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Which tech companies aren't benefiting from piracy? YouTube has entire movies, songs, etc. on their platform. Sure, they take them down with a DMCA submission (

Which tech companies aren't benefiting from piracy? YouTube has entire movies, songs, etc. on their platform. Sure, they take them down with a DMCA submission (legit or not). But you can't deny that them feigning ignorance and the whack-a-mole nature of their pirated content hasn't benefited them greatly. It won't change until they get hit with massive fines. Amazon surely knows what they are doing. They don't care that brands are diluted or merchandise is authentic. Because that just ensures people trust AmazonBasics that much more. There are no downsides for Amazon.

kmeisthax 4y ago
The flipside of this is that the utter and flippant disregard for the basic principles of copyright are also responsible for one of the biggest expansions of freedom of speech in human history. The legal liability for copyright infringement itself, imposed upon every "link in the chain", was enough to deter people from running "content" pipes; and there was no distinguishing factor between a "publisher" that actively decides what content to publish, and a "platform" which does not. CDA 230 and DMCA 512 invented this new legal category of platforms that facilitate speech but do not editorialize it, and gave them broad immunity from basically every legal challenge. There's an argument that came out of the Copyright Office a few years ago that DMCA 512 has been grossly misinterpreted by the courts. You see, because 512 immunity only applies to things done "at the direction of the user", the courts have decided that social media recommendation engines can be immunized from suit through the 512 safe harbor. However, if that same curation is done by a human instead of an automated system, then it's no longer "at the direction of the user"[0], and the site is a publisher rather than a platform. This is absolutely bananas and I can think of no other part of law where deliberately ignoring the crime or tort makes it less criminal or tortious. If the Copyright Office had its way, both of these activities - automated and manual curation - would take you out of your safe harbor. YouTube could host your videos, like Vimeo's pro tier, but it couldn't put them in search or on the home page unless it was willing to take on your copyright risk. Shopify could run your online store but you couldn't sell your products on Amazon. There's been other proposals to change the process by which companies get their safe harbor, too. The EU got rid of notice-and-takedown and replaced it with license[1]-and-notice-and-filtering. The criteria for who has to abide by the new system is very roughly the same "do they curate" standard the US Copyright Office wanted put into DMCA 512, with online marketplaces - among other things - explicitly exempted from the requirements. So now our dichotomy becomes a trichotomy of "host" (no liability), "platform" (must license and filter), and "publisher" (full liability). I'm not sure if the EU will ultimately be able to thread the needle on this. We haven't seen the full effects of EUCD Article 17 yet, but my gut instinct is that it both goes too far (targeted platforms will be overregulated) and not far enough (copyright holders will still have horrific piracy problems). [0] See Mavrix v. LiveJournal [1] This is technically a "best effort" standard - you are not required to actually obtain a license, since copyright holders could otherwise just refuse you one. However, unlike IETF standards, those words do not mean "lowest effort" in law. Serving EU regulators a water sandwich will likely not go well with them.

kmeisthax 4y ago

The flipside of this is that the utter and flippant disregard for the basic principles of copyright are also responsible for one of the biggest expansions of freedom of speech in human history. The legal liability for copyright infringement itself, imposed upon every "link in the chain", was enough to deter people from running "content" pipes; and there was no distinguishing factor between a "publisher" that actively decides what content to publish, and a "platform" which does not. CDA 230 and DMCA 512 invented this new legal category of platforms that facilitate speech but do not editorialize it, and gave them broad immunity from basically every legal challenge. There's an argument that came out of the Copyright Office a few years ago that DMCA 512 has been grossly misinterpreted by the courts. You see, because 512 immunity only applies to things done "at the direction of the user", the courts have decided that social media recommendation engines can be immunized from suit through the 512 safe harbor. However, if that same curation is done by a human instead of an automated system, then it's no longer "at the direction of the user"[0], and the site is a publisher rather than a platform. This is absolutely bananas and I can think of no other part of law where deliberately ignoring the crime or tort makes it less criminal or tortious. If the Copyright Office had its way, both of these activities - automated and manual curation - would take you out of your safe harbor. YouTube could host your videos, like Vimeo's pro tier, but it couldn't put them in search or on the home page unless it was willing to take on your copyright risk. Shopify could run your online store but you couldn't sell your products on Amazon. There's been other proposals to change the process by which companies get their safe harbor, too. The EU got rid of notice-and-takedown and replaced it with license[1]-and-notice-and-filtering. The criteria for who has to abide by the new system is very roughly the same "do they curate" standard the US Copyright Office wanted put into DMCA 512, with online marketplaces - among other things - explicitly exempted from the requirements. So now our dichotomy becomes a trichotomy of "host" (no liability), "platform" (must license and filter), and "publisher" (full liability). I'm not sure if the EU will ultimately be able to thread the needle on this. We haven't seen the full effects of EUCD Article 17 yet, but my gut instinct is that it both goes too far (targeted platforms will be overregulated) and not far enough (copyright holders will still have horrific piracy problems). [0] See Mavrix v. LiveJournal [1] This is technically a "best effort" standard - you are not required to actually obtain a license, since copyright holders could otherwise just refuse you one. However, unlike IETF standards, those words do not mean "lowest effort" in law. Serving EU regulators a water sandwich will likely not go well with them.