Google to Viacom - The Law is Clear, and On Our Side 290
An anonymous reader writes "Google responded to the opinion piece in the Washington Post by a Viacom Lawyer with a letter to the editor titled 'An End Run on Copyright Law.' Their strong wording sends a very concrete message: 'Viacom is attempting to rewrite established copyright law through a baseless lawsuit. In February, after negotiations broke down, Viacom requested that YouTube take down more than 100,000 videos. We did so immediately, working through a weekend. Viacom later withdrew some of those requests, apparently realizing that those videos were not infringing, after all. Though Viacom seems unable to determine what constitutes infringing content, its lawyers believe that we should have the responsibility and ability to do it for them. Fortunately, the law is clear, and on our side.'"
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Analysis from the Future (Score:5, Insightful)
That won't happen. They will ask for and receive extension after extension.
Re:This requires some translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This requires some translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, Google doesn't want Viacom to drop the suit. Google was gunning for this fight and they want Viacom to come at them swinging hard. It's a fight Google is likely to win, but it has to be a fight otherwise it won't resolve anything and the rampant DMCA abuse will continue.
Re:Tag this: (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because Google's entire business model is based around using other people's copyrighted material.
It's a symbiotic relationship where Google can use pieces of peoples content to advertise over while simultaneously causing that full content to be consumed, making the creators money.
What a strange new world...
Re:Tag this: (Score:4, Insightful)
So now what? Does she write book 2 knowing that if she publishes it she'll only sell a few hundred thousand copies before stores are swamped with the (now legal) copies from the major publisher? Or does she just quit writing.
If there's no copyright, than it makes a lot more sense for media publishing companies to quit paying artists, and specialize in leeching off of small publishers. Which in turn means the small publishers will increasingly make no money for actually paying the media creators, which means the media creators eventually go back to flipping burgers.
In short: abolishing copyright entirely completely eradicates the financial incentive to pay artists to make work. I'm sure some will do it anyway, but most people have to make a living, so there will be virtually no professional, full-time artists of any kind ever again. That, to me, is insane.
Re:Tag this: (Score:1, Insightful)
Should I be able to bust into your house and have sex with your wife?
What, no, she's 'your' wife?
Can't own ideas, eh? Can't own people, either.
Should I be able to, after having my way with your wife, make off with your hi def TV?
What, no, it's 'your' tv?
Can't own ideas, eh? Can't own objects, either.
Sorry, but information doesn't want to be free. Information isn't a living thing, and it doesn't even have animal intelligence.
Information is nothing but a different 'type' of object, and there's no reason there should't be ownership laws involved. But, but, but, your wife is a person! But, but, but, your TV is a real tangible thing!
But, but but - listen, assholes (and I don't mean you, parent poster, as you have a clue!) - what, a TV takes material resources to create? Time to create?
What's the difference between a TV rolling off an assembly line, and a novel written by some guy in his basement? None. Both were produced by hard working people (and some robots in the case of TVs). That guy in his basement deserves to get paid just as much as those hard working people and robots in the TV factory.
There's obviously a point where enough is enough. Patents expire after a certain time; so should copyright. I argue not on the side of a certain irritating rodent who, if things continue, will never be released into the public domain. But crying for the complete abolishment of copyright is sheer stupidity and insanity all rolled into one.
Re:After reading both letters... (Score:3, Insightful)
I sincerely hope nobody from the MPAA, RIAA, or Viacom sees your post. "Well your honor, it's easier for everybody surfing the web to find our content and notify us if the find something infringing. So if you *see* copyright infringement and don't report it then it's a crime!"
Re:After reading both letters... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tag this: (Score:4, Insightful)
Your wife owns herself. And no one's arguing that we should drop ownership of property laws. Objects can be owned by nature of them being tangible.
Information is nothing but a different 'type' of object, and there's no reason there should't be ownership laws involved
How about "the will of the people?"
The Real Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? Because it's overkill (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, any elected official trying to 'crack down on speeding' by tossing speeders in jail wouldn't last long in office. When you give ridiculous punishments for minor offenses, you just breed contempt for the law (not to mention annoy everyone but special interest groups).
