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Court: Veoh Not Guilty of Copyright Infringement
A California district court concluded today that Veoh is not liable for infringing content uploaded to its site, settling one of the first lawsuits filed against a video sharing site two years ago.
“The record presented demonstrates that, far from encouraging copyright infringement, Veoh has a strong DMCA policy, takes active steps to limit incidents of infringement on its website, and works diligently to keep unauthorized works off its website,” the opinion read.
For those who don’t recall the particulars of the Io v. Veoh lawsuit, let’s briefly review: Io Group, a distributor of adult films, discovered its copyrighted works on Veoh.com in June 2006 and, without requesting the videos be taken down from Veoh, summarily filed suit. Coincidentally, Veoh had already decided to discontinue publishing adult content, and by the time the lawsuit was filed the videos had already been deleted.
YouTube Lawsuits: A Roundup
YouTube’s been sued so many times, it’s hard to keep track.
Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against the video-sharing site is being watched closely in the U.S., but other copyright litigants are springing up abroad as well. In the past two months alone, YouTube’s been sued in France, Spain and Italy for allegedly hosting copyrighted materials.
Here at home, the lawsuits challenge the DMCA’s safe harbor protections, which state that service providers cannot (with a few qualifications) be held liable for the content that users upload. But the EU doesn’t enforce a DMCA-like law, leaving several powerful media companies and collective licensing agencies to continually pressure YouTube to respect copyrights. YouTube has come to agreements with some of the agencies, e.g., Germany’s GEMA, but those with media companies have proved more elusive.
Below are some of the larger lawsuits alleging that YouTube violates copyrights. Also included are a few early, well-publicized lawsuits that have since been abandoned or rolled up into larger ones.
Mediaset v. Google/YouTube
The Italian television company, owned by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, is seeking $779 million in damages after finding what it claims were 4,643 copyrighted videos on YouTube. MediaSet alleges the clips constitute the equivalent of 315,672 broadcasting days. The lawsuit comes on the heels of news that Italy is about to charge four Google execs for failing to adequately monitor uploads on Google Video. Google is also currently facing copyright lawsuits in Spain and France.
- Filed: July 2008
- Court: Rome
- Accusation: Illegal distribution and commercial use of audio and video files
- Further Reading: Spain also suing YouTube over copyright and France’s TF1 Suing, Too
Imaginary Bitches Recipient of Imaginary Views?
Is the latest breakout series on YouTube the beneficiary of view scamming?
An unexpectedly successful, non-studio affiliated show starring All My Children actress Eden Reigel as a lonely-slash-possibly schizo girl who conjures imaginary friends, Imaginary Bitches has been racking up the views lately: At least one episode has been viewed over 1 million times, and several other episodes have view counts in the high six figures.
Ostensibly, the show’s popularity is derived from Reigel’s star power, plus cameos from other soap actors such as Jessalyn Gilsig, Greg Rikaart and Elisabeth Hendrickson. The boldface names have prompted coverage in pubs including NYPost.com, US Weekly and TVGuide.com, and the series was recently featured on YouTube’s home page.
But despite these bona fides, at least one anonymous IB detractor — a tipster who wrote a detailed account of his suspicions to NTV — accused IB of using fake MySpace profiles, MySpace spamming and YouTube’s autoplay embeds to generates tens of thousands of fake views.
YouTube Says Autoplays Don’t Count
After weeks of speculation about its autoplay view-counting policy and at least one high-profile news story, YouTube has revealed that the company purposefully does not count video autoplays.
“Autoplaybacks are not counted toward the visible ‘views’ numbers displayed on the YouTube site because autoplaybacks are not viewer initiated,” a YouTube spokesperson said via email, adding that viewcounts should be a reflection of the interests and intents of video viewers. “The majority of videos are not affected by this.”
YouTube did not answer follow-up questions aimed at finding out why the majority of videos are not affected. Presumably most embedded videos use YouTube’s default embed code, which requires user interaction to play.
