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Uberpaper founder Dmitry Shapiro

“In a world full of algorithms, we can get a skewed sense of the world when it comes to news,” Shapiro, the tech executive known for founding Veoh and most recently for serving as the CTO of MySpace Music, said in a phone conversation Thursday. “News is an extremely important part of how we experience the world around us. If news has been overly processed by personalization algorithms that essentially pander to us, we can start to believe that the world is a certain way, when it really isn’t that way at all.”

News that’s purposefully impersonal

That problem is exactly what Shapiro’s latest project Uberpaper was built to combat. Uberpaper, which launched to the public this week, pulls all the news from Yahoo News’ API and presents it in a way that manages to be both clean and image-rich: Imagine Flipboard meets Pinterest, but all in a liquid user interface design that works in any web browser. The only social elements to the site come in the form of a simple “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” button that users are meant to use to show how well-reported or relevant a story was, as well as the ability to comment.

Users can choose to view Uberpaper in 10 different languages, and sort the news according to topics such as World, US, Business, Technology, Sports, Politics, and so on — just like an old fashioned newspaper. In fact, the experience of finding out what’s happening in the world by reading a traditional physical paper is a big thing Uberpaper is trying to replicate. Shapiro put it this way:

“With technology, I think we threw the baby out with bathwater when it came to newspapers. Online news sites today show their content very much like search does — it’s kind of database-y, and formatted in a very linear way. We wanted to bring back the aesthetic of a newspaper, and the serendipity that comes with scanning the news that way.”

Uberpaper screenshot (click to enlarge)

Keeping social in its place

However, Shapiro is quick to point out that he is personally a big fan of social media sites, telling me, “I love Facebook and Twitter, and I’m on those sites all day long. They’re wonderful places to share news, and I don’t think Uberpaper is competitive in any way to them.” Rather, he says, Uberpaper is meant to be a place where people can find fresh news to ultimately go back and share with their friends on Facebook and Twitter — to bring something new to the table, rather than re-sharing stuff that’s already been discovered.

For now, Uberpaper only pulls in news through Yahoo News’ API, which was chosen because it has a very broad base of news sources and topics. More news sources will be folded into Uberpaper in the future, but the expansion process will be very well-considered, Shapiro said. “We’re going to be really cautious as we add additionally sources. We very much want to make sure that we’re not slanting the news in partisan ways, or toward any kind of topic, really — it should be broad and generic.”

Uberpaper was built by the same team led by Shapiro that built Anybeat, the social network that encourages people to use pseudonyms that launched this past autumn. Anybeat, which has $1 million in funding, is still in operation, but right now it and Uberpaper are being run as separate products. Uberpaper doesn’t make any revenue right now, but down the line advertising could be brought in to run alongside the news.

A long shot that’s worth taking

In all, I think Uberpaper is great: Simple, straightforward, and clean, while perpetually brimming with new content. It’s certainly coming out in a tough space — many people already feel like they have more than enough sources of news — but I could see Uberpaper becoming a much-frequented bookmark for news junkies. And in my opinion, any service that’s aiming to put an end to the echo chamber is fighting the good fight.

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But what if the answer to all this political theatre was an amendment forcing copyright holders to put their money where there mouths are? Maybe some of SOPA’s terribly harsh penalties for infringement can stay, but making false allegations would cost accusers dearly. Law professor and blogger Eric Goldman thinks that might be a good start, and that the future of the Internet economy might depend on it.

It all starts with the DMCA

Anyone wondering why SOPA engenders such outrage need only look at the effects of its predecessor, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. As I’ve noted before, the DMCA — including the oft-mentioned safe-harbor provision (aka 512(c)) — is really a boon for copyright holders and a burden for service providers. We were reminded of this recently when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the now-defunct Veoh’s DMCA defense in its lawsuit against recording label UMG Recording.

