This morning’s Video Rights Roundtable was, as we hoped, a rare opportunity for online video industry players to talk about their conflicts and collaborations in the wild — not in a courtroom or conference room. In a (more than) two-hour discussion, the nearly 50 attendees shared their perspectives on the increasingly complex world of rights, responsibility and opportunities surrounding online video content. Complete liveblog coverage is available at GigaOM Pro (subscription required), and Ryan Lawler was on-site with some additional event coverage at NewTeeVee. More links below the fold (and full event video coming soon!). Read more of this story

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the advocacy group Public Knowledge sent tit-for-tat letters to the FCC yesterday over the issue of Selectable Output Control (SOC). The MPAA has petitioned for waiver on the FCC’s ban of SOC, which would allow analog outputs from consumer electronics devices to be disabled, and, by extension, would prevent people from watching certain content unless they had special digital inputs on their TV sets.

The MPAA says that enabling Selectable Output Control would help stem piracy and would allow studios to release movies on VOD sooner after they appear in theaters.

Public Knowledge doesn’t buy that argument and sees the issue as a matter of control over what kind of TV you can use. It sent a letter to FCC Genachowski asking the Commission to deny the MPAA the waiver. Public Knowledge wrote:

[O]ver the past year, the MPAA has failed to provide a reason as to why the limited interests of its six member movie studios should be allowed to outweigh the interests of those consumers that will be forced to replace over 20 million television sets and countless other devices in order to view content that their current equipment is capable of displaying.

In its response, the MPAA sent its own letter (PDF) to the FCC and wrote:

[G]rant of the waiver would for the first time allow millions of consumers to view high- value, high-definition theatrical films during an early release window that is not available today. MPAA has explained that release of this high-value content as part of an earlier window, especially with respect to movies released for home viewing close to or even during their initial theatrical run, necessarily requires the highest level of protection possible through use of SOC.

Chinese P2P startup Xunlei has sued its competitor Sohu for copyright infringement, according to the Shenzen Daily. Xunlei is alleging that Sohu’s search engine, Sogou, is infringing on copyrights related to Xunlei’s P2P software as well as its own search engine, Gougou.com. Sohu had previously filed its own copyright infringement lawsuits against Xunlei and other Chinese P2P vendors.

China has long been a P2P video wunderkind of sorts. Efforts to establish P2P-based consumer video platforms like Joost and Babelgum have largely failed in the U.S. and Europe, but similar offerings attract millions of users in China. However, the Chinese market is saturated with literally dozens of video vendors, and efforts to grow their business beyond the PC have stalled due to strict government licensing requirements.

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UPDATED: Salvatore Cuffaro, an former Italian politician who was found to have ties with the Mafia in Italy, is taking legal action against 4,609 YouTube commenters.

This story comes via Techdirt and Boing Boing, and there are some issues with translation, but here are what seem to be the basics: The video (embedded here) is from the early ’90s and features Cuffaro before he was elected president of Sicily in 2001. Stefano Polli, a Boing Boing commenter, provided what he says is a translation of what’s happening in the video:

The man onstage with mustaches on the right is one of our civil heroes, Giovanni Falcone, an anti-mafia judge that paid his commitment dying in the most terrifying of the cosanostra attacks, the Capaci carnage. The yelling guy is Salvatore Cuffaro 10 years before becoming the president of Sicily. He is complaining about how journalists and some kind of magistrates (referring to Mr. Falcone) are damaging sicilian politic system and the whole Sicily with their “false” accusations, even more than CosaNostra itself.

We’re not sure exactly what legal actions Cuffaro is taking, but on Oct. 22 he “laid charges,” writes Boing Boing. An anti-corruption Italian political party called Italia del Valori has offered to cover the legal defense of any of the commenters that need help.

A criminal investigation has been launched against senior executives of YouTube and parent company Google in Hamburg, Germany, over allegations of copyright infringement, according to media reports from that country. The case started after a complaint by German music rights holders; Hamburg’s prosecutor has formally requested assistance from U.S. colleagues to compel YouTube to produce log files identifying who uploaded as well as who viewed 500 specific videos.

It’s unclear if the investigation will ever result in an actual court case. German prosecutors routinely throw out criminal investigations against copyright infringement, leaving it up to the parties involved to pursue civil lawsuits or settle out of court. The case does, however, once again demonstrate that Viacom’s massive one billion-dollar lawsuit isn’t the only copyright dispute Google has to tackle. There are regularly lawsuits all around the globe accusing YouTube and Google as running a worldwide video platform. Indeed, at a time when fragmented rights and universal access continue to collide, not irking rights holders seems impossible.

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Court Orders Pirate Bay to Delete Torrents; site operators are found responsible, but don’t have to block access to Dutch users. (TorrentFreak)

The Sales-Only Window Is Real; studio sources confirm Netflix CEO’s assertion that the industry will block more than just Redbox discount rentals — though delays may actually be traded for better deals. (LA Times)

Why TV Is Good for the World; interesting read on the global effects of television, past, present and future. (Foreign Policy)

yfrog Adds Webcam Uploads; now users can post videos and photos to Twitter using the yfrog, web site, iPhone, email, and many desktop and mobile Twitter apps. (emailed release)

Which Came First, the Rights or the Monetization? Supercomm panelists say multiple aspects of a successful online video business are still missing. (Contentinople)

Here in the UK, last night’s Question Time — a BBC show where audience members can ask questions of a panel, usually consisting mainly of politicians — caused uproar as the BBC invited Nick Griffin, the controversial leader of the far right British National Party, to participate on the show.

While the general opinion seems to be that Griffin’s appearance hasn’t done his party many favors (and Griffin is planning on formally complaining about his treatment on the show), one thing about the show struck me as interesting. Every time Griffin tried to portray his party as being more moderate in its views, the other members of the panel would respond by pointing out various videos of Griffin available on YouTube, such as this one of Griffin appearing on stage with Ku Klux Klansman David Duke and explaining how to “sell” far right ideas, or denying that the holocaust took place. The live show didn’t stitch in the videos themselves, but the fact they existed was enough. While Griffin could claim that some quotes attributed to him in the media were untrue or taken out of context, it was very hard for him to deny the video evidence.

To see UK politicians — among them Jack Straw, a senior member of the Cabinet — citing specific YouTube videos to discredit Griffin (rather than, say, taking quotes from newspaper articles) was surprising and effective. Griffin had to resort to saying he couldn’t comment on the content of the Holocaust denial video out of concern he would be prosecuted under European law — a statement that was flatly denied by Jack Straw, who has some authority on the topic as UK Justice Secretary.

Simon Mackie is editor of our sister site WebWorkerDaily.