Notes on the Viacom ruling [LWN.net]

Notes on the Viacom ruling

Posted Jul 4, 2008 18:46 UTC (Fri) by kirkengaard (subscriber, #15022)
Parent article: Notes on the Viacom ruling

Makes you wonder why users viewing those videos are in any danger.

What law has been broken by a viewer of copyrighted material which has been posted for public
access by someone else? I can see that the information would be useful for proving what the
RIAA has thus far had trouble with, if you can call YouTube-watching "distribution," and
therefore proving harm to Viacom under the statute. I guess the question is how you analogize
the act in question. The audience of an unauthorized public performance is in no trouble;
what about people who buy unauthorized duplicates of a CD or DVD?

"Viacom promises it would never use this data to launch enforcement actions against
individuals" -- as you say, it obviously crossed somebody's mind.

--> PJ has a quote that's useful. (Her rights reserved in accordance w/ CC license; I believe
that the quoted statement is used as fair use commentary, on which she's giving free lessons
lately.)
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080703111013598

"Viacom General Counsel Michael Fricklas said yesterday that Viacom has no intention of going
after individual users. "Even if they uploaded pirated clips, we're not going to use the data
to find them. We're not going to use it to sue them. We're not going to use it to look at who
they are."

Rather, the company has argued, the data could be used to measure the popularity of
copyrighted video against non-copyrighted video.

Yesterday, lawyers for Google said they would not appeal the ruling. They sent Viacom a letter
requesting that the company allow YouTube to redact user names and IP addresses from the
data."

Which even she thinks is a red herring. Sue Google to get the ability to improve their
popularity metrics? Appears that Google has dropped a line back to the judge asking for
reconsideration on the relevance of identifiables to Viacom's stated purpose.

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Notes on the Viacom ruling

Posted Jul 4, 2008 22:16 UTC (Fri) by grahammm (guest, #773) [Link]

If it just to be used to measure the popularity of copyright vs non-copyright video, then why
does it need Viacom to do it. I am sure that google itself has more facilities for doing this.

Anyway, what is a non-copyright video? Unless it is specifically placed in the public domain
or (very unlikely in the case of videos) the copyright has expired then every video, whether a
clip from a movie or TV show or one recorded on a camcorder or mobile phone, is copyright. So
as there will be almost no non-copyright videos on youtube (or anywhere else on the net), the
popularity of copyright videos must be almost infinitely higher than that of non-copyright
ones.

Notes on the Viacom ruling

Posted Jul 4, 2008 23:31 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Well, what they mean is obviously 'stuff owned by big media companies' 
because of course it's not *really* copyrighted unless you can afford an 
army of lawyers.

(Actually they probably mean 'stuff owned by Viacom companies so we can 
try to sue everyone who ever went near it pour discourager les autres', 
but we all knew that.)

Notes on the Viacom ruling

Posted Jul 5, 2008 1:27 UTC (Sat) by mjr (subscriber, #6979) [Link]

What law has been broken by a viewer of copyrighted material which has been posted for public access by someone else?

The Finnish copyright law, for one. Downloaders are responsible for downloading only legal material by a literal reading of the law. No, there's no way to know. Yes, it's insane, but so is the totality of the copyright law, so it's merely business as usual. I don't know if other countries have similar nuggets in their legislation, but wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

Notes on the Viacom ruling

Posted Jul 5, 2008 15:20 UTC (Sat) by kirkengaard (subscriber, #15022) [Link]

Which of course depends on the court's reading of "download".  Geek logic argues that
temporary browser copies are qualitatively different from intentional copy-to-the-hard-drive
downloading, especially considering the streaming nature of YouTube.  The user intends to view
the material, not to make a copy, in the former, and intends to acquire a copy of it in the
latter.  Of course, I already know that ephemeral copies have been cited in copyright
decisions, several ways in several jurisdictions.  Law logic, to paraphrase PJ, is different
from geek logic.