« Shaastra Google SEO Event | HomePage | Eureka! Your own search engine has landed! »
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
YouTube names names: why is anyone surprised?
MarketWatch ran a story last week about YouTube that's been making the rounds. In the piece, MarketWatch reveals that YouTube turned over user data to Paramount so that the film studio could file a lawsuit against a young filmmaker who had produced a 12-minute version of Oliver Stone's Twin Towers using his own actors and working from a leaked script. It's an interesting story, but not for the reasons you might think.
The case itself is old news. Paramount filed their complaint against Chris Moukarbel on June 16 of this year, alleging copyright infringement that caused the studio "great and irreparable injury that cannot be fully compensated or measured in money," according to court documents. Moukarbel settled with Paramount, and Judge Royce Lamberth signed off on the settlement on August 1. The case itself was straightforward: shooting a film based on a "bootleg" script currently being used by another director is going to get you in trouble. Surprise!
But it's the YouTube angle that has people talking. For whatever reason, people have convinced themselves that YouTube is different. Posting copyrighted content, though it remains illegal, is widely seen as behavior that cannot get the uploader into trouble. So YouTube takes down the infringing clip when someone complains—big deal, right?
When YouTube also turns Moukarbel's information over to a movie studio, people are shocked, but they shouldn't be. In fact, that this case has aroused comment at all is interesting, because it's the sort of thing that happens every day to companies across the country.
22:58 Posted in YouTube | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Google, YouTube