“The record presented demonstrates that, far from encouraging copyright infringement, Veoh has a strong DMCA policy, takes active steps to limit incidents of infringement on its website, and works diligently to keep unauthorized works off its website,” the opinion read.

For those who don’t recall the particulars of the Io v. Veoh lawsuit, let’s briefly review: Io Group, a distributor of adult films, discovered its copyrighted works on Veoh.com in June 2006 and, without requesting the videos be taken down from Veoh, summarily filed suit. Coincidentally, Veoh had already decided to discontinue publishing adult content, and by the time the lawsuit was filed the videos had already been deleted.

The lawsuit went forward anyway. Veoh claimed DMCA safe harbor protection and Io Group disputed that claim, alleging that Veoh didn’t implement its repeat copyright infringer policy in a reasonable manner and thus wasn’t adhering to one of the DMCA’s safe harbor stipulations. Veoh replied with evidence: 1,096 user accounts deleted for repeat copyright infringement, plus records of responding to copyright complaints.

Io responded by arguing that since Veoh can’t track deleted users who create new aliases, Veoh’s repeat infringer policy is useless. Here the decision recounts some unintentional comedy: “Io points out that its vice president, Keith Ruoff, was able to obtain a new Veoh account using the pseudonym ‘FauxUser99′ and the email address ‘FauxUser99@yahoo.com — an address which he acquired from Yahoo using the pseudonym ‘John Doe.’”

What Io Group failed to suss, though, was that the DMCA doesn’t require perfect defenses against copyright infringers. Rather, the DMCA requires that service providers make, essentially, a good-will effort to dissuade and delete infringing material. Plus, Io Group only raised the possibility that a repeat infringer might upload copyrighted material, but never provided evidence that such infringement occurred. Oops.

In its conclusion, the court was quick to distance itself from any suggestion that its decision could be applied to all service provider infringement cases. “The decision rendered here is confined to the particular combination of facts in this case and is not intended to push the boundaries of safe harbor so wide that less than scrupulous service providers may claim its protection.”

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YouTube’s been sued so many times, it’s hard to keep track.

Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against the video-sharing site is being watched closely in the U.S., but other copyright litigants are springing up abroad as well. In the past two months alone, YouTube’s been sued in France, Spain and Italy for allegedly hosting copyrighted materials.

Here at home, the lawsuits challenge the DMCA’s safe harbor protections, which state that service providers cannot (with a few qualifications) be held liable for the content that users upload. But the EU doesn’t enforce a DMCA-like law, leaving several powerful media companies and collective licensing agencies to continually pressure YouTube to respect copyrights. YouTube has come to agreements with some of the agencies, e.g., Germany’s GEMA, but those with media companies have proved more elusive.

Below are some of the larger lawsuits alleging that YouTube violates copyrights. Also included are a few early, well-publicized lawsuits that have since been abandoned or rolled up into larger ones.

Mediaset v. Google/YouTube

The Italian television company, owned by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, is seeking $779 million in damages after finding what it claims were 4,643 copyrighted videos on YouTube. MediaSet alleges the clips constitute the equivalent of 315,672 broadcasting days. The lawsuit comes on the heels of news that Italy is about to charge four Google execs for failing to adequately monitor uploads on Google Video. Google is also currently facing copyright lawsuits in Spain and France.

• Filed: July 2008
• Court: Rome
• Accusation: Illegal distribution and commercial use of audio and video files
• Further Reading:
  Spain also suing YouTube over copyright and France’s TF1 Suing, Too

Viacom v. YouTube

Alleging a now infamous $1 billion in damages, the lawsuit launched a direct assault against the DMCA’s safe harbor protections. As part of the case’s discovery process, the court last month issued an order saying YouTube must disclose all videos ever removed from the site, plus the database records disclosing every video ever watched, including which username and IP address watched said videos. Viacom hopes the former will demonstrate the sheer amount of infringing videos hosted on YouTube over the years, while the latter will demonstrate how often those videos were viewed. However, YouTube was not compelled to release copies of every video ever uploaded to a private account — accounts which Viacom originally argued were potential honeypots of infringing activity. The case is not expected to continue for several years.