Goldman, writing about the case on his Technology and Marketing Law Blog earlier this week, gave a damning assessment of the situation:

Make no mistake, web hosts and their investors got a major 512(c) victory in this ruling. …

But also make no mistake: this case reminds us why we need to strike a fair balance between rightsowners and technology providers, or else our system will break down. This case’s real result is that Veoh is legal, but Veoh is dead—killed by rightsowner lawfare that bled it dry. Meanwhile, rightsowners wrongly assessed the legality of Veoh, but the worst consequence they suffered was overpaying their lawyers. … Veoh’s employees? On the street. Veoh’s investors? SOL. Veoh’s community? Kicked to the curb.

However, as originally written, SOPA makes the DMCA look like child’s play. For foreign websites it doesn’t even provide the option of fighting expensive, protracted legal battles before killing their services.

So, make accusers pay

Reining in copyright infringement is a laudable goal, but SOPA simply goes too far, especially when viewed in light of DMCA cases such as UMG. Goldman offers a compromise: keep some of the draconian penalties for infringement, but make copyright holders pay damages when their accusations prove false. Otherwise, there’s little reason for big-media plaintiffs not to overstretch claims if they can afford the attorney’s fees.

His proposed solution:

Make them put up a $1 billion bond for the privilege of sending cutoff notices; and pay liberally out of that bond if the rightsowners get the law or facts wrong. Write checks to the investors and employees whose economic expectations are disrupted when rightsowners get it wrong. Write checks to the payment service providers and ad networks who turn down money from legally legit businesses based solely on rightsowner accusations. Heck, write checks to the users of those legit services who are treated as inconsequential pawns in this chess match. Sure, a $1B bond obligation with liberal payouts would turn cutoff notices into a sport of kings that only the richest rightsowners could afford, but perhaps that’s the way it should be. A rightsowner’s decision to send a cutoff notice should be a Big Deal, the equivalent of going to Defcon 5, and not like sending holiday cards to distant relatives you last saw at Ethan’s bar mitzvah.

Sure, it needs some fine-tuning, but I think Goldman’s solution has legs. I’ve written on numerous occasions about the disconnect between the law and the web, but copyright is one area where the law is still relevant because content is still content. The challenge is figuring out how to police copyright law on a medium as fast-moving, flexible and democratized as the web without sacrificing due process for individuals or small companies that can’t afford legal battles with Hollywood.

If drastic measures such as proactive takedown notices and DNS cutoffs without legal proceedings really are the best solution, it seems only fair that companies have a reason to think twice before seeking them.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Ross Elliott.

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In the Veoh decision, a unanimous 9th Circuit Court of Appeals gave a ringing endorsement to the current copyright regime in which “safe harbors” protect internet companies from misdeeds by their users. Universal had argued that Veoh lost protection of its safe harbor because it didn’t do enough to stop unauthorized videos on the site.

The Veoh decision basically affirms existing law but it is significant because the lawsuit is part of a great game in which copyright owners are trying to chip away at safe harbors. The goal of the game is to use lawsuits and legislation to place more copyright enforcement duties onto sites like Veoh.

Copyright owners are unhappy with the current regime, created in 1998, which protects sites like Veoh as long as they remove copyrighted material when they receive notice about it. They complain the system has left them playing a whac-a-mole game as internet users upload more and more files. Internet companies respond that copyright owners are overstating the problem, especially as almost all of the “notice-and-takedown” work takes places through automated technology.

In the context of this debate, yesterday’s decision was a strategic setback for the content industry because the court strongly affirmed the current system:

Although Congress was aware that the services provided by companies like Veoh are capable of being misused to facilitate copyright infringement, it was loath to permit the specter of liability to chill innovation that could also serve substantial socially beneficial functions. Congress decided that “by limiting[service providers'] liability,” it would “ensure[ ] that the efficiency of the Internet will continue to improve and that the variety and quality of services on the Internet will continue to expand.”

