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« on: May 22, 2012, 02:11:12 PM »
U.S. copyright law was never intended to deal with issues of copyright related to “file sharing” on the Internet. That’s why the law is open to fairly wide interpretation (and therefore varying) determinations by different judges. To make a formal argument of whether or not the law is “constitutional” would be quite a long and expensive affair, and sometimes that’s an answer in itself. That is, is anything to be gained for the effort of challenging it overall?
The “law” protects “works”, but ironically it can also protect innocents from the likes of corporations such as Getty and their ilk, who make a frequent habit of falsely accusing people of infringement. So, the law is the best “test” that we have, but the law will always lag behind technology and new issues no matter how hard people make efforts to remedy it.
While “file sharing” is a bit off topic in this section of the forum, it’s probably of interest to some people to know how the methodology of a “defense” differs between infringements of “images” vs. that of “multimedia” files. The main defense that’s effective against claims of copyright infringements of images is that (with very few exceptions) the “plaintiff” doesn’t own or is not an “exclusive” agent for the image/artist in question. For multimedia content such as movies and music, you can bet that the copyright is registered and ownership is clear. However, the defense in such cases is often built around whether or not there’s proof that the accused party actually committed the act of “infringement”. IP addresses are widely known to be completely unreliable, and therefore the burden of proof must also come from other sources such as logs from the Internet service providers. However, the service provider can be circumvented from releasing such info on the grounds of privacy. If incriminating logs were released, one could simply argue that his/her “router was hacked”. It’s easy to come up with logical defenses that will probably fly, however it often comes down to whom has the most resources, can make the most convincing argument, and ultimately who has the most resolve. So, the “fight” is very different between the two types of content.
Ironically, the use of “content” outside of what the owners/producers/artists intended (some may call these “infringements”) actually drives sales to some extent. If channels such as YouTube and others didn’t allow infringing content to some extent, the buying public wouldn’t be exposed to content that they might opt to buy. That is, people don’t normally buy music that they’re never heard before. It can be advertized on TV, but that costs a lot of money. Radio’s a good choice, but it’s only one media channel of many. In the case of Getty and their images, this is why Getty’s CEO says that they have sophisticated systems to detect infringements along with legal counsel, but encourages people to “play” with Getty’s images and even post them on social media sites such as Pinterest. Getty's allowing and encouraging infringements to occur in certain situations which is technically "free advertizing", but it also feeds the misconception that people have about the content being "public domain". This drives Getty's copyright trolling revenue.
S.G.
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