• Filed: March 12th, 2007
• Court: NY Southern District Court
• Judge: Hon. Louis Stanton
• Accusation: Direct copyright infringement through public performance, public display, reproduction, and inducement and contributory copyright infringement
• Further Reading: Justia’s case records for Viacom v. Google, In July Order, Trade Secrets Win, Privacy Loses EFF: Court Ruling Will Expose Viewing Habits of YouTube and
  Viacom: User Logs will be Anonymized Businessweek: The Legal Tide is Turning Against Web Companies

The Football Association Premier League Limited et al v. Youtube, Inc. et al

The Premier League’s lawsuit differs from Viacom’s in that Premier claims it tried to use YouTube’s anti-piracy tools and they didn’t work. Since filing, Premier has been joined in the lawsuit by the Rugby Football League, the Finnish Football League, the Federation Francaise de Tennis, the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), Knockout Entertainment Limited, Robert Tur (see below), Seminole Warriors Boxing and Ligue de Football Professionnel. Premier’s lawsuit is now on the same track as Viacom’s, and on July 2nd the judge issued an identical ruling barring disclosure of YouTube’s source code but allowing the disclosure of data from the logging database.

• Filed: May 4th, 2007
• Court: NY Southern District Court
• Judge: Hon. Louis Stanton
• Accusation: Inducement and contributory copyright infringement
• Further Reading: Justia’s case records for Premier v. YouTube, Eric Goldman: The case is an assault on safe harbor protections and probably won’t last, BBC: YouTube Faces Football Lawsuit and Reuters: Other Companies Join Premier Lawsuit

New Jersey Turnpike Authority v. YouTube

The Jersey Turnpike’s lawsuit concerns a single video, taped via a highway security cam, showing a speeding car crashing into a toll booth. The driver of the car died, and the video subsequently found its way onto YouTube. Soon after filing, the Turnpike Authority asked the court to dismiss the case. The NJTA’s property was certainly stolen but YouTube is not, under the DMCA, liable for the illicit actions of its users. Once YouTube responded to the NJTA’s takedown request, it fulfilled its legal obligation.

• Filed: May 22nd, 2007
• Court: NJ District
• Accusation: Copyright infringement
• Further Reading: CNET: NJTA sues YouTube

David Grisman v. YouTube

An erstwhile bandmate of Jerry Garcia, Grisman sought a class-action lawsuit against YouTube in spring 2007. Grisman’s attorneys requested voluntary dismissal, though no reason was given in the court documents.

• Filed: May 2007
• Court: NY Southern District
• Accusation: Copyright Infringement
• Further Reading: Case Docket from Justia and eWEEK: Former Grateful Dead Mandolin Player Sues YouTube

Tur v. YouTube

Tur, an LA-based video journalist, sued YouTube for $150,000 in 2006 after he discovered that videos he took of Reginald Denny’s beating were available on the site. Although he was the first person to sue YouTube for copyright infringement, his case never progressed far, and he eventually sought voluntary dismissal to join the English Premier League suit.

• Filed: June 14th, 2006
• Court: California central district
• Accusation: Copyright infringement
• Further Reading: ZDNET: YouTube Sued over Copyright Infringement and Case Document: Tur petitions court for voluntary dismissal

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An unexpectedly successful, non-studio affiliated show starring All My Children actress Eden Reigel as a lonely-slash-possibly schizo girl who conjures imaginary friends, Imaginary Bitches has been racking up the views lately: At least one episode has been viewed over 1 million times, and several other episodes have view counts in the high six figures.

Ostensibly, the show’s popularity is derived from Reigel’s star power, plus cameos from other soap actors such as Jessalyn Gilsig, Greg Rikaart and Elisabeth Hendrickson. The boldface names have prompted coverage in pubs including NYPost.com, US Weekly and TVGuide.com, and the series was recently featured on YouTube’s home page.