Re:Tag this: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tag this: (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to point out that the greatest works of art of all time were produced in an era where there were no such things as copyright laws. It's called patronage, and it worked for thousands of years.
Maybe if every teeny bopper whore who wants to pout at a camera, sing to an over-produced track and get paid millions for it suddenly can't make money because the artificial monopoly supporting such a business model vanishes, we wouldn't be innundated with mindless crap. Maybe we would all be better off if the only people who made art were the ones that were passionate enough to make it without thought of getting paid.
Nah, you're right. That's crazy.
Re:Tag this: (Score:2, Insightful)
otoh, it would discourage those artists who are cranking out mindless drivel (*cough* *cough* Robert Jordan *cough* *cough*) just to sell a few copies so that they can make a living.
As far as what J.K. Rowling might do in your hypothetical scenario, I think these options are more likely:
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should abolish copyright law entirely, but holding on to outdated business models doesn't make sense either. IMO, its only a matter of time before the book publishers lose their monopoly position just as the music and movie publishers have. Music and movies got hit first because you don't have to interact with the media itself to enjoy the content - you load it into the player and walk away. Its different with a book. At least, for now.
Re:Tag this: (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the artist's income only that copyright seeks to protect, it's also the cultural enhancement that society itself recieves and benefits from, which is more intangible but nevertheless a Good Thing. Yes, if all copyright were abolished some artists in some mediums would continue to produce, but we would not have anywhere near the amount of creative works we have now since it would be much harder to earn a living without doing some other parttime work. Copyright is supposed to strike a balance between the needs of the creator (income) and the needs of society (entertainment, culture) but lately the balance has been pushed by corporations far in favor of the creator, or rather the holder of the copyright. One way that this might also be addressed is to prohibit the wholesale transfer of copyrights to corporations, removing the incentive for a corp. to hoard works and lobby for ever stronger/longer terms. Just a quick thought, needs more fleshing out.
My main point was to defend the parent who I believe is essentially correct: removing all copyrights will in the end hurt artists by making it harder for them to make a living solely from their works and returning us to a period where works are produced mostly on commission, which means only the wealthy could afford what we take for granted today. It won't happen overnight, and it won't stop all artists from producing, but the variety, quality, and breadth of works currently available will definitely decrease.
Re:After reading both letters... (Score:5, Insightful)
The DMCA safe harbor provision declares it to explictly be the owner of the copyright who must object & request the takedown of the material. In fact, it has always been the responsibility of the copyright owner to initiate any form of copyright complaint. There is no way that YouTube or any other content aggregate can determine if the material is:
Given those factors, it is strictly the copyright owners responsibility to identify & request the removal of infringing material. YouTube in fact goes farther & uses a hash system to block the re-upload of videos it removes - in effect performing the pro-active filtering that Viacom wants.
Re:Tag this: (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting choices for examples of stuff people are willing to produce for free. Each and every one of those is a derivative work, or at least based on someone else's original work -- which is mostly likely copyrighted and created at least in part for profit.
So we'd lose all of the original work, and be able to 'mod' and 'remix' each other's derivative dreck. Woo hoo.
Real issue here (Score:3, Insightful)
Entity A has a service by which lots of stuff gets picked up and made available to others. Some of this is owned by other people and Entity A has no rights to it at all. Is it Entity A's responsibility to ensure they do not collect such material, or is it the owner's? DMCA pretty clearly says it is the owner's and this works on a small scale pretty well.
But when Entity A is the size of Waste Management and they "accidently" pick up every car in your neighborhood to sell them at auction, is it necessarily a good move to say that every car owner has to sue them individually?
YouTube is a vacuum cleaner of mammoth proportions and is certainly capable of sucking up whatever content there is to acquire through the dillgent efforts of anonymous contributors. There are vast similarites with Napster here - sure there is a lot of non-infringing content but also lots of infringing content as well. Grokster pretty much said the service can be held liable for copyright abuses of its users.
