15 ms·

Megaupload to Sue Universal, Joins Fight Against SOPA

248 points by llambda 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago
The camel's back has been broken. Because of the label's stupidity, this trial will un-do a lot of the stuff the labels have been pushing for over the years. It will not only stop the trend of more restrictions dead in its tracks, but also reverse it. Megaupload will bring the necessary attention to the labels' abuses of DMCA and their other proposed bills, and we'll probably going to end up with laws that strengthen our online liberties.
- tiles 15y ago
  It's important that we don't let this happen in a bubble. We have to show that citizens are behind Megaupload (in this case). The recording industry has no qualms on speaking on behalf of public interest, and I can imagine they'll suggest the public would prefer censorship with false positives than to risk "hurting musicians" through piracy. If there have been other cases where artists have had music taken down by recording labels that did not own copyright, now would be a good time to bring them back to light.
  - jasonlotito 15y ago
    While we are fighting the recording companies, why not put pressure on the people that give them power: the artists themselves? UMG is speaking on their behalf, acting on their behalf. If they are going to play the musicians card, why not strike back. It's one thing to hear the music industry wants to silence your speech. It's another thing when your favorite artist supports the same efforts.
- EGreg 15y ago
  This reminds of me of the hotfile vs warner brothers http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111110/10135116708/glimpse-future-under-sopa-warner-bros-admits-it-filed-many-false-takedown-notices.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111110/10135116708/glimps...
VonLipwig 15y ago
This isn't an isolated case. In a similar story Warner Bros abused the DMCA to take down HotFile content that didn't infringe their copyright. http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-admits-sending-hotfile-false-takedown-requests-111109/ http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-admits-sending-hotfile-f... Label's and studio's have every right to defend their products. However, they must do it in a responsible way. Stories like this make it difficult for politicians to legislate for more power's when the existing ones are already being abused by those they are set up to protect.
- mattmanser 15y ago
  This isn't really like that at all. To be honest I found Warner Bro's mistake, apart from the OSS takedown, to be not that odious, you can't on the one hand have the web industry say that trying to deal with so much infringing content is almost impossible because there's too much of it, and on the other moan that Warner Bros make a few mistakes when trying to deal with that vast amount of infringing content, not on one site but on hundreds of sites. There's a happy medium somewhere and safe harbour isn't it, for example YouTube knows that hence the auto filtering software they've developed. Universal's action, however, is pure censorship in a massively misguided attempt to further their own goals. Ultimately it has resulted in utter failure.
  - Vivtek 15y ago
    If I recall correctly, Warner Bros was issuing DMCAs without even cursory research into whether they had rights to the IP or not. The problem isn't even so much that Warner Bros was cutting lawyer fees - fine - but that they weren't held to the minimum of responsibility provided by the DMCA for issuing fraudulent (OK, or at the very least incorrect) notices.
    - mattmanser 15y ago
      If someone puts up a 600mb file called 'Thor (2011)', what do you think it's going to be. Do you need to open and watch it? 10s or 100s of times on 10s or 100s of sites? On the one hand many sites are making no attempt to stop the flood, pointing at the DMCA, on the other the film and music industry want to legitimately stop these files being shared. I guess what I'm saying is are they supposed to download and watch every single file? As that's precisely what the website owners have claimed is something they can't do, but the music/film industry suddenly has to do that on 100s of sites? It's a rock/hard place scenario.
skore 15y ago
I find it particularly curious that this was taken down. It was supposed to be something that the music industry is smart enough to understand for the "attack that you need to sit out for now" that it is - instead, they took the bait and went into attack mode themselves. The reaction, of course, shows how disgustingly superior (to logic and reason, really) the industry perceives itself - basically everything that an artist creates and is related to the profit of the music industry must fit into a narrow idea of control. When they produce music that sells, the industry wants control. When it's only an appearance that could funnel traffic to something they can sell, they will allow it, because they know they will have control down the line. But if it is something like the Megaupload case - having the artists create something that does neither, but also seemingly "strengthen the enemy", they are caught outside of their logic. Now, anybody who isn't with their back to the wall would work with such a situation creatively. But with the media industry, we have a curious case of not needing to get defensive (after all, they still turn record profits), but having bought into the idea that that is the attitude they have to display in order to survive. It would be interesting to hear precisely how much standing they have on this, really. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the artists that appeared in that clip do have contracts that say - whatever you do, we own, if we don't like it, we will fight it. After all - the industry isn't stupid and they certainly have the access to the best legal defenses you can get these days. The good thing about this hack by Megaupload is that it's a loose-loose for the industry and while they have no shortage of material in that area (it seems like we hear a horribly backwards story like this every month), that steady drip really may end up give us some progressive approaches.