Google Video’s Porn Problem
While Google is busily applying YouTube’s pop culture aegis to safe-for-work fare like politics and hip hop, the company seems content to allow also-ran Google Video to wallow in softcore smut.
Not a believer? Check the first few Google Video top 100 new videos, as delivered via RSS:
- Theo laughing at the Wii (195k views)
- Prostitute video (22k views)
- Beautiful girl kissing you with love (56k views)
- Bournemouth prostitute discusses her trade (114k views)
- First time online dating how to pickup dating sex (9k views)
The top 100 as seen on the Google Video site itself isn’t much better: Barbie Girl, Ainda te amo, Woman in Shower!!!, Guy pwned by girl and Girl caught by boyfriend. Some of the vids are lighthearted parody, but others, like two girls teach one another how to french kiss, are definitely lascivious.
Ashton Kutcher’s Latest Prank: Room 401, WTF
Among the many annoyingly-addictive gimmicks J.J. Abrams has helped loose upon the world — TV show cryptograms, mysterious movie trailers, Alias — is that inescapably virulent strain of marketing known as the interactive mystery. The latest show to employ the format, albeit without Abrams’ imprimatur: MTV’s Room 401, named after the hospital room where Harry Houdini died.
The show, EP’d by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, is a reality series that pranks unsuspecting people with terrifying (but fake) situations: Crabs scuttling Alien-like out of a man’s chest at a sushi restaurant, a man who deep-fries his hand, a rat inside an arcade game, you get the idea. The show also contains, apparently, a series of easter eggs — subliminal messages by a doo-rag wearing Kutcher, directing videos toward an online mystery.
Hollywood Strike: Good for Online Video, Bad for UGC?
In an apparent attempt to earn even less money than they do now, Hollywood writers, long at loggerheads with studio execs over contract terms, might start jumping into the notoriously fickle online media marketplace once their contract terms expire. Hello frying pan. Meet the fire.
Screenwriters sat down with studio executives on Monday for contract talks centered around industry proposals to revamp the decades-old system by which television and film writers are paid extra when their work is released into reruns or onto DVDs. Currently writers aren’t paid for work that appears online or on wireless platforms. The contract for the 12,000+ members of the Writers Guild of America ends October 31. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) is set to make a new proposal next week.
“The only place where a strike is good is the interactive business,” said Fox Interactive president Ross Levinsohn at an event covered by Variety. “The ability to create and distribute programming across the Internet and mobile is as simple as point-and-shoot.”
Diddy Looks for Personal Assistant via YouTube
When it comes to applying for a job with a music biz icon, nothing says “I’m qualified” like saying “I’ll be your b*tch.”
Just ask the kids responding to Diddy’s search for a personal assistant, which the hip hop impresario is conducting through YouTube:
Techies, Don’t Apologize for Stickam
What to make of the fact that Stickam, a site popular with young webcam users, is run by a Japanese porn magnate?
Here are the facts: The company that owns Stickam, Advanced Video Communications (AVC) owns and operates porn sites; Stickam has no advertising; Stickam has expensive office space; and a disgruntled employee with competitive business interests is concerned about child safety on the site.
Here are the allegations: Stickam employees deleted thousands of customer service e-mails; Stickam uses the same computer systems as other AVC sites that peddle porn.
The Creepy Side of YouTube Meetups
Saturday was a strange day. While the rest of the world was celebrating the global canonization of Al Gore, a flock of handycam-wielding YouTubers descended on Washington Square Park and busily navel-gazed their way into a me! me! me! orgy of giddy solipsism. At the park’s northern entrance the vid jockeys video’d each other, circling each other with cameras pointed like some retarded McLuhan version of a Reservoir Dogs standoff.
“I’m video-ing you! Now I’m video-ing you! You’re video-ing me? I’m video-ing you!” That’s a direct quote. Meanwhile police cameras whirred and clicked their own recordings, while a few members of the media interviewed the starry-eyed kids. A producer from HBO’s Runaway Box beckoned HappySlip, the YouTuber whose advert for the meetup garnered 2.7 million views, over for an interview.
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