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English Premier Football League Sues YouTube
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat May 05, 2007 10:55 PM
from the cracks-in-the-dam dept.
from the cracks-in-the-dam dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is reporting that the English Premier Football League has launched a lawsuit against YouTube and its owner Google, claiming unspecified damages. The league is sitting on high-profile content valued at $5.4 billion over the next 3 years in a recent series of auctions. This will be the second major suit against YouTube since Google's purchase."
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Viacom Sues Google Over YouTube for $1 Billion 508 comments
Snowgen writes "Viacom has filed a $1,000,000,000.00 lawsuit for 'massive intentional copyright infringement' against Google over YouTube video clips. '"YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site," Viacom said in a statement. "Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.'"
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shame for soccer fans (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:shame for soccer fans (Score:5, Insightful)
For years, people told the record companies: "things are changing, the way we listen is changing, the way we collect music and manage our collections is changing. Get with the times and provide solutions that suit us or we'll just find our own."
Now, with broadband expanding and compresssion/streaming technologies improving, the companies that provide video media are starting to get hit with the same problems Napster brought to the record companies 10'ish years ago. With a decade to learn from the plight of the record companies, adapt, and profit... the video media companies are making the same mistakes, thinking they can solve their problems with lawyers instead of adapting to the new circumstances.
Parent
Re:shame for soccer fans (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a big problem for them, though. They don't have any interest to provide their 'content' for free, they want to earn money. But honestly would you pay for something of the quality of YouTube? I fear most people would want to get a better quality, if they have to pay for it. I seriously doubt that they are willing to go for advertising supported distribution, because of the hard to calculate revenue.
And that gets them into this problem, the net was for very long not able to deliever high quality video streams (and perhaps it still isn't when a lot of people want to watch it). And I don't see any way for them to compete with YouTube, if they deliever that low quality people will (rightfully) ask why they should pay, if they deliever high quality they get into serious problems of where to get the bandwidth and how to pay for it.
So I can see, that for them the only way is to make sure, that their content has a high enough value to either make it possible to sell it to YouTube or to at least make a lot of money by selling to the traditional channels.
For your information, here in Germany the DFL (German Football Leage) who has the rights and sells them last time also sold separate rights for delievery via IP and mobile phone and you can bet, that the owner of the rights will sue anyone 'broadcasting' it for free.
Parent
Re:shame for soccer fans (Score:5, Informative)
However, as a Juve fan, you may want to go with Dish Network. For $12/mo you can get RAI International, which should give you a ton of Serie A games (which should include Juve, since they're moving back up after this season).
I can sympathize with Americans that can't get enough Premiership coverage, because I'm in the same boat (I've been a Liverpool fan for over 20 years), but the Premiership has made a reasonable effort to reach out to the American market. Considering just how much money is at stake in the European market alone, I don't think they're acting all that unreasonably.
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Re:shame for soccer fans (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:shame for soccer fans (Score:4, Interesting)
If there's no legal way for me to watch this, of course I'm going to turn to YouTube. And clips of soccer only encourages it across America, I have purchases two soccer replica jerseys (solid pocket money going to the Premiership and Serie A there)
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Nice to see Google taking the heat (Score:3, Insightful)
We've made the claim that copyright is just such an unjust law.
The last few years we've seen it actually happening. We dipped our toes in with music sharing, but it was too hot, so we went back to the shadows. The so-called Pirate Party grows stronger. Now there's YouTube/Google.
The silent majority of us ignore these laws. Now there's a vocal minority who are saying enough is enough.
I think this issue has finally come of age.
Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you mean like credit reports, purchasing habits, medical histories, dead bolt keys, telephone conversations, looks, social security numbers, home addresses, photos taken with a telephoto lenses,credit card numbers, bank account numbers, names, email?
Or do you just mean you want to get free shit? That you don't want to pay for other peoples' hard work?
Re: (Score:2)
So it breaks down to: Do we own the content that is "sold" to us by the RIAA/MPAA? Shouldn't we?
Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat (Score:4, Informative)
We have laws which restrict your rights for the benefit of society.
Society no longer sees restrictions on copying entertainment to be for its own benefit.
