Take Down Notices Don’t Work

In spite of all the DMCA take down notices sent to YouTube, copyright infringement continues to grow on the site and the infringed material stays for a while before it is taken down and during that time it is viewed by a large number of people across the world. The take down notices have not really had an impact on reducing copyright infringement and has not reduced piracy.

Smaller artists have been promoting their songs etc, via YouTube and it has served as a good advertising platform, so the larger media companies have joined the bandwagon and follow the saying, if you cannot beat them, join them.

Large Media companies have finally woken up and realized that they cannot fight the postings on YouTube and now let the infringing material stay on the Youtube site and have decided to use it as advertising material. That is good thinking to save money, energy and time and surely creating goodwill and promoting the posted material. Curt Marvis, the president of digital media at Lionsgate Entertainment, said  “We don’t want to condone people taking our intellectual property and using it without our permission,” “But we also don’t like the idea of keeping fans of our products from being able to engage with our content.” he said. “For the most part, people who are uploading videos are fans of our movies. They’re not trying to be evil pirates, and they’re not trying to get revenue from it.”

Prince to sue for copyright infringement.

The latest news is that the U.S. pop star Prince plans to sue YouTube and the like for unauthorized use of his music in a bid to “reclaim his art on the internet.” He said that YouTube could not argue it had no control over which videos users posted on its site. “YouTube … are clearly able (to) filter porn and pedophile material but appear to choose not to filter out the unauthorized music and film content which is core to their business success” Prince also plans legal action against online auctioneer eBay and Pirate Bay, a site accused by Hollywood and the music industry as being a major source of music and film piracy.

YouTube responded saying that they do care and are trying their best to prevent copyright infringement and piracy and are developing the necessary tools to combat it. If you read my previous entry- http://techbizlawblog.wordpress.com/2007/09/01/youtubes-antipiracy-technology-and-licensing/ you can read more about it. With more and more advanced technology being developed to share music, videos etc copyright infringement and fighting piracy is a one step forward two step backward game.