Appeals Court Tells Universal Music: You Lost The Veoh Case, Get Over It
from the moving-on... dept
The Universal Music case against Veoh is quite incredible on many layers. Universal Music sued Veoh, a YouTube-like company, despite the fact that Veoh was quite careful in abiding by the DMCA's safe harbor rules. Universal Music has lost at every single level, though the costs of the lawsuit put Veoh out of business (someone else bought up the domain and continues to run a site, but it's not the original Veoh). Despite losing, and losing badly, Universal Music keeps pumping huge sums of money into the law firms it hired to continually appeal the rulings against it, despite them being overwhelmingly against Universal Music. Back in March, the appeals court, once again sided with Veoh, but Universal Music asked for the court to rehear the case.The Ninth Circuit appeals court has made it clear it has no interest in rehearing the case:
The panel has voted to deny Appellant's petition for rehearing. Judges Pregerson and Berzon have voted to deny the petition for rehearing en banc and Judge Fisher so recommends.Basically, not a single judge on the court thinks there's any issue here at all. Universal Music lost. It lost big. It lost clearly and with little question to whether or not it should have lost. Not a single judge on the court thought that it's even worth bothering exploring this issue again since the issues and the decision were so clear.
The full court has been advised of the petition for rehearing en banc and no judge has requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc.
Of course, given that Universal Music's lawyers seem to be running the show, I fully expect them to ask the Supreme Court to review the case as well (rack up those billing hours!). Chances are the Supreme Court will deny cert (what's the issue to review here?), but if they actually take the case, it could lead to a clear decision on how Universal Music's warped interpretation of the DMCA, that it requires filters, is obviously incorrect.
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Filed Under: copyright, dmca, safe harbors
Companies: universal music, veoh
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Also, and I'm sure this has been brought up before, but I find it important enough to ask again: given the fact that UM's lawsuits were obviously to a) put Veoh out of business due to legal fees, and b) to set a precedent for later cases beneficial to UM, why has UM not been ordered to pay Veoh's legal fees? This is pretty much a textbook example of 'vexatious litigation', so why hasn't UM been ordered to pay the legal fees of their target as punishment?
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It must be nice to be able to run a business where you can screw the consumers AND get them to pay for it.
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The hammer time has come and pass.
Pinky and Brains will have to go to the drawing board again trying to find another "anchor" to pin their plans on it, the forcing filter scheme sank.
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Universal didnt lose
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They wanted the power to force filtering and probably be able to chose what filtering was adequate or not, the courts disagreed hard on that.
And the shill here who parroted that line may be feeling a bit stupid right about now LoL
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I don't know who said that, but it is applicable to this.
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No, the will face the same strategy. Sue them until they are broke, no matter how many times they win.
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Have any of you notice the similarities between MC Hammer and Psy?
Put the 2 dancing side by side and you see how they dress and move :)
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A perfect example of...
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I am wary of how things will develop though. Without some serious competition maybe due to the chilling effects from this lawsuit and the one from Viacom against Youtube this same Youtube managed to get firmly established as THE platform for hosting and streaming user generated videos. Which poses the same issue of Amazon monopolizing the ebook market, Apple the digital mp3 songs. They simply dictate what happens in the market and in Youtube's case you have those problematic Content ID takedowns and arbitrary censorship (usually due to moral standings). A more diversified market would be preferable.
That said, the MAFIAA are the biggest losers in any of the cases due to their own incompetency.
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