I don't think this is at all clear cut. Yes, Viacom probably could do a better job at identifying infringing material and a compromise might be to enable Viacom (and others) to have easy access to recently-uploaded materials for such identification purposes. But in no way does YouTube (or anyone else) get to say they have no responsibility in the matter at all.
Re:The Real Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Already can be done - licensing. Artists aren't obliged to sign their copyrights away - they can instead let somebody license the work from them with whatever restrictions they feel fit to place upon it.
The problem is, historically, the cost is distribution. To make any money from your copyrighted work you need to distribute it, distributing it means going to the big media companies and they'll only distribute if you hand over the copyright, not license it from you.
The internet, computers, podcasts, YouTube and the like are moving the distribution cost lower and lower. Hopefully we'll get to a point soon where artists realise they aren't beholden to some of the current companies to get their works out and make a reasonable sum of money from it.
Re:Tag this: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if it became clear that flea market organizers kept welcoming DVD pirates back (after the infringing content has been discovered previously), then the organizer may be setting him/herself up for some argument of complicity...
Re:Tag this: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tag this: (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to point out that the greatest works of art of all time were produced in an era where there were no such things as copyright laws. It's called patronage, and it worked for thousands of years.
Thousands of years without every man, woman and child owning a high speed "printing press" in their homes
Re:Analysis from the Future (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Real Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tag this: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with your first point is that the mega-publisher has no incentive at all to do that. They'd probably have to pay Rowling a shit-ton of money if they wanted to publish her next book, and all they had to do the first time is pay $20 for a retail copy. Do you really think they'll ever give up a deal that sweet for, literally, no reason? The Grateful Dead may have done a huge number of free concerts, but you're kidding yourself if you think even a majority of them were, they were just nice enough to allow paying concert goers to record and legally distribute (for free) the recordings if they so chose, though they charged extra for that privilege. They most certainly did not give away their studio recordings for free. You're crazy if you think The Dead didn't profit greatly from copyrighting their work, though it should be noted they did so without selling out or being draconian about it.
Your second point is just wrong. Copyright was never intended to keep one party from fraudulently claiming that another created something. That's what trademark is for, as well as libel. If I take a copy of the new Harry Potter book and publish a thousand copies without getting permission and paying her (and her publisher, and anyone else I'd need to pay), I'm in violation of copyright; if I cross J.K. Rowling's name out, write mine in, and publish a thousand copies without paying her (etc), i am both in violation of copyright and flagrantly plagiarizing her; if I write up a thousand pages of TimeCube style ranting and publish them so that they appear to be a copy of the new Harry Potter book, then I am in violation of trademark , and Rowling et al would probably have a very strong libel and defamation case against me... I would also, most likely, by committed to a mental health facility pending psychological evaluation.
The problem is not with copyright (or patent) itself, because we really do need that in order to protect content creators (or inventors) from predatory publishers. The problem is with our current implementation. Part of the problem is also that many content creators are completely unwilling to accept that there are other ways to profit: like providing paid support for free software (a la all the major Linux players), live performance (I think Shakespeare is the single best example of this: he wrote all of his plays so that his theater troupe could perform them for paying audience members and wrote his non-dramatic works as a way of advertising his talents to the upper classes in hopes they'd sponsor the company), or various other techniques, but they aren't always practical or applicable (a painter, sculptor, or novelist can't really touch up the work after the fact, or expect people to pay to watch them work, they really just have to sell their work, and in the case of the novelist they can't even rely on others not to be able to copy it exactly or customers to be able to recognize such copies or care if they do).
Re:Tag this: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is silly. There's a very fundamental difference between tangible goods and ideas. If you take my car, I have no car anymore. If you take my song, I still have it. So you have not deprived me of the song.
You can not deprive people of ideas by "stealing" them, and thus stealing an idea is different than stealing a tangible object.