- throwaway64 15y ago
  I am almost certain the DMCA take-down request was at least semi-automated via tag searches on youtube and rubber stamped by one of their employees. You can see this yourself by submitting a video with tags that contain artists they have on contract. I am also almost certain that MegaUpload understood this, and their video was specifically engineered to trigger these bots....
  - skore 15y ago
    Interesting - if that is the case, kudos to them! This also makes me wonder whether there is are bots to search for all those "no copyright intended" videos.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
w1ntermute 15y ago
It seems to me that the only way to end the labels' dominance over the music industry is to deprive them of their sole revenue source - popular and successful artists. What services exactly does a label continue to provide, now that the internet has made it much easier for artists to self-promote? I presume that large portion of what the labels used to do can now be done very easily by the artists themselves. There may be an opening for a tech startup here (maybe there's already one (or more) in this field) to take whatever the labels still need to do and undercut them on price and ease of acceptance (the labels are pretty picky about which artists they take). It seems to me that the labels have spurned a lot of the technological advances that have been made possible over the last decade or two in favor of clinging to an increasingly outdated business model in the hopes of squeezing a final dollar or two out of their musicians.
- untog 15y ago
  What services exactly does a label continue to provide, now that the internet has made it much easier for artists to self-promote? Promotion. Artists can self-promote all they want, but they're up against thousands of other artists that are also self-promoting. Labels pay people to listen to artists, work out which ones are actually talented (or, in reality, which ones will make the most money) and focus their promotion on those artists only. The signal to noise ratio is totally different, and they can afford to put far more resources behind this smaller pool of artists. They also have a lot of experience in promotion, which up and coming bands simply don't have. There isn't a tech startup solution to everything. Maybe you could set up a site that crowdsources this artist selection process but I wouldn't be optimistic- there is no personal reward in listening to hours upon hours of awful music. Maybe you could give those initial listeners a stake in the bands they vote for? That could be an interesting idea. I've long thought that MySpace might yet have a life as some sort of band-centric site. Since it died a horrible death nothing has really come up to replace it.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    Tech companies hire PR firms to do their promotion. They don't give the PR firm a cut of all the revenues the company makes, nor do they give them equity necessarily (it does happen but its not the rule). The 'labels' have no reason to exist, there is however a great market for Artist PR firms. We need that first disruptive one though, where an artist 'signs' with them meaning that they do the promotion but they don't own the music copyright. And as it is a new business model for the music industry it will take some time to work out.
NameNickHN 15y ago
I would be 100% behind this if it weren't for that stupid Kim Dotcom.
xer0 15y ago
This is part of a trend to abandon due process. In some cases it's the government itself, with ICE seizing domains without having to go to trial and prove their case. In this case it's government abdicating their role in due process, telling corporations to do what they will. This is leading to vigilantism, by the government and by corporations.
- nocipher 15y ago
  This is leading to vigilantism, by the government and by corporations. This is one the most pointed comments I've heard about copyright litigation and wanton take-down notices.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
bigohms 15y ago
I'm surprised to learn Megaupload is a Kim dotcom, aka Kimble production.
- Element_ 15y ago
  I always wondered who owned the mega label sites and why they were never talked about in the mainstream media. Then your comment led me to the following article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20087753-261/the-mystery-man-behind-megaupload-piracy-fight/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20087753-261/the-mystery-m...
  - bigohms 15y ago
    Cool. I would opine that a good 50% of the internet money made out there is very unsexy, hidden and underground. The people behind the businesses have absolutely no incentive to draw attention to themselves but occasionally they do slip through the cracks.
rmoriz 15y ago
Money laundry.... => Hongkong => BVI http://imgur.com/a/7fqbg http://imgur.com/a/7fqbg

