YouTube's fate rests on decade-old copyright law

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There will be no winners.

If YouTube falls, then not only social networking sites (such as MySpace, which also hosts videos, not all of which are legally there) would fall, but so would other, legally-used methods of file-sharing. For example: BitTorrent-protocol systems. A broad interpretation of the DMCA would also force them off the 'Net, and that would be a horrible mistake, since there are many legal uses of the technology.

Is Viacom going to win? Not even if they win in court. Yet again, they prove they're in it for the $$$ and not for the consumer. First, they foul the Star Trek franchise, which until /Enterprise/, got them a lot of money . . . now this. Viacom's star will also be dragged downward, closer to extinction, as consumers react against them.

Frankly, I'm sick of the whole mess. The RIAA in particular, if you look at the distribution of the cost of a single CD, is little better than a group of pirates themselves; a typical CD nowadays costs $18-30, and yet the artist's share of that pie rarely exceeds 25??!

The original Napster was sued out of business because of one thing: The RIAA was too stupid to realize that their sales had /increased/ as a result of Napster. (I ought to know; I own 20 CDs I would not have bought had I not downloaded tracks from Napster). Did I infringe? Perhaps.

Peer-to-peer systems would be the target next, and for good reason, from the standpoint of the MPAA and RIAA. Problem is, (as stated earlier in this) those systems are also used legitimately by many companies to distribute their programs, videos, whatever. (Good example: Anarchy Online's "froobie" client and their full client are both available via BitTorrent, sourced from the maker. Sure makes more sense than what the beta testers (myself included) went through, which was downloading the client at 4.5k/sec even with DSL, due to massive overloading of their FTP servers!)

Is there an easy solution? No. Users, however, need to be educated in what should and should not be shared. As for me, most of the time, I look for the stuff that is long out of print. Music that the RIAA, in most cases, will likely never approve to be reissued. (which is a pity, given the quality of some of those tracks!)

This is also a case of Viacom ignoring one salient fact: They are gaining positive publicity via these clips. This effort, to shut down YouTube, is generating serious negative publicity, that will, no doubt, come back to haunt them.

Posted by: Raymond Danner   Posted on: 03/14/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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