So the reason that people can't take my TV is quite simply that then I will no longer have a TV. But if I start whistling my own invented melody and someone hears me and starts whistling it too, I haven't lost the melody. The wife example is silly. If my wife wants to have sex with some dude - much as that would suck for me - then I can't stop her. If she doesn't want to, then it's rape. Are you now trying to say that rape and theft are the same thing?
What's the difference between a TV rolling off an assembly line, and a novel written by some guy in his basement? None. Both were produced by hard working people (and some robots in the case of TVs).
Books, as in the physical objects, are not copyrighted. It is the contents of those books - which are intangible - that are copyrighted. I suggest you do some reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_propert
But crying for the complete abolishment of copyright is sheer stupidity and insanity all rolled into one.
It saddens me that I agree with you on anything.
Re:The Real Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
In short, why is a company that has not produced anything creative allowed to take advantage of a legal right that was supposedly enacted to protect creativity?
A couple things to note. First of all it's interesting that you qualify corporations with "large". I take it you understand why corporations are so important to modern business. What they do is limit the risk of any investor to only their investment. In other words if you put $1,000 into a corporation and the corporation gets sued and loses all it's assets and still owes money, the creditors can't come to you for more cash. Without this guarantee of safety, investing in corporations would be even more risky, and only the rich could do it (only they could run the risk). So it's actually a powerful democratization effect to have corporations exist as legal entities because it protects their investors.
However you're right that when corporations get really big it's hard to make sure that the people running the corporation have the interests of the stakeholders at heart. In fact, it's hard to even define who the stake holders are. In America the stakeholders are the shareholders. In Europe the stakeholders are also the company employees (even if they don't own stock). In Japan it's company employees and also other businesses (because in Japan companies own each other's stocks at a much higher rate). In none of these cases is the stakeholder the general public. So trying to figure out how the general public can none the less impose some penalties on corporation decision makers for bad decisions is an extremely, extremely tricky problem.
I agree with you in principle that it's a problem, but I think the real fundamental problem isn't about copyright, it's about how to design corporate governance structure so that the individual decision makers in corporations are responsible for the decisions the corporations make. This is harder to do than it sounds.
Re:Tag this: (Score:5, Insightful)
I get the impression that you don't understand what copyrights are. If you have a copyright to an idea you do not own that idea. Ideas can not be owned. Period. Copyright laws and patents do not contradict this common sense notion. A copyright law does not grant you ownership of an idea. It grants you ownership to exclusive rights to control the distribution of that idea for profit.
This isn't just a matter of pragmatics (although that comes into it to) but also of ethics. If it takes me 1,000 hours to write my novel is it fair that anyone else can come and copy it and sell it? I invested the work, but if there's no copyright law then they can reap the benefit. Most people agree that this is not fair. So artists deserve *some* rights.
On the other hand if I spend 1,000 hours writing a book does it makes sense that I can then sue someone for quoting a passage from my book? Or that I can stop people from reading my book if I don't want them to? Imagine an author wandering around a book store "I don't like the looks of you, give me that book back. Get out." So clearly giving artists *all* rights is also not fair.
Since both extremes - no rights and all rights - are not ethical than if you want to find the ethical then by definition you are looking for something in between. You are, as it were, attempting to strike a balance.
Do physical property laws "strike a balance"? No, what's mine is mine, and what's your is yours, period.
This is false. Both taxes and eminent domain demonstrate that we do, in fact, strike a balance in this case as well. If you own a house on land the country needs for a road, then you don't get to say "what's mine is mine". The gov't knocks your house down (and pays you for it).
I disagree. The total quantity of works produced might decrease, but I think the variety would actually increase.
It's called the tragedy of the commons. If everyone can profit from an copying from an invention as much as from inventing the invention, then everyone has the incentive *not* to be the one that does the hard work of inventing. This is a more fundamental law than your liking for indie music. Why should there be a larger variety of music if people are being paid less to make it? It's not as though anyone is forcing people who are willing to make music for free not to make it now. So right now everyone that is willing to make money for free makes it, and also people who need or want to get paid make it. You take away the option to get paid, and only the people willing to make music for free will make it. How are fewer artists "more variety"?
