YouTube has built a reputation for quickly pulling copyrighted material from its servers. Many have argued for years that YouTube pulls content a little too quickly and some have expressed frustration over re-instating content that was wrongfully yanked. One copyright holder, namely the creator of the Nyancat, is finding out how hard it is to undo the damage of a copyright imposter.

Last month, YouTube prevailed in the Viacom vs. YouTube case. Under the ruling, YouTube does indeed qualify for the DMCA safe harbor provision. Today, Viacom served notice that they are appealing the ruling, but didn't specify how they plan on doing so.

"We are disappointed with the judge's ruling, but confident we will win on appeal," general counsel Michael Fricklas said at the time. "It is and should be illegal for companies to build their businesses with creative material they have stolen from others."

An e-mail reportedly from Steve Jobs has recently surfaced which suggests that Apple may be preparing to sue Theora and other open source video codecs. The dispute would revolve around patent laws.

All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other "open source" codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn't mean or guarantee that it doesn't infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.

It will likely be a few months before Adobe rolls out 10.1 to everyone, but the impact of this move will likely be felt both in the short and long terms.  Short term, hardware decoded Flash video could be a real boost tonettop PC’s and netbooks, allowing them to really become cheap and easy media playback devices.  In the longer view, however, Flash’s innovation here could really cement its central role as they delivery avenue for video of all kinds over the Internet, dealing serious blows to both Microsoft’s Quicksilver, but also any other competitors still out there.  Unknown is what Flash video’s dominance will mean for the file-sharing and downloading communities.  Will video pirates move away from downloading entire shows via Bittorrent to instead watch free streaming episodes on Hulu -like services if quality differences disappear?  Will more cable customers ditch their TV services in favor of going completely for over-the-top video?  Such suppositions may be quite speculative at this point, but with the changes to Flash on the horizon, they are becoming more plausible every day.

Easy-to-use guide will show you how to rip, download, and convert video from Facebook or simply embed on other websites.

STEP #1

STEP #2

STEP #3

Embedding and Customizing Video

Downloading Video

Converting Video

The EFF is currently highlighting a new legal victory for video sharing sites. The case is known as the UMG vs. Veoh case where UMG sued video sharing site Veoh for the activities of it’s users – some of which uploaded copyright infringing material on the site.

Veoh argued that their activities of offering a medium to post content falls under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s “Safe harbour” provisions which says that, among other things, that internet services are not liable for the actions of their users – a provision that seems to be glossed over like a mere suggestion these days with the copyright industry demanding ISPs to fight copyright infringement.

UMG (Universal Music Group) counter argued, saying that hosting companies should be liable for every bit a user uploads.

All too often when these cases come up, user generated websites are frequently branded as little more than a vehicle for copyright infringement. Like the internet itself, when one makes an argument that labels, say, a video sharing site as something simple like a medium for piracy, it’s far too easy to argue many ways in which that given site is not. Examples of possible counter arguments include the fact that it’s a learning tool (plug in virtually any software product and add “tutorial” to see what we mean), or an independent musician site (OK-Go is one of the more famous examples of musicians jump-starting their careers with a viral video), a website for magicians (where magic tricks are often a popular keyword), a gaming website (where speedrun is a good keyword for something like this), a tool for businesses to host video content (many businesses like small town newspapers are jumping onto YouTube to post their small town journalism reports, or a cleverly well produced advertisement for companies like BlendTec for their rather famous ‘Will it Blend?’ series), or even an education tool where students can post final projects like animations. Pretty much anything in general one can think of is more than likely posted on a video-sharing site.

Still, it’s an effective weapon the copyright industry has against such sites by saying that users just go there to pirate their content as it gives them a public relations edge that actually works for a lot of people. Make everyone think that people just go there just to watch music videos and there will be those that will easily believe them.

The EFF concludes with the following:

Relying on the statutory language, as well as the legislative history, the court concluded that all of these activities are covered by the DMCA Section 512(c) safe harbor. Lots of online service providers will greet this ruling with relief. If the court had accepted UMG’s arguments, every web host would lose the safe harbor as soon as it made web pages available to the public. The ruling should also help YouTube in its ongoing battle with Viacom, which also turns on the continuing strength of the DMCA safe harbors.

But the Veoh ruling also points out a surprising irony: while YouTube and Viacom are fighting their interminable litigation trench war, many interesting DMCA legal questions are being resolved in smaller, faster-moving cases involving companies like Veoh. At this rate, the highly-anticipated Viacom v. YouTube lawsuit may end up a footnote in the legal fights that define the rules governing user-generated content.

It might be worth noting that the legal battles going on with the DMCA in the United States will more than likely be little more than the tip of the iceberg with legal questions being raised with video sharing sites since many broadcasters from around the world have also sued YouTube for copyright infringement. As much as the copyright industry likes to, from time to time, believe that the US laws apply to other countries, the DMCA only covers US cases and international cases will be far more complex. Worst case scenario in the future, some countries will end up being either blocked by or blocking YouTube due to a court decision not deciding in a video-sharing sites favour. It’ll have a negative effect on video sharing sites, but it’s unlikely that it’ll be a fatal one – especially if the lawsuits in the US end up failing to take down YouTube (and YouTube’s position seems to be more favourable as a result of this legal victory).

Controversy has taken hold in Australia recently over what happened to a 60 year old man now charged for child abuse. The report comes from the Sydney Morning Herald which says that Chris Illingworth liked a viral video posted on YouTube so much, that he re-posted it on a similar website known as LiveLeak.