But despite these bona fides, at least one anonymous IB detractor — a tipster who wrote a detailed account of his suspicions to NTV — accused IB of using fake MySpace profiles, MySpace spamming and YouTube’s autoplay embeds to generates tens of thousands of fake views.

Pointing to the inbound links on each IB vid on YouTube, our tipster noted the high number of views coming from suspicious MySpace profiles. For example, Episode 1 links include 4,463 views from Pam/Jenna (a fake Office profile). Episode 7 links include 18,938 views from Leona Lewis (a UK pop artist). There are several more examples, with each MySpace profile showing the video in the comments field, never embedded by the actual profile owner. Sometimes the videos appear in comments far removed from the profile’s front page.

Andrew Miller, the series creator and writer, denies any wrongdoing.

“We stopped doing that,” he said, referring to the practice of distributing embedded videos in comments. “There are sites out there that say they guarantee a certain number of views or plays or whatever, but honestly, I can’t afford that. And when you do it that way, I don’t think it even counts.”

A YouTube spokesperson said that autoplaybacks are not counted toward the visible “views” numbers displayed on YouTube because those playbacks are not viewer initiated.

Miller said that he and Reigel spent hours promoting the show to MySpace bloggers, and asked Reigel’s enthusiastic fan base to help out. Every time a show premieres, he said, they send the video to their MySpace contacts. “It’s our fans who have done the bulk of the work. They pass the episodes along, they blog about them, they comment, they message board, create avatars and write to other bloggers…Without an Eisner-type marketing budget, episode sharing is the best way we know to find an audience.”

Miller is currently finishing post-production work on IB’s first season. “We haven’t made any money, and this is all out of pocket expenses,” he said, adding that he’s been shopping around the series to several sites. He attributes the show’s success to his wife’s fans, the show’s content and help from friends. “We’ve gotten by on favors from friends, really.”

In fact, he added, “We’re about to start work on season two, and I’m just about out of favors.”

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“Autoplaybacks are not counted toward the visible ‘views’ numbers displayed on the YouTube site because autoplaybacks are not viewer initiated,” a YouTube spokesperson said via email, adding that viewcounts should be a reflection of the interests and intents of video viewers. “The majority of videos are not affected by this.”

YouTube did not answer follow-up questions aimed at finding out why the majority of videos are not affected. Presumably most embedded videos use YouTube’s default embed code, which requires user interaction to play.

It is possible to tweak the embed code so a video plays automatically each time the page loads. Though this method has historically resulted in higher view counts for video producers, it also has the potential to annoy users and undermine advertiser confidence in the video-sharing site.

YouTube said previously that the company has measures in place to discount false ad impressions.

YouTube revealed its autoplay policy after NewTeeVee inquired about the view counts for a forthcoming story on the breakout hit Imaginary Bitches, which has garnered millions of views over the course of nine episodes. Some of those views, however, seem to come from autoplay embeds in the comment sections of high-traffic MySpace profiles.

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Not a believer? Check the first few Google Video top 100 new videos, as delivered via RSS:

1. Theo laughing at the Wii (195k views)
2. Prostitute video (22k views)
3. Beautiful girl kissing you with love (56k views)
4. Bournemouth prostitute discusses her trade (114k views)
5. First time online dating how to pickup dating sex (9k views)

The top 100 as seen on the Google Video site itself isn’t much better: Barbie Girl, Ainda te amo, Woman in Shower!!!, Guy pwned by girl and Girl caught by boyfriend. Some of the vids are lighthearted parody, but others, like two girls teach one another how to french kiss, are definitely lascivious.

Changing my content filtering setting doesn’t remove these videos, either. I set it to “Use strict filtering (Filter both explicit text and explicit images),” but the images and videos remain.

The odd thing here is that Google (and Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft) obviously goes to pains to scrub sex-related topics from Hot Trends and the zeitgeist rankings. Yet Google Video is allowed to remain as is. What’s more, traffic to the site seems to be going up, at least according to Hitwise. So what gives, Google?

