Copyright Laws Abused
Early in the "rich media" revolution, I predicted it would turn out to be an intellectual properties nightmare. Now, it looks like that prediction is coming true.
Viacom on the warpath
On Friday, Viacom asked YouTube to remove from its video-sharing site all pirated clips from Viacom-owned television networks. With current attitudes toward enforcement of such complaints, video-sharing sites such as Google and YouTube are somewhat immune to copyright law so long as they respond promptly to complaints. Unfortunately, with tens of millions of new posts a week, there isn't much chance of checking them all.Sez Viacom:
"After months of ongoing discussions with YouTube and Google, it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users -- Filtering tools promised repeatedly by YouTube and Google have not been put in place, and they continue to host and stream vast amounts of unauthorized video."
Well, duh. Why am I not surprised?
According to Gigi Sohn, co-founder and president of Public Knowledge, an open-access advocacy group"
"using a copyrighted song as the soundtrack to a home video that gets posted on an Internet sharing site such as YouTube, you could be subject to a huge lawsuit."
Here's the article by Candace Lombardi, Staff Writer, CNET News.com -- High bandwidth spam version: Viacom to YouTube: Take down pirated clips, or
Print version
Listen to the PodCast MP3 interview; read the high bandwidth spam version, or print version
Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge was quoted from the Catholic News Service
Here's what the copyright law says
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