The part of the decision that copyright lawyers will be looking at most closely involves the meaning of so-called “red flags” — situations where companies like Veoh should have known that users were violating copyright but did nothing to stop it. Universal, Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and other content owners are hoping to use the red flag rule to shred some of the safe harbor protections.

The 9th Circuit Court didn’t bite this time. Copyright aficionados can read for themselves in paragraph 14 of the decision (embedded below), but the long and the short of it is: “we hold that Veoh’s general knowledge that it hosted copyrightable material and that its services could be used for infringement is insufficient to constitute a red flag.”

The entertainment industry will be disappointed by the California court’s terse ruling but the game is not over yet. Red flags are also expected be a big part of the YouTube-Viacom decision expected any day now. In October, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York took the unusual step of asking YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) and Viacom to submit an additional filing after a hearing to explain red flags in more detail.

The Viacom-YouTube case is being watched closely in the mainstream press because it sheds light on the early days of the popular video service that Google bought in 2006. The case has also garnered headlines because of the sensationalist $1 billion figure that Viacom is claiming and because it involves other high-wattage players like the English Premier League.

The New York court is taking an unusually long time to issue its ruling, possibly because it’s been waiting to see what its sister court in California had to say.

If the 2nd Circuit decides to break from the 9th Circuit in its YouTube ruling, the stage could be set for Supreme Court review. The New York court is considered one of the intellectual giants among the country’s federal appeals courts while the California court is well-respected for its sophisticated rulings on technology issues.

As for Veoh, the video-sharing service declared bankruptcy in 2010, citing the exorbitant costs of defending itself in the Universal lawsuit which it has won at each stage. But the website is still operating after being obtained by a company backed by Jerusalem Venture Partners.

Veoh ruling by 9th Circuit
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Here are some of the major takeaways from the decision:

• Universal had argued that the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions, which shield site operators from copyright infringement lawsuits as long as they respond to take-down notices, was only meant for web hosting providers and not for companies that convert video files on behalf of an end-user. The court rejected this argument: “We hold that the language and structure of the statute, as well as the legislative intent that motivated its enactment, clarify that (the DMCA) encompasses the access-facilitating processes that automatically occur when a user uploads a video to Veoh.”
• Universal argued that Veoh must have known about infringement because it had a separate content category for music videos on it site, and in fact advertised some of these music videos via Google Adwords. The court disagreed, noting that Veoh actually had the right to distribute some music videos. But more importantly, it also said that Google ads don’t really prove anything: “For example, a sunglass company might buy the search terms ‘sunscreen’ or ‘vacation’ because it believed that people interested in such searches would often also be interested in sunglasses. Accordingly, Veoh’s search term purchases do little to demonstrate that it knew it hosted infringing material.”
• Finally, Universal argued that Veoh had knowledge of the infringement on its site, which would run afoul of the safe harbor protections. It pointed to instances of Veoh’s former CEO Dmitry Shapiro acknowledging infringing content on its servers, and an email from Disney to Veoh Investor and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, in which the Disney complained about its movies being available on Veoh. The court, however, found that knowledge of infringement has to be specific, and that an informal email with vague complaints may actually not be the best way to go if you are a copyright holder: “As a copyright holder … Disney is subject to the notification requirements in (the DMCA) which this informal email failed to meet.”

All of this may not be of much help for Veoh, except for the fact that the site’s investors may possibly get some money back from Universal. However, it could play a big role going forward in the ongoing legal drama between Viacom and YouTube, and it should also help media storage lockers who rely on the DMCA’s safe harbor provision to fend off any possible legal challenges.

Picture courtesy of Flickr user rafaelmarquez.

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1. What’s the one big issue/law/attitude/restriction that you think is holding back the industry?

It’s an amazing time for innovation and change, but it’s also a very challenging time for folks whose roles are changing and thus understandably need to protect their livelihood.

I don’t think the industry is necessarily being held back, except maybe by attempts to define and control the industry using standards no longer relevant. As publishing shifts to participation, media becomes a part of every business, rather than an island to itself. When everyone can participate, it changes the value of the media, particularly for those who used to be able to control their publishing and even charge for access to media!