Re:Tag this: (Score:5, Insightful)
So... how many novels have you seen performed? Not adaptations of novels, but actual novels? There's an argument to be made that copyright is less important for the performance arts, but in that case you're not merely selling the work, but the performance of the work. So it makes sense. But a lot of art is not performed. Just tough look to them? I suppose Terry Pratchett should just start writing novels live and charging $10 an hour to watch him work?
I don't care about publishers and distributors. They're just ripping off the creators like the railroad monopolies did to the farmers, and they can all rot.
They are *now*, but that's because now any 8 year old with a CD can make perfect digital copies of most forms of art. Music, video, or text. But publishing companies were invented when the means of publication and distribution were much, much more expensive. The plunge in the cost of publication and distribution is a relatively new thing, historically.
The publisher's teat is running dry. They are a fifth wheel trying to put more laws on the books to maintain the artists' dependence on them.
This is a drastic overstatement. One of the most important things publishers do is marketing. And as Google shows, that's still an industry that is thriving today. So publishers aren't dead yet. Furthermore, not all media is digital yet, and that means there's still a reason for publishers to exist. I want a hardback copy of Harry Potter and the Deahtly Hallows, not a
Why should I subsidize a full time artist with corrupt law that only promotes hoarding and speculation?
This is just silly. Copyright law doesn't force you to subsidize anybody. If you don't want to subsidize J. K. Rowling, don't buy her book. That's fine with me. Find an author that is willing to give their work away. But I'm happy to give J. K. Rowling her money. And if she has worked out a deal with Scholastic to print the book, then I'm happy to give them their cut. And if Borders is kind enough to take shipment of the books and provide nice displays for me to peruse, than I'll gladly fork over some cash to them as well. Conveniently enough for me, all that money is bundled into one transaction.
Copyright doesn't force you to pay money at all. It just gives authors the right to set limitations on their work. If you don't like the price they set: don't pay. You don't have some inalienable right to enjoy art you didn't create for free.
There is no reason a reproduction of work already performed should fill your wallet. Make your contract, perform the work, get paid, and walk away. That's all you or anybody else is entitled to.
Did you really write this entire thing without ever once stopping to think that not all art is performance art?
Re:Tag this: (Score:4, Insightful)
This strikes me as really funny. Like it or not, the reason that pop songs like this keep getting made is because people by them. It's actually relatively democratic. I mean, you might not like the music. I certainly don't care for it. But you can't argue with the fact that a lot of people like the music enough to pay money to get it.
But rather than the democratic ideal you'd rather go back to a system where a few mega-rich fat dudes literally decided what got made. You honestly think that would be an improvement? You know what - evenif the mega rich fat dudes were all my friends and made sure that all my favorite screamo bands and prog rock bands stuck around forever, I'd still be deeply troubled by the fact that in general people had to buy music that was decided for them by a few rich people.
Consumerism lets people vote with their wallets. The trouble is, as you've observed, they tend to make stupid decisions. Still, I'd rather take the stupid masses than a tyranny any day: even when it comes to music and not politics.
Re:The Real Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
When the government starts dictating who can sell to who, it usually ends up worse for everyone concerned. In this particular case, if a label can't get access to a significant future revenue stream, then they are not going to stump up the cash for production, advertising and so on. Every limit you place on what the corporation can do with the rights gets instantly and automatically translated into a limitation on how much the artist can get paid. In your example, if a company is willing to pay £100,000 for the rights to all productions, then it might only be willing to pay £20,000 for the rights to the first production. Is this a better deal for the musician? Well, it might be, or it might not be. I'll let him figure that one out - he doesn't need me, or government, to decide for him.
To answer your question about why, it is simply about distribution of labour. Labels are good at marketing etc, artists are good at creating music. Artists pay for the labels to promote them by giving them the copyrights. At the moment it is claimed that artists get a bad deal - if it is true, then it is time for the artists to start wising up, not for the government to introduce new populist laws.
YouTube doesn't need Viacom anyway? (Score:2, Insightful)