Rethinking copyright law
Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ:
TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington comments on YouTube-Viacom copyright showdown (see my earlier post from today here) and offers some insightful observations on the need to rethink copyright law:
There was more posturing today in the big YouTube-Viacom copyright showdown that began around the time that Google acquired YouTube
and started talking to big copyright holders about paying them to get
their content legally onto the popular video site. It spun out of control from there until it became a billion dollar lawsuit.
Normally I’m on the side of whoever’s against the copyright holders and their agenda of ever-expanding rights on these types of issues. They will stop at nothing to preserve their expired business models.
In this case, though, I’m just as afraid of YouTube, which still
aims to get rights to show all, or virtually all, professionally
produced television and film content. Their goal is simple - copy the
adsense model and get the same stranglehold on advertising around video
that they have around search.
That may be more difficult for Google than sewing up search was,
since there are so many players determined to stop them before they get
a proper foothold. The music guys got hooked on the iTunes fees and
still haven’t been able to get off the juice. Their tv and film cousins
are fully aware of what happens if a single middleman gets too much
power.
What’s Best For The Internet?
The front lines of the copyright war are the ISP and service
provider skirmishes. The MPAA and RIAA continue to fight consumers
directly, of course, but their only real chance of locking down the
Internet and file trading/steaming is to go after the companies that
allow it to happen. In 1998 the DMCA made copyright infringement even
more illegal than it already was,…