YouTube's no friend to copyright violators

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Gotta totally disagree with that one, No Ax...

You make "fair use" sound like it's antiquainted or something.

Far from it, "fair use" is one of the most important rights we have today, because without it, free speech would be severely limited! The First Amendment trumps any copyright law, any day of the week.

If anything, the rights of "fair use" need to be extended and clarified, not degraded, to make up for the unhealthy provisions added by DMCA. We've already seen the chilling effects of this law, where the Church of Scientology used it to silence its critics.

The bottom line on YouTube is that I can't seeing it existing without producing copyright violations under our current law. If you shrunk its userbase to only those who are "content creators", it would virtually be nill. How many people do you see going around with a videocamera, shooting stuff? And even in the case of the amateur homevideo maker, there are still many legalities involved with filming stuff without permits, and then publicly distributing it. Only big studios have the resources to ensure that they are 100% legal, and even they run into skirmishes every now and then.

The real problem is that the people who made the original copyright laws never envisioned the possibilities and challenges that would develop during the Information Age. The biggest issue today is not how information is created and who it belongs to, but how it's accessed and propogated. People would have never predicted that a hundred years ago.

I think the reason you see so many people ignoring copyright laws (sometimes to their peril), is because there is a dividing line between what the law says and the "morals of the law". In the Univerisity, you are taught that "plagiarism is wrong" but it's okay to use someone else's work if you give it proper credit. This is common sense to most people.

But copyright laws aren't. If you give me a book, and I read it and give it back to you, then no law is broken. But if instead, I photocopy it and read it a month later, then I technically have broken the law. Even though, in both cases, the information ultimately ends up stored in my head. The DMCA has only made the copyright laws even more out of touch with people's common sense, and that's why you see people ignoring copyright altogether.

There are people who drive their whole life without speeding, but I highly doubt their is a single soul on the planet who has not at one point or another been in violation of someone's copyright, whether intentional or otherwise. We do need protection of intellectual property, but we need new laws that are at the very least practical.

Posted by: Allstar_z   Posted on: 10/23/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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