Why is this so hard to understand?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not a perfect law and it does get abused. The concept of a creator being able to exert some control over their creation so that they can profit from it and prevent its adulteration to a certain extent is not wrong. And without copyright, anyone could take a GPL'ed project, incorporate it into closed source products, and no one could say boo to them.
The concept of copyright is not only just, it is necessary. There are a lot of people who, if they didn't have copyright laws to protect their creations, wouldn't create them, either because those creations cost too much or simply because there was a more profitable use of their time. The dream of being rich and famous spurs a lot of artists, and while you might argue that the "true artists" would create anyway... how much less would they create when the only reward was personal satisfaction?
You're a fringe ideologue who probably creates nothing and is only looking for an excuse to commit intellectual gluttony on someone else's dime. If you created stuff and actually were good enough to have a hope of doing that for a living, you wouldn't try to take that hope away from others.
- Greh
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
We have a right to be free.
We have a right to copy.
We no longer want these laws.
Our numbers are growing.
Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat (Score:5, Interesting)
And, as I said... you don't create, so you don't understand. So I'll break it down for you...
My contribution to culture, however small, was done because I had the expectation of being able to trade that contribution for enough money to pay my rent, feed my kids, etc. If there was no expectation, you know what I would have done? Become a lawyer.
The long hours, sweat, and money I have put into creating art and paying others to create art... gone. The hours, sweat, and money thousands like me put into it... gone. The only reason you have as much content to copy, particularly good content to copy, is because copyright encouraged others to create it.
We have a right to be free.
One which was only secured for you by good people who made great sacrifices. And furthermore, freedom is not absolute. Your freedom is limited at the point where it stops someone else from being free.
We have a right to copy.
No, you have an ability to copy. You only have a right to copy something you PAID for and then only to copy it for personal use. Proclaiming a right to any copying that goes beyond that is like me saying I have a right to steal your car merely because it's stealable.
Slave owners quoted the bible to prove they had a "right" to own slaves. There are people who think their rights as parents extend to beating their kids unconscious and that the government arresting them for breaking a four-year-old's arm is a violation of their rights.
You can proclaim all the "rights" you want. That doesn't mean they're legal, ethical, or moral.
We no longer want these laws.
There are people in Germany who no longer want laws prohibiting the Nazi party. There are CEOs who no longer want laws prohibiting insider trading. There are pedophiles who no longer want laws prohibiting the possession or distribution of child pornography.
The dislike of a law doesn't make it unjust, just inconvenient to criminally-minded people like yourself.
Our numbers are growing.
Sadly, so are the numbers of Nazis, corrupt CEOs, and pedophiles. But growing numbers doesn't make be accept their causes, arguments, or criminal behavior, nor will they make me accept yours.
Parent
As expected from a producer of "content", not art. (Score:5, Interesting)
And mine was not. Is it less valuable? You do realize that there are other ways to make money from works of art and imagination (not mere "content" one might stuff into a box with a price tag), no? Or that something called the Renaissance happened outside the domain of copyright, no? You DO also realize that essentially ALL of your ideas are based on those of others, too, no? Otherwise, you'd have to write using only those words you had coined yourself. After all, while human thought, like water, originally shapes its own riverbed, ever after it flows down and is shaped by the same riverbed it first formed.
> One which was only secured for you by good people who made great sacrifices. And furthermore, freedom is not absolute. Your freedom is limited at the point where it stops someone else from being free.
Indeed. And when the only way to properly enforce copyright is to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC, should not their right give way, particularly when it was a right created for the good of society?
> Slave owners quoted the bible to prove they had a "right" to own slaves. There are people who think their rights as parents extend to beating their kids unconscious and that the government arresting them for breaking a four-year-old's arm is a violation of their rights.
And ignored their obligation to free them all every 7th year during the Year of Jubilee, ignored that a "slave" was one who originally sold themselves (or was, alas, sold by their parents), not to mention a whole host of other limitations they found inconvenient. It's right that too often we see a right touted without ANY consideration for what gives rise to it, however. And here the point was NOT to give authors a right to profit, but instead to enrich culture. A goal that is almost if not entirely ignored by current copyright laws.
