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Viacom Sued Over YouTube Parody Removal
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Mar 23, 2007 06:38 AM
from the turnabout-still-fair-play dept.
from the turnabout-still-fair-play dept.
A self aware computer input device writes "Just a week after Viacom sued Google over copyrighted material, MoveOn.org Civic Action and Brave New Films LLC have sued Viacom claiming the cable network company improperly asked the video-sharing site YouTube to remove a parody of the network's 'The Colbert Report.' Couple this with the iFilm fiasco reported earlier, and you have to question how a company like Viacom can cry foul when it can't even accurately account for its own copyrighted material."
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iFilm Infringement Could Blunt Viacom's YouTube Argument 119 comments
Radio Silence writes "Infringing videos on iFilm could undermine Viacom's case against YouTube. Although it's arguably not a nest of infringement like YouTube, iFilm appears to host more than a handful of videos for which its corporate parent Viacom does not own the copyright. More importantly, Viacom isn't engaging in the kind of proactive infringement identification practices it expects of YouTube, which may cause problems for them in court. 'if Viacom isn't willing to take the same steps with iFilm that it wants YouTube to take with copyrighted content, Viacom may have a harder time making its case before the judge presiding over the case. "It would have some persuasive value with a judge if YouTube says 'look, they're ranting and raving about all this infringement occurring on my site and they're not doing anything about it themselves,'" said copyright attorney Greg Gabriel.'"
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Editing still apparently optional on /. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Editing still apparently optional on /. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174297&thresh
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"Sorry boss, but I couldn't provision those 4 servers you asked for because I'm trying to keep the data center more 'Real'."
Fowl (Score:5, Funny)
Those vultures at Viacom have a full-fledged plan to feather their nests by hatching lawsuits -- and it looks like some people are getting soar about it. Hiring those legal eagles to flip them the bird won't come cheep, though.
Bah, the RIAA probably egged them on in the first place.
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You Tube link (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty unfunny imo.
Re:You Tube link (Score:4, Interesting)
I dunno, some of it was hilarious:
That was hilarious. The rest? Not as much. I think their humor was a little too subtle and poorly executed - the people making the jokes weren't comedians (Al Franken's a politician, right?).
So, not the funniest thing ever, but still mildly amusing. They were obviously trying to be funny, but didn't quite succeed, and so they sounded more like people who simply didn't get the joke than people who were really just advertising for the Colbert Report.
Which is obviously why Viacom had to try and take it down. No one but Viacom is allowed to advertise their shows. If you so much as mention their show ... oh crap. Gotta go.
Parent
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Doesn't matter (Score:2)
Let's call Kyle's dad (Score:3, Funny)
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I read the summary, and this song [metrolyrics.com] immediately came to mind. Especially "Aww, do I even need a reason?"
Submitter misses the point. (Score:5, Informative)
They want to shift the burden of policing to the website operator.
The law:
Copyright violator puts material on website without proper rights to do so.
Copyright holder complains to website operator.
Website operator immediately takes down material, then follows up as appropriate.
Courts, whatever follow.
In exchange for certain protections (and they made out like bandits, but it's still not enough), the industry's lobbyists agreed to bear the weight of policing when the DMCA was finally passed in 1998.
What Viacom wants:
Website operator is responsible for making sure material in violation of license never appears on their site.
If this ever happens, copyright holder gets one biiillllion dollars (well, 1.6, but you get the pinky anyhow).
Well, that, or viacom just gets to dictate terms to google when they finally partner up.
As the google/youtube lawyer said this morning on NPR--this is something they should take up in the Congress, not the Courts.
Re:Submitter misses the point. (Score:4, Insightful)
Especially of the Colbert Report (of all things). Even ignoring the "oh-you're-one-of-them" reaction from fans, somehow I don't think it's in Colbert's best financial interests to restrict parody.
Parent
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And this is the most important part of the issue. Google, Youtube, et al, have exactly zero insight into the contractual arrangements of Viacom or anyone else. It's impossible for them to have access to the necessary information such that they may pass judgement over the validity of a submission.
If Viacom can shift the policing effort onto someone else, they might as well b
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To be honest, I can't recall who, if anyone, followed that correctly or incorrectly in this case. Just a small note on the process.
The real point, however, is what disturbs me
As far as I am concerned.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Indeed. Seems to me this is a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
I'm sure Colbert is loving the parody of a parody, but Viacom's lawyers are obviously to dense to figure it out.
If Colbert was smart, he'd take the video and "rip it apart" and do his own "behind the scenes" investigation of Moveon.org and Al Franken and Media Matters for America.
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Yes, this would be apt, if one hand was a giant, all ecompassing hand that controls almost everything, and the left hand was a miniscule part of the other hand, employed by the other hand, and in the situation where almost all content produced is owned by the other hand. Yes, then this would be apt. What Steve personally wants, has very little do sway in what Viacom wants, and it probably shouldn't.