“Our community of users polices the site for inappropriate material,” said Google spokesperson Gabriel Stricker via e-mail. “The users can flag content that they feel is inappropriate, and once it is flagged it is reviewed by our staff and removed from the system
if it violates our Terms of Use.” (Hyperlink mine.)

In other words, Google’s not to blame, and it’s our fault for not flagging the smut. Not sure I buy that rationale, since Google seems to be doing a bang-up job of removing smut from YouTube, or at least keeping the smut from percolating into the most viewed videos listings. What’s more, Google employs a distributed network of freelancers to verify the content in YouTube videos — why don’t they use that same network for Google Video?

Follow the money, I guess. The more videos uploaded to Google Video, the more Google SERPs reveal those videos, and the more AdWords clicked. If Google can provide a better explanation, I’m all ears.

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The show, EP’d by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, is a reality series that pranks unsuspecting people with terrifying (but fake) situations: Crabs scuttling Alien-like out of a man’s chest at a sushi restaurant, a man who deep-fries his hand, a rat inside an arcade game, you get the idea. The show also contains, apparently, a series of easter eggs — subliminal messages by a doo-rag wearing Kutcher, directing videos toward an online mystery.

I say “apparently” because after watching the show online, I can’t find a single “secret” message. I scrubbed back and forth, but it’s difficult to see anything with online video. Probably much more apparent on TV if it exists. Maybe, subconsciously, I just don’t want to see Ashton Kutcher. Or maybe there’s no mystery. After all, the only way I learned about this was via a NewTeeVee tipster, who pointed me to the small community hashing out the “mystery” at 401wtf.wikispaces.com.

Mystery? Hoax mystery? The latter seems more Kutcher’s style — what better way to pull a prank than to prank the audience watching the prank. Either way, the show gets publicity. And either way, I’m getting really bored with interactive marketing. Thanks J.J.

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Screenwriters sat down with studio executives on Monday for contract talks centered around industry proposals to revamp the decades-old system by which television and film writers are paid extra when their work is released into reruns or onto DVDs. Currently writers aren’t paid for work that appears online or on wireless platforms. The contract for the 12,000+ members of the Writers Guild of America ends October 31. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) is set to make a new proposal next week.

“The only place where a strike is good is the interactive business,” said Fox Interactive president Ross Levinsohn at an event covered by Variety. “The ability to create and distribute programming across the Internet and mobile is as simple as point-and-shoot.”

So a strike would be a good thing for online video consumers, yes? Sure, but it’s no big surprise, because the shift of professionals to online media is already happening.

Just take a look at some of the news recently: Sony transitions Grouper into “prosumer” Crackle; 60 Frames Entertainment launches with the former digital chief of UTA, Brett Weinstein; Will Ferrell launches FunnyorDie; a group of Hollywood directors launches Trailers from Hell; R.J. Cutler is about to release the Facebook Diaries; Vuguru is about to launch a new Prom Queen series. The professionals are already here, folks. Hollywood is gradually acceding to the demands of an online world. So in a way, these contract problems could be just what Hollywood needs, i.e., to become constant media.

Or, to look at it from another angle, the movement of professional talent into the online space may also sound the death knell for user-generated content. For a long time a lot of observers have considered UGC to be the next Hollywood. But the truth is that most UGC is communication, not entertainment — friends making clips for their friends. These types of vids will always be prominent and they will always compete for our attention. But as more professional talent comes online, we’ll find ourselves watching more and more professionally-created vids. We’re all suckers for a good story nicely done.

The lesson for Hollywood is simple: Get off your duff and help your writers get paid for online work. Otherwise your writers will get themselves paid for their online work. Good for us and good for them, but sucks for you.

See also: the Professionalization of Internet TV.