> You can proclaim all the "rights" you want. That doesn't mean they're legal, ethical, or moral.
Quite right. Copyright, as it exists now, can only rightfully be considered one of those three. It's no wonder then, that disrespect for it is continually mounting and will continue to mount until such time as the laws reflect something more real.
> There are people in Germany who no longer want laws prohibiting the Nazi party. There are CEOs who no longer want laws prohibiting insider trading. There are pedophiles who no longer want laws prohibiting the possession or distribution of child pornography.
Surely you know that by equating copyright infringement to Nazis and molesting children, you have long since undermined whatever point you were trying to make by abandoning reason wholesale in an attempt to demonize the opposition? Can you honestly find no better reasons to support copyright than "think of the children"? Yes, perhaps I am being glib with your response, but I cannot rightfully apprehend the sort of confusion that would prompt such an untoward comparison.
> Sadly, so are the numbers of Nazis, corrupt CEOs, and pedophiles. But growing numbers doesn't make be accept their causes, arguments, or criminal behavior, nor will they make me accept yours.
They are? Based on what do you suppose that these numbers are growing?
Now then, you say indeed that ad populum does not make a good moral system. I can agree with that, but the moral basis I use can only consider copyright infringement evil if it is ultimately hurtful to society. I do not find evidence of that, therefore I wish to see the law reformed into something which is good for society. Alas, I am not holding my breath.
But who am I kidding? You went to Godwin this discussion. I have to believe that you're just trolling, because you appeal only to emotion and not to reason.
Parent
Re:As expected from a producer of "content", not a (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you have to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC? You accuse me of using extremes, then use them yourself.
Again, and for the last time... Copyright law is not perfect and gets abused. But
Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat (Score:5, Insightful)
The *minute* you start to enforce a restriction on information in any way,
is the minute you start to limit free speech. Copyright is a restriction
on free speech, as is censorship. Don't agree? Witness the recent uprising
about a *number* being transmitted *AND SHUT UP*.
Should I point out the irony of you blabbering about free speech and then telling me to shut up, or would that limit your freedom of hypocrisy? It's amazing how many proponents of free speech only seem to believe that their speech should be free and tell their critics to "shut up".
Again, I'll point out that copyright law is not perfect and does get abused. I am not against copyright reform or the eradication of copyright abuse. But a lot of people participating in that uprising were protesting against an abuse of copyright law, not against the concept of copyright itself.
And furthermore, we limit free speech all the time. Ever heard of laws against incitement to riot, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, municipal noise ordinances.... Even though you can go up on stage in a night club and say the word "fuck" over and over for 4 hours, and call it performance art, if you tried doing that over a bullhorn in front of an elementary school, I guarantee you that the cops could arrest you and that even the Supreme Court would uphold that arrest.
I value my free speech far more than I value my right to get paid.
Tell me that when you have no food or shelter and no money to pay for them.
Isn't after all, caveat emptor?
How does "let the buyer beware" have anything to do with free speech? "Caveat emptor" means you need to inspect something before you buy it, so you're not ripped off by false representations. It does, on the other hand, have a lot to do with your elected representatives who help create copyright law. I'd heartily endorse a "caveat emptor" policy on election day, no matter what your political leanings.
Repeal the libel, the slander, the dmca, the copyright, the patents.
Please reply to this post with your photo and your full, real name and address so I can plaster your neighborhood with posters about how you're a child rapist and a danger to all children in your neighborhood. If you truly believe in the repeal of slander and libel laws, and you're all about freedom of speech, you'll not only take no legal action, you won't even pull the posters down (because that would be censoring me). You'll just suffer through your neighbors throwing rocks through your windows as the price of your ideals.
Lawyers, go fuck yourselves. You create nothing but misery.
And when you get get tossed in a cell in Guantanamo, I want you to tell that to the lawyers who are trying to get the government to let you go and stop torturing you.
- Greg
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Re:Nice to see Google taking the heat (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:2)
Less creation is not important, since without copyright the stuff that does get created will be much more widely useful. The English Premier League wouldn't shut down. Most likely the players wouldn't make so many millions p
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Somebody would still be willing to do the job." Of course. But have you ever watched minor league baseball? Ever gone out to see the Cucamonga Quakes at the Epicenter? Entertaining to be sure, but nothing compared to major league baseball.
