YouTube is a collection of literally millions of copyrighted works, used without permission, and seemingly with utter impunity.
Hell, one of the most respected businesses online, Google, recently bought them out!
Users of the SDMB, contributors from Slate, and many other avid defenders of IP routinely link to copyrighted material from the site without consequence.
Considering their incredibly high profile, how is it that haven’t they been sued by anyone yet?
The users of P2P services, despite being decidedly more underground and offering essentially the same material, have had their brains sued out by the RIAA.
What makes YouTube so special that they escape this fate?
The simple factual answer is that they remove any copyrighted material when the legitimate copyright holder asks them, which is what the law specifies.
We will now see a long parade of [largely uninformed] opinions about copyright which will eventually throw this thread over into GD after much acrimony.
When they receive complaints, YouTube does act reasonably fast to delete copyrighted material. So those cases don’t move beyond the Cease and Desist phase.
In addition, YouTube has made deals with NBC, CBS and a few other companies to officially distribute promotional materials; in return, they largely look away from copyrighted stuff posted by fans, as long as it’s kept relatively short. (This is also why YouTube introduced their 10-minute clip limit.)
You can bet that YT is going to be acting proactively a lot more now in nipping copyright infringement in the bud now that it’s owned by Google. I suspect anything in violation wil lhave a lifespan of days (if not hours), as opposed to possibly weeks of things escaping legal notice or attention.
Maybe nothing. Variants of this question are appearing in many quarters, and Time Warner appears to be firing the opening salvos:
Also, some of the large record labels are playing it smarter this time. Sony BMG, Universal and Warner Brothers all worked out revenue sharing deals before the Google acquisition:
Let me throw in an even more general question. How does Google itself or any other search engine for that matter get away with it?
They just go around around and grab every bit of content they can find, cache it on their servers, and then make money by presenting other people’s work in an easy format. I am glad it is allowed but it seems like that type of thing would run afoul of the law in any other medium.
I believe there have been some lawsuits against Google for this precise issue. However, Google does respect any sites that are set up with a “no archive” file, and would take anything down if there was a complaint.
Archive.org has the same issue with archiving web pages. But so far, there has been no definitive ruling. I’m guessing Google could pay enough to make any lawsuit go away.
There’s also the fact that a not-insignificant portion of the material on YouTube is actually put up by the copyright holder. Particularly for videos from small-label bands.
I started a similar thread a little while ago, that never really went anywhere.
I still don’t think that any of the claims that people make about why Youtube is different didn’t apply equally to, say, the internet radio stations that let you choose songs to play. And they all got sued into non-existence.
A friend of mine who works for Disney wants to go after YouTube in the worst way, but I just don’t think she’d be able to knock out everything that wasn’t cleared by the Mouse, not to mention all the other studios. There’s so much of it.
Apparently professional intellectual property lawyers think they know more about the subject than you do. People in that other thread kept trying to tell you that but you brushed them off, which is not the same thing as the thread not going anywhere.
Apparently. By “professional intellectual property lawyers,” are you referring to those employed by the RIAA and video sharing sites, or to the other posters responding in that thread? If the former, that’s a cop-out answer. If the latter, none of them identified as such.
How did I “brush them off”? Several people suggested reasons why Youtube was different, and as far as I can tell I responded to all of them. And then people stopped making suggestions.
Napster did the same thing. Not initially, when they were still trying to fight every lawsuit, but once it was ordered by a judge, they happily filtered search results to remove infringing works when notified. That didn’t stop the lawsuits.
For one, it’s easy to download video off of Youtube. For two, that doesn’t explain why other such sites, like Vimeo, which allow downloading, aren’t getting sued. For three, it doesn’t explain why internet “radio” sites, which allowed people to pick their own playlists but not download the music did get sued.
I agree with those who posted that the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA should protect Youtube. But by the same logic, they should have protected other services and didn’t.
None of your responses betrayed any understanding of the legal arguments underlying the suit. Safe harbor? Have you read any analyses of the Napster case? They lost on Safe Harbor.
IOW, the Judge found that very basis of the extistence of Napster was predicated on the illigeal swapping of copyrighted music, which is not the purpose or even the de facto majority of Youtube’s video displays.
You’re simply wrong in equating Youtube and Napster, and any attorney active in the field would see this in a second. They do in fact see this and they are handling Youtube in a different way.
Heck, I’ve worked on major TV shows where we intentionally take clips from the show and “leak” them to youtube. Build buzz and get eyeballs to watch the rest of your show. Suing the fans is counterproductive, when you can work with them to build a larger fanbase instead.
Out of curiousity, is there any sort of “fair-use” concept for copyrighted video? I can quote a short excerpt from a copyrighted text on the Dope without breaking the law, does this principle extend to TV/movies? Could YouTube just limit copyrighted postings to a minute or two and thus have them all be legal due to fair use?