I’m sure that this has been discussed previously, but a search didn’t turn anything up.
Why is YouTube legal? Sure, anyone can post their home videos of aunt Mabel’s 90th birthday party. And anyone can post their own work under their own copyright.
But to copy a scene from a movie or TV show – how does that not run afoul of copyright laws?
Youtube is protected under the “Safe Harbor” provisions in the DMCA bill which say website owners cannot be held legally liable for the actions of their users so long as they are responsive to any copyright complaints that are filed in the appropriate manner.
This was most recently tested in court with Youtube vs Viacom which was just recently decided on the side of Youtube.
I would presume a certain amount falls under " fair use". Stuff gets taken down all the time for copyright violations.
You can be sure that many owners of copyright in movies and TV programs are aware of the existence of YouTube, and are likely to monitor it for others posting their copyrighted works. If they stay up there, then either:
(1) The coyright owner was the one posting on YouTube; or
(2) They don’t mind the extracts being posted there.
Because if they didn’t like it, they would tell YouTube, and YouTube would remove the videos.
Try and find most any mainstream Fox program like Simpsons on YouTube. Yes, you’ll find short clips but not episodes.
Lots of music videos are only left up if they are those silly slide shows of still pics with the music playing rather than the actual music video.
With regards to the legality, there are a couple of U.S. Supreme Court precedents that are on point. Sony v. Universal (1984) held that technology that allows copyright infringement can still be legal as long as it also has “commercially significant noninfringing uses”. Videos of Aunt Mabel’s 90th and one’s own videos pretty obviously falls into this category. The water is muddied somewhat, though, by MGM v. Grokster (2005). The main difference with this case is that in this case, Grokster was alleged to have “induced” copyright infringement via its actions, and so was liable for said infringements. What, exactly, “inducement” means is somewhat of a grey area. Here’s a pretty good article on copyright liability issues for P2P developers.
It’s complicated and the true legality is whatever the courts say on any given day. YouTube does not post copyrighted material and it is against their policy for users to do so, yet users do it anyway. It is the users who are violating the law.
Napster (remember Napster?) came in on the wrong side of this equation when their service facilitated file copying and nearly all of it involved copyrighted material. I do not know why Napster was found in violation while YouTube still operates. They’re both file sharing services, but YouTube hosts all the content themselves whereas Napster just ran a cataloging service and the pipeline to move data.
All this, and there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
If searching (the many) Doors performances on YouTube makes me want to buy some material, then hey, why take it down. Elektra Records no doubt feels the same way.
Exactly. It’s a form of advertising, and wise labels are waking up to that. I’ve bought more than one song or album after hearing it on a YouTube, most recently last night! A wikipedia entry on “The Lebanon” by Human League was linked in a thread here, I went and looked at it, which led me to YouTube, which led me to the iTunes store, which led me to OMD, which led me to ABC, which led me to memories of hanging out at Bramalea Town Centre when I was in second year… ah, memory lane… then I bought “The Lebanon” and an OMD album. 
Google does have agreements with some content companies to allow their stuff to appear on youtube.
The problem with this line of thought is it shifts the financial/time burden of patrolling copyright violations from the site that encourages massive violations of other people’s rights so they can make money of the ad views to the rightful owners.
Lots of cars are stolen each year. If you find a stolen car you can’t just keep it under the assumption that if the owners wanted it they would have found it already otherwise they don’t mind if you have it.
Yeah, but it’s up for the label to decide that, not other people.
Dan,
Your arguments sound like those of Howard Stern. But look at it this way.
No one is arguing about videos of “Aunt Mabel”, right. So in that context youtube should be allowed to exist. So they are at the mercy of the uploaders. How could youtube bare the burden of vouching for clearance of every single video presented. It would be impossible. This is why the burden is “shifted” to the content owners. Most if not all corporations affected have lawyers on year round retainer; they are already being paid so there is no real extra cost to them to have their lawyers complain when necessary or desired.
I thought that Napster had problems because they couldn’t (didn’t want to, or were unable to) remove copyrighted files from their directory. Whereas Youtube will remove videos if the copyright owner complains. I Am Not A Lawyer but isn’t that why Youtube still operates, and not Napster?
YouTube actually allows the copyright holder to, as an alternative to taking the video down, use it to advertise. I first heard of this when this wedding dance videobecame inexplicably popular; the record label used it as an opportunity to place a link to buy the Chris Brown track contained in the video.
If the copyright holder doesn’t mind the video on youtube, there’s no requirement for youtube to take it down. People are seeing that youtube is a promotional tool.
But the copyright holder can ask for something to be taken down, and youtube is required. Whether that’s good or not – and that’s certainly not something that had a hard and fast answer* – it’s the right of the copyright holder to control his work, no matter what others may think.
*An even bigger question is whether Youtube is good for music/movies, etc. in general. In the long run, it will be an unmitigated disaster (and not in the ways you think I’m talking about).
I am a professional entertainer. It is very easy to search myself and takes very little time. Private artists all have a responsibility to monitor the distribution of their work, both legal and illegal. This has been true for quite a while, and celebrity artists have a full-time employee that monitors all of this for them.
There’s a very popular YouTube user, Malinky2Stoatir, who puts up all the Craig Ferguson Late Late Show episodes. Recently her account was suspended, and we all thought it was CBS finally cracking down, even though until then they had a respectful relationship with each other, including Craig himself, who even follows Malinky on Twitter.
It turns out her account was suspended due to a different clip that she had on her channel, from the Drew Carey Show, and it was Warners who asked it be taken down. It was a third strike after similar digressions, and seemed to be based on the usual arbitrary nature of what constitutes breach of copyright.
But she’s slowly putting them back up on another channel, one specifically devoted to Craig. Which is where it should have been all along, so that all her videos would not have been shutdown at once.
She also has to avoid clips from other sources that are shown on the LLS. The clips are often only authorized for a single showing on TV. Even if that very clip is available on YouTube sans advertisements.