some test cases. Ultimately, it will cost Google in revenue sharing meaning reduced profits or litigation which could be worse.

I like to think of YouTube doing the same thing as iTunes when they provide a 30-second sample of a song or when Amazon.com puts the first chapter of a book on their website. It's just a free sample of a larger product. I haven't seen any complete TV shows or entire movies on YouTube, just short clips. It's free advertising for the entertainment product. The copyright holders love it! And that is why YouTube is safe from litigation.

To be clear, I'm not a lawyer either...

but I am married to a IP attorney ;)

(and no one is 'safe' from litigation :(

Right, but it does not require preemptive searching for infringing material. YouTube does remove things when asked, and they do it quickly. As best I know, though, DMCA does not require that they constantly search for material on their own.

That provision was championed by groups like AOL to protect them from people posting material in their user-generated content areas. They had a lot of political muscle and they made sure that they would never be liable for some random person posting material that infringed on someone's copyright. This same protection applies to YouTube.

I would be very curious to know what percentage of material posted violates copyrights.

Right now, here are some seach results...

Probable violations:
Jon Stewart : 1,990
Colbert : 2,549
Dave Matthews : 1,584 (although they do allow concert taping)
Madonna : 11,746
I'm not cool enough to know who to search for to find more...

Probable non-violations:
Mentos: 8,120
VLOG : 7,742
lonelygirl: 829
silly: 28,971
dumb: 29,371
girl: 168,561

Obviously, there is some protected material in all of those categories, but for the ones I put in the latter category it was mostly cell phone (or simliar quality) video of people just doing stuff and posting it. I do actually believe that this makes up the majority of the content there, or at least a very sizeable chunk.

I think that the people who think YouTube is mostly made up of copyrighted material are people who are searching for that.

I do believe that I once searched for Jon Stewart and came up with 80,000+ hits, and not it's down under 2,000. That suggests to me that they are doing a pretty good job of deleting things when asked.

The fact is that society wants a place like YouTube for it's legal uses (and some want it for it's illegal uses). As long as there is a place like YouTube, someone will post copyrighted materials, and the best the owner can hope for is that they take it down quickly - like YouTube does. That's it. That's why the law exists. Otherwise there could be no online forums.

I can post copyrighted material here, and Chris can't get sued for it unless he fails to take it down when informed (and he takes it down). If he could get sued for me posting something - even though he took it down - he would probably not take the risk of hosting this place.

It's a big world, and certainly someone, some time, will sue YouTube. I think YouTube will win. And I think they should.

YouTube is being sued. By several people.

http://www.d-silence.com/story.php?h...3238&comment=1

There you go. So funny that it would be a music company. I'm pretty sure they will win, though. And apparently Google, who knows far more about the issues, the lawsuit and the law than you or I, was willing to bet $1.65B that they will.

"Winning" is a subtle word in the legal world. I'm pretty sure they will 'settle'. With both sides claiming 'victory'.

Google can afford to make a suit go away... I don't think the YouTube guys here in San Mateo could have.

Semantics 101

One crucial difference - I would be VERY surprised if iTunes or Amazon's postings are done without express written permission of the copyright holders. It's not that posting copyright material that's prohibited, it's posting copyright material without permission of the copyright owner. Get that permission and you can post away!

Just another completely unscientific survey....

A video of a cat sleeping:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-gW3RbJd8U&NR
(strangely compelling)
1,500,000+ views in a month and a half

Jon Stewart on Crossfire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmZkw169xEI
(my favorite)
120,000+ views in 7 months.

This is just to say that I really do believe that the main purpose off the site self-publishing and not copyright infringement. That, combined with a system for very rapidly responding to copyright holder complaints, is going to ensure that YouTube does just fine legally. (and yes, it might still be cheaper to settle)

Again, I allow for the fact that I'm just no cool enough to find the avalanche of material in violation. It may outweigh the cat...

Barry,

From a strictly LEGAL viewpoint, and ISP can be removed from service for ONE violation. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but it is within the realm of the law.

Richard,

I think we largely agree on all this really. Do you mean one violation as in one thing being posted? Or one violation as in failing once to take down an offending piece? I am pretty sure it is the latter.

I actually really love the Chad Vader short:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGR4-SeuJ0

And my new hero, 1.6M views in two weeks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6tlw-oPDBM&NR
Time-lapse of a man putting on 155 T-shirts at the same time.

I found out that YouTube is very clear in its own Terms of Use section that user submissions may not include copyrighted material. Obviously no one reads the Terms of Use as evidenced by all the breeches. Also in a special copyright section they lay out the procedure for Complaints of Copyright Abuse.


Okay fine, but I think that a judge somewhere is going to make YouTube be more proactive in enforcing their own Use Policies vs letting things fall where they fall.

But I will say that if I owned copyright to a short video and it got ripped and uploaded on YouTube, I would get me a dang good copyright lawyer and make sure it didn't happpen again.

But that's just me.