I reall
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Two wrongs don`t make a right (Score:2)
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making a big deal out of nothing (Score:2)
viacom - ifilm = isolated incident
slashdot = grasping at straws for news
Gosh (Score:2)
Someday we will evolve beyond the mind cancer known as politics.
Re:Oookay (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Oookay (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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Somebody has to pay for the bandwidth (Score:2)
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Then they should have advertisers sponsor the bandwidth.
Do advertisers generally pay up front for advertising on web pages? I know that bandwidth providers generally charge up front. So, unless you know how many people are going to watch the video beforehand, it's a pretty bad idea. Besides, nobody would have watched this video if they hadn't gotten sued to begin with, and who's going to advertise on that?
Is downloading via torrent more of a pain in the ass than not being able to download the video at all?
No, but it's more of a pain in the ass than watching it on Youtube, which is probably why that is where it was.
Re:Fair use is subjective (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Um, no, it is obviously a parody. It attacks Colbert for claiming to tell the truth, which in turn is his parody of organizations like fox news. Colbert is a joke, and this is a joke on that joke.
I am going to venture a guess that you have never actually seen the Colbert Report, or that you never watched the video. What some of his videos and then rewatch the parody. It makes a lot more sense.
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jht ml?ml_video=&ml_co [comedycentral.com]
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The First Amendment applies only to actions by the government.
Everyone else is free to censor content spoken or published on their home grounds for whatever reasons they damn well chose. You are not entitled to a soapbox and a megaphone, a printing press or a web blog.
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The government passed a law that allows people to trivially infringe on the first amendment rights of others. If you don't think there's an action of government in there somewhere, you're not thinking.
Re:Censorship by Proxy (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the Constitution of the US is all about how the gub'ment interacts with the people. It has little to with how people interact with each other (anti-discrimination elements are an excption.) The government says I have a right to bear arms. That does not imply that you are powerless to prevent me from bringing a sidearm into your home or plac
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Nothing you said is fundamentally wrong except for this. And it is more contextually wrong then factual. It is a common position to be in.
The government made the laws protecting the copyright of the person expre
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This is because they never thought about the problem. The DMCS was about protecting the copyright holder not someone else's use of it. It creates the provision that allows the library of congress (or national archives, I'm not positive and too lazy to look it up) to make minor adjustments to
Re:Fair use is subjective (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. The DMCA is fundamentally flawed. But that doesn't matter. There is no objective measure at the moment whether this video is infringing or not. If Viacom were to sue the creators directly, and made an argument as to why it infringes, then it would take a court to make the decision. Now, as long as the creators submitted the argument "It's clearly a parody" they'd win in court, but that hasn't happened yet.
The DMCA would not be so bad if it were actually enforced as written. As things are it's only being used in a one-sided manner such that large companies are able to suppress whatever they want with no repercussions and small content providers are not protected at all (and are in fact being silenced via misapplication of the DMCA). In order to compel someone to take down infringing content providers have to swear under penalty of perjury that they own the content. To date, although numerous examples of blatant violation exist, including takedown notices being issued for obviously original works and other work that the submitter does not own, no prosecutions seem to have occurred. This is also the first lawsuit I have heard of on such grounds; it is a wonder that more have not been submitted.
As for your bit about arguments being submitted in court, that is an odd bit of logic. TFA is about precisely that; to wit, the creators have submitted the argument, in court, that their video was wrongfully removed because it is in fact a parody. You don't even need to read the summary because this information is contained in the title of the slashdot article.
Viacom probalby should have known that this is non-infringing, but their argument that they aren't in a position to make a legal judgement will be a decent defence in court.
No, they have to be able to prove that they knew for a fact it was infringing. They are in a positioon to make a legal judgement and have done so wrecklessly. This is a blatant abuse of the DMCA which is covered in the statute itself. It's also an important case because this kind of abuse is far too frequent and comes of content providers not doing the due diligence required by the Act. It's about time someone cracked down on it; let's hope they make a fine example. Hang 'em high, judge! Hang 'em high!
Parent
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Fair use guidelines have been on the books for 2 decades +
If they weren't sure, they shouldn't have filed the DMCA notice, where the swore under penalty of perjury that the video was infringing.
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The thing is, you don't have to prove it is infringing at this stage, you have to prove you believe it is. Then the infringer has to say, I have a fair use exception to their copyright claim. Look here for some more on it [chillingeffects.org].
Being that it is a parody doesn't necessarily make anything automatically fall into fair use. It has to actually say something that might b
Subjective is objective (Score:2)
Viacom have adequate reason to believe that this infringes copyright.
On what basis do you make such an assertion?
And on what basis would they get around 17 USC 201(a):
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