248 points by llambda 15y ago

The camel's back has been broken. Because of the label's stupidity, this trial will un-do a lot of the stuff the labels have been pushing for over the years. It will not only stop the trend of more restrictions dead in its tracks, but also reverse it. Megaupload will bring the necessary attention to the labels' abuses of DMCA and their other proposed bills, and we'll probably going to end up with laws that strengthen our online liberties.

tiles 15y ago
It's important that we don't let this happen in a bubble. We have to show that citizens are behind Megaupload (in this case). The recording industry has no qualms on speaking on behalf of public interest, and I can imagine they'll suggest the public would prefer censorship with false positives than to risk "hurting musicians" through piracy. If there have been other cases where artists have had music taken down by recording labels that did not own copyright, now would be a good time to bring them back to light.
- jasonlotito 15y ago
  While we are fighting the recording companies, why not put pressure on the people that give them power: the artists themselves? UMG is speaking on their behalf, acting on their behalf. If they are going to play the musicians card, why not strike back. It's one thing to hear the music industry wants to silence your speech. It's another thing when your favorite artist supports the same efforts.
EGreg 15y ago
This reminds of me of the hotfile vs warner brothers http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111110/10135116708/glimpse-future-under-sopa-warner-bros-admits-it-filed-many-false-takedown-notices.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111110/10135116708/glimps...

VonLipwig 15y ago

This isn't an isolated case. In a similar story Warner Bros abused the DMCA to take down HotFile content that didn't infringe their copyright. http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-admits-sending-hotfile-false-takedown-requests-111109/ http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-admits-sending-hotfile-f... Label's and studio's have every right to defend their products. However, they must do it in a responsible way. Stories like this make it difficult for politicians to legislate for more power's when the existing ones are already being abused by those they are set up to protect.

mattmanser 15y ago
This isn't really like that at all. To be honest I found Warner Bro's mistake, apart from the OSS takedown, to be not that odious, you can't on the one hand have the web industry say that trying to deal with so much infringing content is almost impossible because there's too much of it, and on the other moan that Warner Bros make a few mistakes when trying to deal with that vast amount of infringing content, not on one site but on hundreds of sites. There's a happy medium somewhere and safe harbour isn't it, for example YouTube knows that hence the auto filtering software they've developed. Universal's action, however, is pure censorship in a massively misguided attempt to further their own goals. Ultimately it has resulted in utter failure.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  If I recall correctly, Warner Bros was issuing DMCAs without even cursory research into whether they had rights to the IP or not. The problem isn't even so much that Warner Bros was cutting lawyer fees - fine - but that they weren't held to the minimum of responsibility provided by the DMCA for issuing fraudulent (OK, or at the very least incorrect) notices.
  - mattmanser 15y ago
    If someone puts up a 600mb file called 'Thor (2011)', what do you think it's going to be. Do you need to open and watch it? 10s or 100s of times on 10s or 100s of sites? On the one hand many sites are making no attempt to stop the flood, pointing at the DMCA, on the other the film and music industry want to legitimately stop these files being shared. I guess what I'm saying is are they supposed to download and watch every single file? As that's precisely what the website owners have claimed is something they can't do, but the music/film industry suddenly has to do that on 100s of sites? It's a rock/hard place scenario.

skore 15y ago

I find it particularly curious that this was taken down. It was supposed to be something that the music industry is smart enough to understand for the "attack that you need to sit out for now" that it is - instead, they took the bait and went into attack mode themselves. The reaction, of course, shows how disgustingly superior (to logic and reason, really) the industry perceives itself - basically everything that an artist creates and is related to the profit of the music industry must fit into a narrow idea of control. When they produce music that sells, the industry wants control. When it's only an appearance that could funnel traffic to something they can sell, they will allow it, because they know they will have control down the line. But if it is something like the Megaupload case - having the artists create something that does neither, but also seemingly "strengthen the enemy", they are caught outside of their logic. Now, anybody who isn't with their back to the wall would work with such a situation creatively. But with the media industry, we have a curious case of not needing to get defensive (after all, they still turn record profits), but having bought into the idea that that is the attitude they have to display in order to survive. It would be interesting to hear precisely how much standing they have on this, really. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the artists that appeared in that clip do have contracts that say - whatever you do, we own, if we don't like it, we will fight it. After all - the industry isn't stupid and they certainly have the access to the best legal defenses you can get these days. The good thing about this hack by Megaupload is that it's a loose-loose for the industry and while they have no shortage of material in that area (it seems like we hear a horribly backwards story like this every month), that steady drip really may end up give us some progressive approaches.