The thing that keeps some of the best in any business doing what they do best is the fact that they can make loads of money doing it. If
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Premier League would still be the highest level, so that's were the best footballers will be. I'd be surprised if the teams couldn't scrape up enough funds in one way or another to pay them an ordinary salary.
In any case the number of lawyers needed will surely decrease once copyright is abolished, which is another good reason for getting rid of it.
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It originally existed to do those things, in it's current form it's only job is to help the creators to control what other people do with the content they create.
Actually, it has been shown repeatedly that giving content away for free actually helps increase sales. See this note from baen books, [baen.com] and this article from the [washingtonpost.com]
Create?! Give me a break! (Score:5, Interesting)
Creation? Innovation? It's a frigging football (soccer) match! It's not like the FA is a bunch of artists writing poems or whatever, it's a sport.
It's not being streamed live in competition with the live broadcast.
Football is an important part of a large part of the world's culture. It is unjust to lock it up behind copyright, that just doesn't make sense. Making it available after the fact doesn't diminish the advertising revenue (that's what this is about, revenue) of the live broadcast, there's plenty of demand for the live broadcast.
But once the match has been played, what's the problem with people being able to watch it?
This is a good example of the bad side of copyright, locking up public culture for fear of losing even a penny of corporate profit.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
First of all, you prefer [insomnia.org] the GPL over the BSD license. This is interesting, as the GPL requires copyright law in order to be enforceable. If the author doesn't have the right to control distribution and users do have the right to copy whatever they want, however they want, wouldn't that be a view closer to that of the BSD license?
Second, you sell shareware [insomnia.org]. This is a source of income which relies on copyright law. Presu
Re: (Score:2)
It didn't start out as an unjust law. There was a time when so few people had the means to copy that it was acceptable for them to trade their right to copy to others as an incentive for them to create more works. This is no longer the case.
We all have the means to copy, and we all do it.
Freedom is more important than entertainment or even art.
Re: (Score:2)
If you leave off the first and last words of your sentence you can pretty much apply that to every single law ever written from the time of Hammurabi to the present. Here's a few examples:
Theft laws are unjust as they place unnecessary restriction on actions that the public want to participate in, namely, stealing from others.
Rape laws are unjust as they place unnecessary restricti
Re: (Score:2)
Car analogy (Score:2)
It didn't start out as an unjust law. There was a time when so few people had the means to steal cars that it was acceptable for them to trade their right to steal cars to others as an incentive for them to manufacture more cars. This is no longer the case.
We all have the means to commit grand theft, and we all do it.
Freedom is more important than entert
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Also, because it must be said, "You must be new here."
oops again (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
But, a little more on topic, YouTube's response is just silly, threatening the internet? Is this supposed to become the tech people's "Think of the Children" meme? No offense but if YouTube goes down the internet won't be affected at all. However the accusation is also silly, YouTube pushing football (non-American) in order to raise it's profile. YouTube needs a bigger profile? I mean, is there really any person with internet access for the last couple years, or who simply watches the news, who doesn't know about YouTube?
As for the copyright issues wasn't there some law that said that people posting to a site (text) were responsible for their posts, not the hosting company? I may be wrong about that but if there was such a law would not this fall under it?
Oh well, it's not like YouTube is going down...and even if it did everyone knows that something would come up to replace it...probably a site with less regard for copyright law...you can't stop people from sharing things by making it hard on the places where people share, all that does is make people go to the less reputable places and then you have an even harder time stopping them. Better to let them share on a site like YouTube, where the worst offenders can be stopped, rather than sending the traffic to a site that would make it impossible to stop anything like this.
Re: (Score:2)
But, a little more on topic, YouTube's response is just silly, threatening the internet? Is this supposed to become the tech people's "Think of the Children" meme? No offense but if YouTube goes down the internet won't be affected at all. However the accusation is also silly, YouTube pushing football (non-American) in order to raise it's profile. YouTube needs a bigger profile? I mean, is there really any person with internet access for the last couple years, or who simply watches the news, who doesn't know about YouTube?
