3 ms·

But what law did YouTube violate? They're not obligated to host your content.

anigbrowl 5y ago
Laws don't have to be violate din civil litigation. Most cases are about torts (or contractual violations. big corporations generally get people to agree to big contracts that effectively say 'we can do anything and you have no rights ha ha' but as soon as any exchange of money takes place, things gt to e more complex. In extreme circumstances, contracts can be declared to be unconscionable. Of course, wealthy defendants often try to spin the process out as long as possible and then offer a fat settlement right before trial if all else fails.
msandford 5y ago
Agreed! They have no moral, legal or ethical responsibility or obligation to host anyone's content. They also don't have any legal, ethical or moral responsibility to ensure that any one copyright holder gets "their fair share" of the revenue for a particular video. The law already has a provision for the recourse copyright holders have if people use copyrighted material improperly. That's called a DMCA takedown request and it requires certain conditions to be met. What YouTube has done with the contentid and three-strikes system is to create an extra-judicial system for settling claims of a similar kind to DMCA takedown requests, but without going through the courts. That's their prerogative! But it may or may not be legal for them to do so, especially using the language that they use. For example something they might get sued for is fraud. These copyright claims that copyright holders are able to make. Are these legal claims via the courts? Or are they YouTube claims made through YouTube? What if YouTube has appropriated too many legal terms for this system? Imagine that I created a Security as a Service (SaaS) called The Police (tm) and for a small monthly fee you can subscribe to The Police (tm) and if/when you find yourself in some kind of tight spot they'll show up and fix things for you. It's not hard to imagine that this might not go well, and for similar reasons one could suspect that YouTube using legal-like terms for an entirely private "copyright policing" system they might eventually find themselves on the losing side of a legal challenge. It's really up to what kind of legal theories the plaintiffs could come up with that would put YouTube on the wrong end of the law.
- lupire 5y ago
  Are you under the impression that "security guards" are not legal?
  - msandford 5y ago
    Yeah I see the analogy there. Another counter analogy is imagine that a publisher finds out part of your book is plagiarized and they decide to give all your royalties to the person who you plagiarized without a court order to do so. A person might call that theft.
ipaddr 5y ago
Fraud. Racketeering. Money laundering.
dredmorbius 5y ago
If YouTube asserts a claim of authorship in violation of facts, the moral right of authors to attribution: That's 17 U.S.C. 106a under US Code, and is a key element of European copyright generally ("droit d'auteur") https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights

Laws don't have to be violate din civil litigation. Most cases are about torts (or contractual violations. big corporations generally get people to agree to big contracts that effectively say 'we can do anything and you have no rights ha ha' but as soon as any exchange of money takes place, things gt to e more complex. In extreme circumstances, contracts can be declared to be unconscionable. Of course, wealthy defendants often try to spin the process out as long as possible and then offer a fat settlement right before trial if all else fails.

msandford 5y ago

Agreed! They have no moral, legal or ethical responsibility or obligation to host anyone's content. They also don't have any legal, ethical or moral responsibility to ensure that any one copyright holder gets "their fair share" of the revenue for a particular video. The law already has a provision for the recourse copyright holders have if people use copyrighted material improperly. That's called a DMCA takedown request and it requires certain conditions to be met. What YouTube has done with the contentid and three-strikes system is to create an extra-judicial system for settling claims of a similar kind to DMCA takedown requests, but without going through the courts. That's their prerogative! But it may or may not be legal for them to do so, especially using the language that they use. For example something they might get sued for is fraud. These copyright claims that copyright holders are able to make. Are these legal claims via the courts? Or are they YouTube claims made through YouTube? What if YouTube has appropriated too many legal terms for this system? Imagine that I created a Security as a Service (SaaS) called The Police (tm) and for a small monthly fee you can subscribe to The Police (tm) and if/when you find yourself in some kind of tight spot they'll show up and fix things for you. It's not hard to imagine that this might not go well, and for similar reasons one could suspect that YouTube using legal-like terms for an entirely private "copyright policing" system they might eventually find themselves on the losing side of a legal challenge. It's really up to what kind of legal theories the plaintiffs could come up with that would put YouTube on the wrong end of the law.

lupire 5y ago
Are you under the impression that "security guards" are not legal?
- msandford 5y ago
  Yeah I see the analogy there. Another counter analogy is imagine that a publisher finds out part of your book is plagiarized and they decide to give all your royalties to the person who you plagiarized without a court order to do so. A person might call that theft.

ipaddr 5y ago

Fraud. Racketeering. Money laundering.

dredmorbius 5y ago

If YouTube asserts a claim of authorship in violation of facts, the moral right of authors to attribution: That's 17 U.S.C. 106a under US Code, and is a key element of European copyright generally ("droit d'auteur") https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights