Posted by Colin B on 12/18/06 00:31

"John Turco" <jtur@concentric.net> wrote in message
news:4584C722.C4FADEB9@concentric.net...
> Colin B wrote:
>
> <edited, for brevity>
>
>> I agree with what you say above. My point is that I am very surprised
>> that a
>> lot of videos that probably infringe copyright can survive on Youtube for
>> many months and, in some cases, receive hundreds of thousands of views.
>> When
>> an "illegal" video becomes this popular, you would think that the rights
>> owner would become aware of it and ask for it to be taken down. But some
>> rights owners may leave such videos on Youtube because of the free
>> advertising their work obtains.
>>
>> Although a lot of videos are, no doubt, taken down at the request of the
>> rights owners, most fair-minded people would be concerned at the number
>> of
>> videos on Youtube (and similar sites) that shouldn't be there because
>> permission from the owners has not been obtained.
>
>
> Hello, Colin:
>
> Well, I've seen some eBay sellers, hawking homemade recordings of
> American football games (i.e., copyrighted, network television
> broadcasts thereof), and getting away with it, for several years.
>
> That's in spite of eBay's explicit rules against such illegal activity!


Because the copyright holders MUST be aware that large numbers of persons
are publishing all or part of their work on internet, then they need to get
together to devise ways of stopping this illegal behavior. If the copyright
holders don't do this, it sends a message to the illegal uploaders that the
copyright laws are toothless, or that nobody really cares about it. So,
until the law is changed to make website owners jointly responsible along
with the uploaders for publishing "illegal" material, then the copyright
holders are going to lose out.

This recent news article talks about how internet brings together the small
contributions of millions of people and makes them matter. But as long as
the web site owners continue publishing material that has not been copyright
cleared, then this practice will become even more prevalent than it is now.

http://news.com.com/Time+magazine+names+you+Person+of+the+Year/2100-1025_3-6144371.html

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