Universal sues MySpace for copyright violations

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Compulsory licenses are not new

In fact the record labels can pay, pre-negotiated (Through the government), compulsory licenses for any song ever published and redistribute it. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#115

This is very disturbing;

The complaint charges that MySpace gives "its members tools to upload copies" of videos, thereby "providing means to viewers to disseminate" videos that infringe someone else's copyright.

But identical charges could be levied against practically every video-sharing site that doesn't prescreen user-generated clip--the list includes YouTube, of course, and Google Video, Grouper, Metacafe and VideoCodeZone.

This effects every web space provider on the internet. Why do they assume you have to go to any of these video sites to upload video? You can pay for web space and host video! Are they really that stupid??

Litvack says the question that the DMCA fails to answer is who has the obligation to protecting copyright materials: the copyright holder or the Web site owner.

"Does the copyright holder have to tell the site owner to take it down? Or does the site owner have to monitor the site?" asked Litvack.

The framers of the DMCA wrote the law before file-sharing or peer-to-peer technology emerged. "Nobody saw it coming," Litvack said. "The law was antiquated very quickly."

These aren't peer2peer filesharing sites. These are web hosts. Web hosts, including free Web hosts like Tripod and Geocities, existed when the DMCA was drafted.

The law is very clear and there is no confusion in the law... The copyright holder has to send a DMCA take down notice. The web host is suppose to notify the user that the DMCA notice was filed and remove the content, and then the user who uploaded gets a chance to file a counter notice to have it put back up.

In reality the way it works is the "copyright holder"(In many of the abuse cases the work was uncopyrightable or the filer didn't hold the copyright) files the DMCA notice and the web host removes the content and doesn't allow the uploader the chance to file a counter notice. A survey was done a few years ago and only 1 in 10 web hosts removed the content then notified and allowed for a counter-notice and only 2 in 10 even notified the uploader that the content was removed.

Abuses include retailers having prices (non-copyrightable content) removed from web pages, The Church of Scientology serving DMCA take-down notices on pages that are critical of their beliefs or critical of the efficacy (Like there is 0 scientific evidence that it helps at all and several medical doctors have publicly stated the treatment may actually be harmful) of their church run "treatment" centers, websites that provided information that serious flaws existed in the Diebold voting machines and Diebold new about them but refused to fix the flaws, ect ect.

Posted by: Edward Meyers   Posted on: 11/18/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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