Though it might not be as good economically for many of the creative folks I hold dear, I think the world is a better place when we can all contribute to its narrative. This democratization makes nothing impossible — and is changing our collective experience of the world.

2. What industry buzzword do you never want to hear again?

Predictably: “transmedia.” I am not a fan of words used to exclude people; and it seems to just mean “media.” But, I am losing the war and have little choice to but to utter this blasphemy all the time…

3. If someone gave you $50 million to invest in a company in this space, which one would it be? (Mentioning your own doesn’t count.)

Besides the companies 7Robot advises — Ask A Ninja, Next New Networks, Orb Media, & Water Canary — I’d invest in 3-D printers, specifically Makerbot. 3-D printing will change not our experience of things, but also of ownership and wealth. What do you need if your printer can print a printer? Check out www.reprap.org, which has the best tagline ever — “wealth without money” — and www.makerbot.com for more information. If I only had $1000 to invest, I’d buy and build the next release of the Makerbot!

4. What were the three last videos (that you weren’t personally involved with) that you liked enough to spread to others?

Following my years at Veoh watching and trying to acquire every video on the internet, I found it kind of hard to watch video for a really long time. Having so much of it shared with me made it impossible to share it all. When so much of it was delivered with demands (instead of the far more effective compliment) that I could or would not meet, I began to only share videos where I did not know anyone involved, or it was my job to do so.

As corporate entities began singing their siren songs to me, the brilliant and insightful Gentry Underwood shared this video from Michael Bierut, which helped me to realize not only how much I adore my clients, but also how I can redefine my social design practice around a shift from systems to stories.

2010/01 Michael Bierut from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

5. WILD-CARD: You’ve recently moved away from the world of video production to focus more on consulting and other areas of new media. Are there specific problems you see with the current model(s) for creating web content?

Though I haven’t been producing video content,I haven’t left the community — I hope I’ve been seeking to expand it! I think I’ve still got some video in me, though I am not sure what project could be as fabulous or teach me as much as working with the infinitely talented Damien Somerset, Jessica Williamson and the Next New Networks team on Zaproot.

That said, I guess my interests have expanded to fostering interactions and sharing experiences. I learned so much from the experience of building Zaproot and its community that it shifted my perspective on the business, how we make decisions, and how value was shifting from publishing to participation. With so many of us making videos, I could sell social design strategy at a premium, but, as so many people have discovered, not the production of content.

As we shift from storytelling to storysharing, and more and more people can and do participate in production, the systems that deliver these stories, and their default options, begin to have the impact (as well as the value) that the media once did. Instead of focusing on the production and publication of stories, I began to develop a strategic practice at 7Robot around the social design of systems, expanding storytelling into storysharing through choice optimization and behavioral economics. Now, rather than being focused on publishing video, I think video is one part of the puzzle of participation.

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Pichette said that Google was pleased by the copyright case’s dismissal, but that’s still a hefty chunk of change. And while that’s the kind of legal bill a tech giant like Google can handle, smaller companies haven’t been as lucky.

The bankruptcy of Veoh, for example, was blamed by founder Dmitry Shapiro on its lawsuit with Universal Music Group. As Shapiro told All Things D’s Peter Kafta last February:

“Clearly the UMG lawsuit was a tremendous weight on the company. It was both financially draining and distracting, and it choked off the ability for any significant strategic deals, because everybody we talked to was terrified of getting sued immediately,” he said. “And we know that potential investors were thinking that, too.”

Kafka reported that the UMG lawsuit only cost the company “something in the $6 million to $8 million range in legal fees,” and as Ryan Lawler wrote at the time, problems with the company’s management and strategy were major contributing factors towards the company’s failure.

But to bring it full circle: Veoh winning the UMG lawsuit was a major factor in the District Court throwing out Viacom’s copyright dispute with YouTube.

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