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Just ask the kids responding to Diddy’s search for a personal assistant, which the hip hop impresario is conducting through YouTube:

“If you feel that you could be my assistant, okay, I want to know why you could be my personal assistant. So what better job than that, having me screaming at you, keeping you up late after hours, have you sleep deprived? If this job interests you, why don’t you upload, I’ll say, your video interview…it’s a new age, a new time a new era. Forget coming into the office and having a meeting with me and being nervous. Upload it to YouTube and tag it “diddy assistant.” Keep it three minutes or less, okay, I don’t like anything long-winded…this is gonna be fun.”

Right, and by fun we mean good for some laughs, and by laughs we mean at you. Below, a few examples of YouTubers telling Diddy why they’re qualified:

• Because I’ve worked for one of the top plastic surgeons in California. Yes, and now you talk like Uncle Fester on Novocaine. Kudos.
• Because I’m sideways. How thug is that?!
• Because I’m wearing Doc Brown’s sunglasses. Style? Where we’re going we don’t need “style.”
• Because I worked at an auto auction.
• Because I possess the mental capacity to be your personal soldier.

There’s no word on the deadline for this contest, though it’s my sincere hope it never, ever ends. Good luck, Diddy. If you want my vote, choose this one here.

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Here are the facts: The company that owns Stickam, Advanced Video Communications (AVC) owns and operates porn sites; Stickam has no advertising; Stickam has expensive office space; and a disgruntled employee with competitive business interests is concerned about child safety on the site.

Here are the allegations: Stickam employees deleted thousands of customer service e-mails; Stickam uses the same computer systems as other AVC sites that peddle porn.

Here are the possible conclusions:  AVC is simply expanding into other markets served by online video; Or, AVC is using Stickam to market pornography to a young demo that’s already familiar with web video.

The reaction in Silicon Valley is, as expected, droll eye-rolling. “Wait a second,” said one commenter on TechCrunch, “are you saying that my kids are using the same internet tubes that pornographers are using? I sure hope there’s no tube leakage!”

And that’s a fair point. Porn and non-porn, on the Internet, live side-by-side. It’s not as though online pornography is, like adult magazines at 7-Eleven, walled off from casual browsing.

But that tech-centric view also conflates proximity with intention. Continuing with the magazine metaphor, it’s one thing to place adult magazines beside consumer magazines. It’s a whole other thing to place the adult magazines inside consumer magazines. And should the allegations about Stickam be true, that’s essentially what the company is doing: Tricking consumers into exposure to porn.

I don’t know if Stickam is a porn gateway. But you should be wary of apologizing for any company that mixes the interests of children and the adult industry. One of those markets is going to be a loss leader. And you don’t keep loss leaders around unless they funnel customers toward profit. It’s business, plain and simple.

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“I’m video-ing you! Now I’m video-ing you! You’re video-ing me? I’m video-ing you!” That’s a direct quote. Meanwhile police cameras whirred and clicked their own recordings, while a few members of the media interviewed the starry-eyed kids. A producer from HBO’s Runaway Box beckoned HappySlip, the YouTuber whose advert for the meetup garnered 2.7 million views, over for an interview.

One of the questions I’ve been asking everybody, the producer said, is that of all the YouTubers, who would you have sex with?

Only the most pressing questions here, folks. HappySlip collapsed in giggles and demurred. She is, after all, married. Sorry boys.

And let’s talk about that for a second. Perhaps the creepiest aspect of the meetup was the meeting of both young women — theHill88, Brookers, more — and older, graying, maladriot men. There’s something inherently off-putting about said men asking girls dressed in superhero costumes (hi, theHill88) for an autograph.

You can accuse me of being cynical, or of not understanding the friendship dynamics at play, or of fanning fears of the “to catch a predator” sort. But I’m just relating what I saw. And it only got weirder at the after-party at a club called The Grand in Midtown, where men with videocameras circled the dance floor, nightvision on. And did I mention the blow-up sex doll at the front steps. WTF.
Creepy guys, creepy park, creepy dance club. YouTube may be a fascinating world online, but offline it skeeves me out.

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