Google Video Sued For Copyright Infringement 60
PadRacerExtreme writes to mention an Associated Press article about a lawsuit against Google Video over copyright infringement. The company provided no additional information about the case, which it disclosed in an SEC filing on Wednesday. Some analysts are viewing this as a preview of what may happen to the company after it completes its takeover of the YouTube site. From the article: "Because it indexes so much material owned by others, Google has become accustomed to fielding complaints about copyright infringement. Some of the disputes have triggered lawsuits for everything from Google's efforts to make digital copies of library books to its search engine's ability to display snippets of news stories and photos appearing on other Web sites. Those suits haven't become a big financial drain on Google yet, and investors so far appear confident the company's lawyers will minimize the damage from any claims brought on by the YouTube purchase."
Cultish Landmark Education sues Google (Score:5, Interesting)
The cultish Scientology/EST offshoot known as The Landmark Forum [rickross.com] has claimed copyright infringement against Google and YouTube. The EFF has extensive details [eff.org] and are trying to squash that case.
Background: In 2004 a French TV channel had someone with a hidden camera go to a Landmark Forum indoctrination weekend. The expose was shown to 1.5 million viewers. Soon after the broadcast, Landmark left France. A similar situation occured in Sweden a few years before.
Landmark has no valid copyright in either case but, having learned a lesson from Scientology, are now resorting to intimidation and abuse of the DMCA and court system [rickross.com].
In any event, fire up BitTorrent and get the French video with English subtitles at Pirate Bay [thepiratebay.org] and a Swedish expose on Landmark, sans subtitles at the moment, at this link. [thepiratebay.org]
You will definately want to see these in case one of your family members or friends starts to push you to take a weekend course "that will create new possibilities"...
Spread the word, knowledge is power.
Operation Clambake (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, though, Scientology has a long history of suing people who talk about Scientology for copyright infringement. "You're showing people our secret dogma? How dare you distribute our papers without our consent!" Xenu.net [xenu.net] and Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] have lots of information on Scientology now. (Disclaimer- Xenu.net is strictly anti-Scientology. Wikipedia has mostly facts, which, as we know, have a decidedly anti-Scientological basis).
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In a lot of cases all Scientology needs to do is send a notice. Slashdot caved rather quickly with just a notice, that cases never made it to the lawsuit stage.
After they crushed the first few, all the rest gave up without a fight. Nothing worse than a cult with a crack legal team.
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Ummm, that would be the SCOX scenario.
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Why would someone talk about Scientology for copyright infringement? Is Scientology really the best means for infringing on someone's copyright? Do people perform Scientology versions of Beatles songs for patrons in their bars?
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I hate doing this, but it's definitely. DEFINITELY.
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Arrrgh... thanks
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Right, because I always uncritically accept any new-age self-help bullshit spouted by family or friends... oh wait, no, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves and never speak to them again. (Seriously. I once split up with a girlfriend mostly because she just couldn't get it through her head that Carlos Casta-frickin-neda was a charlatan.)
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What I actually do is to make it a joke whilst still making clear what nonsense I think it is.... "Hi Mum, back from mumbo-jumbo land, 'eh? Was it a good session of fairy stories this week?"
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To be precise, Landmark Forum is a direct offshoot of EST (which is the source of a lot of self-improvement 'cults'), but it has - to the best of my knowledge - no relation to Scientology. Unless you go by the claim that EST itself is an offshoot of Scientology. Now, Werner Erhard, creator of EST, admitted influence by Scientology, but that was among a long list of other things. Really the man took whatever he wanted from a lot of sources.
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They should have waited (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:They should have waited (Score:5, Insightful)
By buying it now, they decided to play it the other way around by dealing with the problems themselves, the Google Way, with all their ressources & influence backing up the dealmaking process.
While I agree this was a costly move, I believe it was a smart one to appropriate themselves the First Mover Advantage.
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(Well, the other answer would be "They're snakeshit crazy" but every other action the company has taken indicates they're stone cold sane, if not downright clever.)
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It seems you should have typed assumed, but the d key is pretty far from the n and t keys. Parlez vous francais? Je parle seul un peu. Plus lentemente, s'il vous plait.
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The only downside to Google is it's wedded to and limited b
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And of course the age old saying: There's no such thing as bad publicity.
Goo
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You don't even have to RTF but to RTS to know that the person is suing Google Video not Youtube.
Um, why the ref to Cuban anyway? (Score:2)
Why does Mark Cuban get any reference here? I don't get it. Saying that Google was a target for lawsuits because it bought YouTube is certainly not a novel idea, and I highly doubt that Cuban was the first to point it out. Has Cuban EVER been relevant? He's a billionaire - that's it. He happened to sell a company at the best pos
The money...!! (Score:4, Interesting)
My advice to Google is this: Prepare some form of profit sharing and all potential suits will be stopped din their tracks.
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AFAIK, YouTube has never made a profit, or even broken even. They were bankrolled the entire time. You ever wonder who got most of that billion dollars for the YouTube deal? Whoever it was that spent $100m and bankrolled YouTube since it's existence, that's who.
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Oh, the irony! (Score:1)
It's all about the benjamins (Score:2)
Typical, just bloody typical... (Score:1)
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Big copyright holders will want to make deals (Score:2)
It's standard 10-Q boilerplate (Score:5, Informative)
Legal Matters
Certain companies have filed trademark infringement and related claims against us over the display of ads in response to user queries that include trademark terms. The outcomes of these lawsuits have differed from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Courts in France have held us liable for allowing advertisers to select certain trademarked terms as keywords. We are appealing those decisions. We were also subject to two lawsuits in Germany on similar matters where the courts held that we are not liable for the actions of our advertisers prior to notification of trademark rights. We are litigating or recently have litigated similar issues in other cases in the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Israel and Austria. Adverse results in these lawsuits may result in, or even compel, a change in this practice which could result in a loss of revenue for us, which could harm our business.
Certain entities have also filed copyright claims against us, alleging that features of certain of our products, including Google Web Search, Google News, Google Video, Google Image Search, and Google Book Search, infringe their rights. In addition, our planned acquisition of YouTube may also subject us to additional copyright claims upon the closing of the transaction. Adverse results in these lawsuits may include awards of damages and may also result in, or even compel, a change in our business practices, which could result in a loss of revenue for us or otherwise harm our business.
From time to time, we may also become a party to other litigation and subject to claims incident to the ordinary course of business, including intellectual property claims (in addition to the trademark and copyright matters noted above), labor and employment claims, breach of contract claims, tax and other matters. Although the results of litigation and claims cannot be predicted with certainty, we believe that the final outcome of the matters discussed above will not have a material adverse effect on our business, consolidated financial position, results of operations or cash flow.
I propose to remove them from google (Score:3, Funny)
itsatrap (Score:1)
Enjoy the DMCA, suckers (Score:2)
The DMCA is a terrible, terrible law for a bunch of reasons. One of the gems is section 512 [cornell.edu], which effectively allows anyone willing to engage in a little perjury to silence someone else for ten to fourteen days. This has been used to silence legit speech before. In practice there is no penalty for the perjury, after the two weeks just drop the claim with an, "Oops, I guess I was wrong, sorry." In theory you can countersue for damages, but you'd have to prove it was intentional, not a mistake, and that y
a real site for "nerds" would not fuck up grammar (Score:1)
[it's] = [it is]