The statement may sount silly, but look at it like this: if litigation is the only reaction that content businesses use, it will kill the Internet content business, and likely hurt the usefulness of the Internet as we know it today. Rather than litigate, content owners should be finding ways to get their content out to users at a reasonable cost. Youtube and Google can offer them many services in doing just that. But if content owners simply want to restrict access, overcharge users, and misuse the courts
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It's called Jackpot Justice. Duh!
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Google Will Find a Solution to this Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
The English way (Score:3, Funny)
google falls down (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
FYI, google != Cristiano Ronaldo [youtube.com].
I think I agree with the plaintiff (Score:3, Interesting)
Dawns the Digital age and networks. Say one places one frame of a football game in each of millions of networked computers. Each frame can be noted as a quote and have proper attribution. Each frame can have an index number... say seconds into the game.
A cleaver app could simply download each frame individually from all the separate machines not as a torrent as currently defined... much more grainy. And said cleaver app could use the attribution information to stitch the game right back together. By doing so one would stay within the current legal interpretation of fair usage and at the same time totally subvert the copyright.
This would be no different than downloading a book where each character comes from a separate source. While this might sound screwy... the thing is it can be done and if legal it subverts copyright. But who is to say that 10 million people cannot excerpt from a published copyrighted work separate overlapping or non-overlapping segments? This would be like assigning a book review to a class and then if two students happen to excerpt the same passage or at least some of it - claiming they colluded and hence are guilty of copyright infringement. I think in a court of law one would have to charge a significant portion of the alleged perpetrators.
Then the question might be asked: Would it be legal to download all book reports and look at all excerpts and attempt to do an analysis of the amount of overlap and the distribution of the excepts over the entire book? In order to do this one would need to stitch the book back together from its pieces. I'm sure there is code to do this. I happen to know a chap who stitched the files off his hard drive back together using this technique after the partition resize was botched.
But let me ask... if we are talking about text as in a book then would it be copyright infringement if all of the letter "A"'s come from a small group of machines? What if one machine is programmed to hold only the 1st word or 1st letter of many different works and perhaps is programmed to do a statistical analysis of the usage frequency in position #1 across many types of books each identified by a book reference ID and a list of tags one might like to analyse over. Sound hookey or contrived? Of course. But is it legal research?
This ends up being nothing more than a linked list structure and it can be indexed and thus downloaded in parallel. Perhaps this is how torrents are put together.
The thing is that if _any_ excerpt is legal then everything in the area if infringement becomes increasingly gray as the sophistication increases. Well with Major Exceptions... the law also looks at the PURPOSE in mind. One can excerpt for a book report because the purpose of the excerpt is to support the book report. If 1 million people each write a book report and each use a different excerpt and their ultimate purpose is to subvert the authors copyright then the courts I think would find them guilty of infringement. However if 1 million people write a book report and have no intention of being able to put humpty dumpty back together again then they would not be guilty of infringement.
But what if Cleaver Programmer comes along and realises he can download all these said book reports and from them reconstruct humpty dumpty. Then is Cleaver Programmer guilty of infringement? Its a gray area. In a way yes. In a way no. Cleaver Programmer may for instance legally purchase the material and stitch it back together to illustrate it can be done. That would constitute Fair Usage. Cleaver Programmer for instance might be working on a PhD thesis on reconstruction technigues.
In comparison... (Score:3, Informative)
There are lots of highlight videos from other sources as well, but no/ very few full games like there are for the premiership. Is there a link? Quite probably - why sit through a low-quality version of the full game when you can just as easily see all the interesting parts in the same quality much quicker?
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
Hang on, what the fuck, I'm participating in a conversation about football codes?
Who just typed that?
Parent
Re:Oh no (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
If you squint really hard, you might actually be able to see a sport in between the commercials.
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Re:Oh no (Score:4, Funny)
Where the advertisements kick a ball around.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Where the ball kicks you.
Apparently.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The mistake they make is thinking that the man who takes a dive is being a sissy, as opposed to being a cheating bastard. De fa
Re: (Score:2)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DbO9fm6XZtQ [youtube.com]
or from today:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xpo7w5b3vo8 [youtube.com]