As we all know theirs a lot of opinions going around over rather Google made the right choice in accruing YouTube but I feel it’s a very strong move because it’s going to be tough competing against a lot of companies putting videos online and this finally puts Google up their with the big boys. Rupert Murdoch wanted to acquire it as well and if that happened, you can say goodbye to Google’s future video business. So just put yourself in Google’s shoes. Risk copyright violations that can easily end in a settlement that’s good for both sides or try to compete against a combination of MySpace and YouTube. If I was in charge of Google I would definitely not let Rupert Murdoch destroy the competition by buying YouTube. Right now Rupert Murdoch is so worried about the potential YouTube will have to Google, he is trying to make an advertising deal with Google. Since Rupert Murdoch lost the chance to buy YouTube, don’t be surprised if he tries to buy Putfile or any other small video hosting service.

When you have 2 very big companies such as News Corp and Google wanting to buy YouTube, it must be a good deal.

I forgot to say that Viacom and Yahoo was also trying to buy Youtube.

Here an interesting article about YouTube’s copyright battles.
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2006/1...unclean-hands/

Posting clips from TV or otherwise is UNSTOPPABLE, period the end. Like Google just stated, you either fight them at a no win situation, or you join them and make money. In fact, it would be foolish for them to think it will be stopped regardless of what the courts rule. If it isn't Youtube, it will be some website in Indonisia or China that allow posting video clips, where their jurisdiction cannot reach.

Another thought is that is has helped so many people with their movies. For example, the new Sasha Baron Cohen, BORAT, is getting a TON of free promotion with the ads on youtube. Similar to the same way Blair Witch Project was promoted.

I did see on a Sunday morning news show today that there is an agreement in place with CBS for revenue sharing. So, they pay a portion of their ad revenue to CBS for the abiility to have CBS's IP on their site.

I suspect similar agreements will be reached with other media outlets.

-gb-

That's the only way they will win. Suing and winning will force bankruptcy, and start a dozen new companies that will do the same. Its a losing battle. If it isn't youtune it will be another. Itunes advanced technology, but cannot stop free illegal downloading such as limewire etc. Its the nature of the beast.

YouTube deletes nearly 30,000 copyrighted files
 

YouTube shared user data with studio lawyers
 

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/stor...4E9%7D&siteid=

Thanks for the post Boyd, I hadn't seen that.

For all those who argue 'you can't stop it' regarding copyright infringement, or "Everyone does it"... or 'How are you going to catch everyone'... you don't have to catch everyone. Just enough people to stem the tide.

If you DON'T protect your copyrights and trademarks, you run the risk of allowing them to fall into the public domain. So it becomes a matter of picking and choosing their battles.

The question for the infringer is ".... do ya feel lucky, PUNK? Well... do ya???"

(Apologies to Dirty Harry)

So if you look at music download, who really won? the record companies??? the artists??? Nope the lawyers, and ultimately companies like Apple that addressed the fundamantal underlying problem and continues to make a ton of money from it. The smart IP owners figure out how to turn it into a profitable legal business where they win.

One of these days it will get back to legislation, and an intelligent approach will be implimented. Just think if when books came out if it were illegal for anyone else from the original purchaser to read the buck without paying a fee where we would be. Fact is the market is not driven by millions of pirates, it is driven by people who want to share what they find interesting, and would be happy to do it legally. Google MIGHT have the brains and money to get something worked out, OR ELSE it will become one of the worst Business decisions Google ever did.

Is a sense the argument that just because everyone does it, at some point does tend to change things, we used to have Probition here in the US. Eventually people realized the smart approach was to regulate it and make money off it, not force it underground.

The original IP owners need to come up with a reasonable model that allows them to make some money, there is a HUGH NEW MARKET out there, with plenty of economic opportunities, but will they learn from the Record Companies??

Sharyn

Google video slapped with copyright suit
 

The big shoe dropped and the pile on begins now. Viacom sues YouTube for one billion dollars. Google messed up by buying You Tube.

Google didn’t mess up on buying YouTube at all. News Corp would have bought YouTube if it wasn’t for Google. Google would have suffered even more than they are right now competing with a News Corp/MySpace/YouTube combination. They really had no choice.

Viacom was also thinking about buying YouTube so it looks like this is a little payback although News Corp had a better chance than Viacom.

You right. With their stock (Google) at more than $400/share, they had no choice. I think News Corp. and Viacom baited Google all along.

I've been saying since this summer that the emperor has no clothes. You can argue strategic market share, eye balls, and advertising/revenue sharing, and those are valid points. My view is that from a legal standpoint, they we're playing with fire, but they were blinded by all of those eyeballs.

And the number of lawsuits are going to explode. In fact, there is the possibility of an injuction by a U.S. District judge in New York to shut it down completely. Even the freelance video guy that shot the Reginald Denney beatings from LA in early 90's is going after You Tube for a few million.

The problem is as soon as You Tube removes a copyrighted clip, some one else loads up the same clip the next day. It will be a never ending battle, because the average person doesn't understand that these programs, through their copyright, have monetary value and they are prohibited by law for rebroadcast without permission. And Viacom has monitored You Tube and stated that on average there are around 160,000 breeches of copyright a day. And that is just with Viacom content.

Mark my word, Google is going to loose Billions of Dollars on You Tube. Plus another Billion in the Viacom lawsuit. Plus if the federal courts shut it down, there goes it's initial multi-billion dollar investment. If you have Google stock, you might want to start selling it and cash out.

And that's all I have to say about that, Sincerely Forrest.