UK Court Finds That Simply Linking To Infringing Videos Is Not Infringing

from the took-a-while-though dept

We've seen more than a few lawsuits over the years by the entertainment industry against various sites that merely link to infringing content. The entertainment industry likes to make the claim that this is inducing infringement, but if you're just pointing to a bunch of YouTube videos, it's difficult to see how that should be considered infringement at all. In one such case, over in the UK, a site called tv-links.co.uk, after years battling this in court, was found not to have infringed on the copyrights of movie studios. The case was brought by FACT, the "Federation Against Copyright Theft," but had little evidence of any actual infringement being done by the site, who merely linked to videos found on YouTube, Veoh, DailyMotion and other sites.

FACT originally claimed that the site "facilitated" copyright infringement on the internet, despite that not being a part of UK law. Eventually, the official charges were "Conspiracy to Defraud and breaches of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act," which is quite similar to what OiNK's admin was charged with. And just like how OiNK's Alan Ellis was found not guilty, the court has sided with TV links, noting that it didn't actually infringe on anyone's copyrights directly. Of course, this still took years of having to fight it out in court and a ton of resources -- some of which were frozen by a "financial restraining order" during the case itself.

So while it's great that TV Links prevailed in the end, it does show how the decks are usually stacked again those doing perfectly legal things. If the entertainment industry does decide to sue, you're basically facing a huge, costly and painful legal battle, no matter how strong your case is. The system is weighted way too heavily in favor of the entertainment industry, such that they can bully sites they don't like into compliance in many cases, even if they're legal. It's great that TV Links was able to make it through the process, but many other sites don't even have the chance -- and that's why these kinds of lawsuits keep showing up.

Filed Under: infringing, linking, uk, videos
Companies: tv-links

Of Course Most Content Shared On BitTorrent Infringes; But That's Meaningless

from the who-cares? dept

I was going to ignore this, because based on what's known there's not much interesting or surprising, but people keep submitting the research done by a student of professor Ed Felten of a sample of some content available via BitTorrent (erroneously described as a "census" rather than a "sample") that suggested that 99% of what was available on this particular slice of the BitTorrentsphere was infringing. While there may be some legitimate concerns with the methodology, I have to say that my response to the original was: of course. So what?

Of course the majority of files shared on BitTorrent are infringing. And I don't see how it much matters if the percentage is 60% or 90% or 99%. I don't think anyone has ever denied that a ton of infringing content is shared on BitTorrent -- and, as some have rightly suggested part of the problem is that those who provide the content haven't done a good job making alternatives available, and that drives people to these potentially illegal options.

But what I don't get is the claim by industry lobbyists and lawyers that this somehow proves that BitTorrent needs to be stopped/fixed/held back/filtered/whatever. I read into it exactly the opposite. It shows what a piss poor job so much of the industry has done figuring out how to embrace the obvious demand that's out there, and how to leverage that smartly. The fact that so much is infringing should be a siren waking the industry up that it's time to stop fighting what people want, and start figuring out how to serve them. And for those who think this is evidence that BitTorrent needs to be blocked (wow) because so much is infringing, I'm wondering how they defend the legitimate parts that do get tossed out along with that. So just because NBC Universal is too clueless to figure out how to take advantage of a great distribution and promotion mechanism, people who want to use those tools and want to embrace better forms of distribution and marketing shouldn't be able to? That makes no sense to me.

Filed Under: bittorrent, content, infringing

Is Google Banning AdSense On Sites It Thinks Have Infringing Content?

from the oddities dept

Thomas O'Toole points us to yet another issue with Google customer service, where an author who holds the copyright on his own books published them online but was denied the ability to put AdSense on the site, after Google told him it had found "it contains copyrighted material." Of course, this makes no sense. Nearly every website "contains copyrighted material," because any new creative content placed in a fixed form -- such as a website -- is automatically covered by copyright. What I'm guessing Google meant (even though it got it wrong) was that it thought the site contained infringing or unauthorized copyrighted content -- though, if that's the case, that's what it should have said.

And, once again highlighting Google's communication problem, the rejection came from an email address called "noreply," making it difficult for the author to get clarification. He did eventually get Google to "resolve" the issue, but Google's overall policy on the matter is not explained at all. Does Google have an official policy where its AdSense team tries to determine if content on a website is infringing? If so, do they have an official dispute process? Does the AdSense team take into account fair use? Google has, generally speaking, been very good on issues of copyright and fair use, but this particular policy seems rather strange.

Filed Under: adwords, communications, copyright, infringing
Companies: google