Apparently, the act of re-posting that particular video was enough to get his house raided by police. Apparently, the video was originally broadcast on US television, but authorities said that since the video was re-posted by an Australian, the Australian is subject to Australian law. Authorities also said that the child was being abused even though the clip depicts the child laughing and smiling by the end of it.

The report also says that the Electronic Frontier Australia (EFA) has contacted the defendant and offered to help defend him.

It’s unclear what authorities were looking for while raiding the defendants house.

The Associated Press is reporting that multimedia giant from Italy ‘Mediaset’ is suing YouTube. Add that to a long list of international content outlets trying to find a get rich quick scheme.

From the AP:

Mediaset, the media empire founded by Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, said Wednesday it was seeking at least 500 million euros ($779 million) in damages against Google Inc.’s YouTube service for allegedly misusing video produced by Mediaset.

In a lawsuit filed with Rome civil court, Mediaset said it had identified on YouTube at least 4,643 video clips of Mediaset-owned material that was available on June 10 alone after being posted “without obtaining rights.”

Those clips totaled 325 hours of broadcasts from Mediaset’s three private television stations, the Italian company said.

This obviously raises the age-old question ever since ThePirateBay started receiving lawsuits of ‘does the lawsuit have jurisdiction?’ YouTube isn’t located in Italy, should it be sued in a Roman court?

Earlier this year, French Broadcaster TF1 sued YouTube for 100 million. This latest lawsuit seems to show that YouTube is one of the broadcasters favorite scapegoat in copyright litigation. Exactly how this lawsuit can be successful is anyones guess.

NewTeeVee noted a report on the Wall Street Journal which points to concern that the Chinese government has shut down popular Chinese video sharing site 56.com.

The suggestion on 56.com was that they were down for maintenance, but the site has been down for maintenance since the third of this month. The lengthy downtime, according to the report, is sparking concerns that the Chinese government is actually censoring the site. 56.com is no small site either since, according to Alexa, currently boasts a traffic ranking of 83 overall with traffic primarily originating from China.

“At the start of the year,” writes Chris Albrecht of NewTeeVee, “Chinese regulators said that video sites would have to be state-owned. The government later clarified its list of requirements for video sites, including the types of content that must be filtered. The strict regulations leaves the state of the online video business in China in flux.”

Apparently, the trouble of the video streaming business in Asia isn’t solely originating in China. According to Chosun, a news outlet in South Korea, five CEOs of a South Korea based video streaming outlet were arrested for copyright violations recently. From the report:

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office on Tuesday said it arrested the presidents of five companies including Nowcom, which runs PDBOX, and KUTECH, which runs Endisk. The total number of the members of these five firms mount to 23.38 million, and the sales W74 billion (US$1=W1,024).

They are charged with promoting the illegal circulation of domestic and foreign films online by giving “heavy uploaders” 10 percent of their revenues from downloaders. According to the prosecutors, if a user pays W300 to download one film, the one who uploaded it gets W30, and the storage company earns W270. The system generates an estimated loss of W1.1 trillion for the domestic film industry, prosecutors say.

Prosecutors decided not to prosecute those who downloaded the files as their number is too large and it is difficult to assume that they knew the files they downloaded violated copyright.

But some Internet users say the government, unhappy with the candlelight vigils, has started cracking down on the Internet as a form of revenge. “As Afreeca became a mecca of online protests with over 7 million watching live broadcasts of candlelight vigils, we remain suspicious at the nature of this investigation,” Nowcom says. “It cannot be ruled out that a political motive is involved.” Prosecutors brushed off the claim, explaining that the investigation began in April, even before the candlelight vigils started, and Afreeca is not even part of this investigation.

NewTeeVee covered the story saying “South Korea has one of the highest broadband penetration rates in the world; 40 MBit connections in the home are not uncommon. Koreans used to make use of these fast connections by swapping files P2P-style, but users have migrated to web-based storage solutions since the popular file-swapping system Soribada was forced to shut down in 2005.”

Further reading:

Free accounts do, however, have limited download speeds. Users have to buy or earn rewards points to get faster downloads, and you can earn points if other users download your files. This rewards system seems to be at the core of the investigations against the companies involved. Prosecutors have told Chosun Ilbo that the company rewards heavy uploaders with up to 10 percent of the money it makes from movie downloads.

Webhard services have been targeted by prosecutors and the entertainment industry for a while now, but Korean activists have always criticized efforts to shut down or restrict those services as heavy-handed and “a surrender (…) to pressure from the U.S.”

Anti-U.S. sentiments are also at the core of the dispute about the recent crackdown. Protests against the government’s decision to allow imports of U.S. meat have hit the Korean government hard in recent weeks. Nowcom execs believe their company was targeted because it offered these protests an online forum, according to JoongAng Ilbo.

NewTeeVee also points to statement which contains the following:

“The arrests naturally make us question whether the government authorities are conducting this probe with a politically motivated intention to prevent the expansion of candlelight vigils,” the company said in a statement posted on Afreeca.com.

“Nowcom never helped Internet users infringe upon copyrights of materials either,” the statement said.

Prosecutors said Afreeca.com is not the target of the investigation.

“The film industry has been filing lawsuits against online storage services since March,” said Koo Bon-jin, a senior prosecutor at the Seoul Central Prosecutors’ Office. “Our investigation is focused on how these storage services are involved in circulating pirated films.”

In a world where privacy has become a thing of the past in the US and in Sweden, people could soon face total disconnection from the internet in France based on three copyright complaints and a theory that making available is copyright infringement floating around, one hopes that these two incidences in Asia isn’t a sign of things to come for Western society as well.

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