YouTube Copyright Questions Abound

[mandy]

A journalist and well-known helicopter pilot in Los Angeles has filed suit against video-sharing site YouTube, claiming that it encouraged users to violate copyright law.

Robert Tur says video he shot of the beating of trucker Reginald Denny during the 1992 Los Angeles riots was posted at YouTube without his permission and viewed more than 1,000 times. Tur says in his lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court, that YouTube is profiting from his work while hurting his ability to license his video.

"Mr. Tur's lawsuit is without merit," YouTube said in a statement. "YouTube is a service provider that complies with all the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and therefore is entitled to the full protections of the safe harbor provisions of the Act."...

full article: http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6095736.html?part=rss&tag=6095736&subj=news

[mandy]

A related article:

Indie video producers who don't have a battery of lawyers are learning just how freewheeling YouTube can be. They complain that removing clips is onerous. The time lag whittles into an audience that can rapidly build — and disappear — for short clips. It took eight months for Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz to mastermind a now iconic Web video that shows them creating intricate fountains of soda by dropping 500 Mentos into 100 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke.

The video became an instant hit after it was published in June on Revver, a service that shares ad revenue. Within days, bootlegs showed up on Google and YouTube. Voltz, a civil litigation lawyer, figured out the process for getting the videos removed. But as copies kept reappearing, Voltz learned that he had to keep contacting YouTube to take down each new version...

full article: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14079318/

related topic:
YouTube's new Terms of Service give site Ownership of uploaded Videos
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...500.0.html

[mandy]

More on YouTube's copyright issues:

Google has announced that it plans to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion. But what the search company didn't say is that it may have acquired a string of lawsuits alleging copyright infringement as well...

YouTube's--and therefore Google's--potential legal liability depends on how the courts interpret an area of copyright law that remains surprisingly unsettled. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Grokster file-sharing lawsuit has raised more questions about who's liable and who's not.

"I think it's pretty murky," said Jessica Litman, who teaches copyright law at the University of Michigan. "There hasn't been much litigation on the scope of (copyright law's) safe harbor." ...

Central to the question of legal liability is the wording of a densely worded section--Section 512--of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998...

full article: http://news.com.com/YouTube+may+add+to+G...tml?tag=nl

[thentavius]

I still can't believe Google paid 1.6 billion. Spending that kind of money on the public could elmininate the homeless situation in a large city (possible several large cities--maybe even small countries).

Spending that kind of money on an iffy, second-generation Napster?  Blehh.

[mandy]

Mark Cuban on Google's YouTube purchase:

It will be interesting to see what happens next and what happens in the copyright world. I still think Google Lawyers will be a busy, busy bunch. I dont think you can sue Google into oblivion, but as others have mentioned, if Google gets nailed one single time for copyright violation, there are going to be more shareholder lawsuits than doans has pills to go with the pile on copyright suits that follow. Think maybe how Google discloses what they perceive the copyright risk to be in the SEC filings might be an interesting read ?

I think there will be supoenas to get the names of Youtube and Google Video users. Lots of them as those copyright owners not part of the gravy train go after both Google and their users for infringement...

full article: http://www.blogmaverick.com/2006/10/09/i...-is-crazy/