throwaway64 15y ago
I am almost certain the DMCA take-down request was at least semi-automated via tag searches on youtube and rubber stamped by one of their employees. You can see this yourself by submitting a video with tags that contain artists they have on contract. I am also almost certain that MegaUpload understood this, and their video was specifically engineered to trigger these bots....
- skore 15y ago
  Interesting - if that is the case, kudos to them! This also makes me wonder whether there is are bots to search for all those "no copyright intended" videos.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

w1ntermute 15y ago

It seems to me that the only way to end the labels' dominance over the music industry is to deprive them of their sole revenue source - popular and successful artists. What services exactly does a label continue to provide, now that the internet has made it much easier for artists to self-promote? I presume that large portion of what the labels used to do can now be done very easily by the artists themselves. There may be an opening for a tech startup here (maybe there's already one (or more) in this field) to take whatever the labels still need to do and undercut them on price and ease of acceptance (the labels are pretty picky about which artists they take). It seems to me that the labels have spurned a lot of the technological advances that have been made possible over the last decade or two in favor of clinging to an increasingly outdated business model in the hopes of squeezing a final dollar or two out of their musicians.

untog 15y ago
What services exactly does a label continue to provide, now that the internet has made it much easier for artists to self-promote? Promotion. Artists can self-promote all they want, but they're up against thousands of other artists that are also self-promoting. Labels pay people to listen to artists, work out which ones are actually talented (or, in reality, which ones will make the most money) and focus their promotion on those artists only. The signal to noise ratio is totally different, and they can afford to put far more resources behind this smaller pool of artists. They also have a lot of experience in promotion, which up and coming bands simply don't have. There isn't a tech startup solution to everything. Maybe you could set up a site that crowdsources this artist selection process but I wouldn't be optimistic- there is no personal reward in listening to hours upon hours of awful music. Maybe you could give those initial listeners a stake in the bands they vote for? That could be an interesting idea. I've long thought that MySpace might yet have a life as some sort of band-centric site. Since it died a horrible death nothing has really come up to replace it.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Tech companies hire PR firms to do their promotion. They don't give the PR firm a cut of all the revenues the company makes, nor do they give them equity necessarily (it does happen but its not the rule). The 'labels' have no reason to exist, there is however a great market for Artist PR firms. We need that first disruptive one though, where an artist 'signs' with them meaning that they do the promotion but they don't own the music copyright. And as it is a new business model for the music industry it will take some time to work out.

NameNickHN 15y ago

I would be 100% behind this if it weren't for that stupid Kim Dotcom.

xer0 15y ago

This is part of a trend to abandon due process. In some cases it's the government itself, with ICE seizing domains without having to go to trial and prove their case. In this case it's government abdicating their role in due process, telling corporations to do what they will. This is leading to vigilantism, by the government and by corporations.

nocipher 15y ago
This is leading to vigilantism, by the government and by corporations. This is one the most pointed comments I've heard about copyright litigation and wanton take-down notices.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

bigohms 15y ago

I'm surprised to learn Megaupload is a Kim dotcom, aka Kimble production.

Element_ 15y ago
I always wondered who owned the mega label sites and why they were never talked about in the mainstream media. Then your comment led me to the following article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20087753-261/the-mystery-man-behind-megaupload-piracy-fight/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20087753-261/the-mystery-m...
- bigohms 15y ago
  Cool. I would opine that a good 50% of the internet money made out there is very unsexy, hidden and underground. The people behind the businesses have absolutely no incentive to draw attention to themselves but occasionally they do slip through the cracks.

rmoriz 15y ago

Money laundry.... => Hongkong => BVI http://imgur.com/a/7fqbg http://imgur.com/a/7fqbg