4 ms·

No, that's about right. It would make YouTube legally responsible for all user-created content. According to YouTube's press statistics, 48 hours of video are u

by enmaku 15y ago

No, that's about right. It would make YouTube legally responsible for all user-created content. According to YouTube's press statistics, 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute. If you were to hire a team of people to watch all the videos and make sure they aren't copyrighted, you'd need 2,880 people working around the clock - and that's just to keep up with the NEW videos, letalone the backlog of stuff that's already there. At my state's minimum wage (~$10/hr) that's $691,200 per day in additional operating costs, or $252.5 million per year... Of course they could off-shore that to cut costs, but it'd still be ridiculous.

fpgeek 15y ago
Why would they bother trying to vet YouTube? It seems like it would be more practical to move the servers outside the US and stop providing YouTube access to US IPs. Maybe throw in "CrippledTube" for US visitors (only registered media companies allowed to upload) if they think the cross-company infringement danger is small enough.
- meow 15y ago
  Considering that US is an important market in terms of ad revenues, that might be as good as shutting down youtube.
vidarh 15y ago
The most chilling part is that even if they could swallow the cost, determining what a court would find infringing is hard. Of course they can filter out the obvious cases. I have a two year old son. He loves Thomas The Tank Engine. And he loves Youtube and will frequently ask for "Thomas on the laptop". Most of the Thomas related videos on Youtube are actually re-enactments using the toy trains rather than copies of the TV show. There's apparently a whole community around this - with movies ranging from shaky clips of a kid playing to elaborate productions trying (though usually failing badly) to get close to the production values of the original series. Some of them use snippets of the music from the TV show - how much is too much? Some use music I can't place - copyrighted or not? I can't tell. Some of them re-use dialogue. Some use text from the books. Others have invented their entirely own stories (but might still run afoul of copyright because they use the characters). Some has as their only similarly that they use the train sets as props. The question is, how many of these would a court find infringing? (how many should they find infringing in a reasonable world?). The end result is that to protect themselves legally, they'll need to reject everything that even has the appearance of being infringing. This will likely throw out a massive amount of non-infringing content as well as a lot of stuff that is in a grey area legally but that the public will find ridiculous that they have to block. Vetting it will be far too hard Of course, this latter part is perhaps the biggest light at the end of the tunnel: The chilling effect on speech are so strong and so far overreaching due to the lack of legal safeguards, that I can't imagine SCOTUS not throwing out substantial parts of this law.
snowwrestler 15y ago
Google is already legally responsible for all the content on YouTube. The DMCA does not remove liability, it just sets out a process for managing liability--the takedown notice. If Google ignores conforming legitimate takedown notices, under the DMCA, they are fully liable for the infringing content. And as we see with Viacom, the DMCA does not actually prevent private lawsuits.
- enmaku 15y ago
  True, but the DMCA requires a takedown notice and then failure to comply before anything can be done. SOPA allows pulling of DNS entries as a first action, meaning sites are down while they handle the complaint. There's also a huge difference between "liable" as the DMCA defines it (must remove when notified) and "liable" as SOPA defines it (must remove immediately, notification == site death)
  - snowwrestler 15y ago
    The private right of action in SOPA is actually modeled on the DMCA notice. Let's say a record label asks PayPal to stop payments to an allegedly "infringing site". PayPal must notify the allegedly infringing site of that request within 5 days. If that site provides a counter-notification, PayPal leaves the site alone and checks out of the whole process. From that point, the record label has to go to a judge to try to get an injunction against the site (with all the associated burden of proof, etc). The DNS blocking is only available to federal law enforcement; a private complaint can't pull DNS under any circumstance.
    - JBiserkov 15y ago
      1. a private complaint can't pull DNS 2. It is available to federal law enforcement. May be I'm just being cynical, but there seems to be an obvious way around fact 1. using fact 2. money == power; gov officials seem to be willing to go to ANY length, given enough Shift+444

by enmaku 15y ago

fpgeek 15y ago

Why would they bother trying to vet YouTube? It seems like it would be more practical to move the servers outside the US and stop providing YouTube access to US IPs. Maybe throw in "CrippledTube" for US visitors (only registered media companies allowed to upload) if they think the cross-company infringement danger is small enough.

meow 15y ago
Considering that US is an important market in terms of ad revenues, that might be as good as shutting down youtube.

vidarh 15y ago

The most chilling part is that even if they could swallow the cost, determining what a court would find infringing is hard. Of course they can filter out the obvious cases. I have a two year old son. He loves Thomas The Tank Engine. And he loves Youtube and will frequently ask for "Thomas on the laptop". Most of the Thomas related videos on Youtube are actually re-enactments using the toy trains rather than copies of the TV show. There's apparently a whole community around this - with movies ranging from shaky clips of a kid playing to elaborate productions trying (though usually failing badly) to get close to the production values of the original series. Some of them use snippets of the music from the TV show - how much is too much? Some use music I can't place - copyrighted or not? I can't tell. Some of them re-use dialogue. Some use text from the books. Others have invented their entirely own stories (but might still run afoul of copyright because they use the characters). Some has as their only similarly that they use the train sets as props. The question is, how many of these would a court find infringing? (how many should they find infringing in a reasonable world?). The end result is that to protect themselves legally, they'll need to reject everything that even has the appearance of being infringing. This will likely throw out a massive amount of non-infringing content as well as a lot of stuff that is in a grey area legally but that the public will find ridiculous that they have to block. Vetting it will be far too hard Of course, this latter part is perhaps the biggest light at the end of the tunnel: The chilling effect on speech are so strong and so far overreaching due to the lack of legal safeguards, that I can't imagine SCOTUS not throwing out substantial parts of this law.

snowwrestler 15y ago

Google is already legally responsible for all the content on YouTube. The DMCA does not remove liability, it just sets out a process for managing liability--the takedown notice. If Google ignores conforming legitimate takedown notices, under the DMCA, they are fully liable for the infringing content. And as we see with Viacom, the DMCA does not actually prevent private lawsuits.

enmaku 15y ago
True, but the DMCA requires a takedown notice and then failure to comply before anything can be done. SOPA allows pulling of DNS entries as a first action, meaning sites are down while they handle the complaint. There's also a huge difference between "liable" as the DMCA defines it (must remove when notified) and "liable" as SOPA defines it (must remove immediately, notification == site death)
- snowwrestler 15y ago
  The private right of action in SOPA is actually modeled on the DMCA notice. Let's say a record label asks PayPal to stop payments to an allegedly "infringing site". PayPal must notify the allegedly infringing site of that request within 5 days. If that site provides a counter-notification, PayPal leaves the site alone and checks out of the whole process. From that point, the record label has to go to a judge to try to get an injunction against the site (with all the associated burden of proof, etc). The DNS blocking is only available to federal law enforcement; a private complaint can't pull DNS under any circumstance.
  - JBiserkov 15y ago
    1. a private complaint can't pull DNS 2. It is available to federal law enforcement. May be I'm just being cynical, but there seems to be an obvious way around fact 1. using fact 2. money == power; gov officials seem to be willing to go to ANY length, given enough Shift+444