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Record industry has the most respectable history when it comes to litigation. Between request millions for trivial acts of piracy and potentially ask for trillions in more serious cases, they showed that they not only completely disconnected from reality, but completely missing the actual implications of their trial. It is therefore not surprising to see their inclination to yet another windmill.
Today the goal – TubeFire site should be familiar to you, at least in principle. This allows you to download and convert YouTube videos into a format more easily watched offline (FLV files can be tricky). You give it the URL he churns out a bit and then you can download the video to MP4 or other format. Obviously this re containering free content poses a serious threat to the recording industry and must be stopped at any cost. Therefore 25 biggest labels in the world got together and sued them.
TubeFire services suspended pending appeal (it is a note apologizing and summarized the situation). And to be honest, probably valid complaint: technically, TubeFire change and distribution of copyrighted material, at least so it seems to you under this. The site belongs to Japanese media, and MusicGate suit was filed in Tokyo District Court. As the content of international protection laws would play goes beyond the scope of this article, but an international consortium content providers may make his influence felt, regardless of jurisdiction.
The funny thing is that, as so often with these clowns, they not only are you Barking up the wrong tree for several reasons, but it seems that they don't understand what they are, in General, forest tree incorrectly.
TubeFire is an ACE away from be quite legal service. To begin with explicitly provides useful services that only potentially dangerous for copyright. Transcode video to enhance mobility is not a criminal. YouTube is a fundamentally online service and it is a natural extension of how image servers and short URLs work for Twitter so long. Users want to watch these videos, which for all intents and purposes being given away for free, in places other than YouTube, for a number of perfectly legitimate reasons: bandwidth caps, lighting issues, travel, and Yes, Exchange.
Next, the local copy of the video can already be present on the user's computer. Just watching the video, it is possible they duplicated all in RAM or temporary folder. This is to write, rewrite, rename, and so forth should count as a modified copyrighted data, isn't he? If not, TubeFire is not much different. The video is already coded several times referred to as packet data, decode and translate to display the data. One more coding in there influence on physical products.
In addition it really TubeFire, do they? In the same way as it is not Bittorrent Inc that Pirates movies and music, TubeFire should not be held responsible for the actions of users. The terrorists used Google Maps to plan their attacks. Stalkers using Facebook to search for victims. TubeFire is a simple operation in, fixes minor problems with videos that users already have access to.
And let's not forget that TubeFire is one of perhaps hundreds of tools used for this purpose. They have not looked very hard for them. Let me help, guys. I have one I built into my browser! I buried it in the menu, to keep the screen uncluttered, but look how easy it is for me to grab one of multiple copies of the video:
Update: Mike reminds me that we actually had our own tool for several years. YouTube sent us a cease and desist letters and eventually disabled tool, but no one rocked us for millions in damage. He was the TOS thing, not the copyright thing.
Many of them are easily accessible, only slightly change the URL or other simple methods. Some sites and tools bar audio output, another very simple process and one Replicated, of course, by downloading YouTube videos and turn a blind eye.
These companies want to have their cake and let no one eat it at all. It seems that they don't understand that putting content on a service like YouTube comes at a price. They make the contents public, free for all. They are literally giving away the content — and then they get angry when someone takes!
Tags are looking for something that appears to the statutory income lost $ 300 damage approximately 10000 in the video for the video. This adds up to 3 million — amount of tags would have earned if TubeFire licensed each video. Now there are two objections here. Why is it a license or royalty? Anyway, TubeFire "rebroadcasted" content, much like the Repeater than anything and the standard royalty fee however many pennies or Yen looks like it may be more applicable. However, I'm doubtful on this issue. It was also unclear whether TubeFire knew that they must be licensed. The service does not require this information; It takes the ID of the code loads the linked file FLV and repackages it. Paying their artists were tags when the watched file, upload, or only when purchasing? And how they define "Download"?
If the label actually bankrupting TubeFire on and off, I must warn them that the effect will be absolutely nil. Any user who wants to download videos from YouTube will continue to do so. Reduction of the practice did not. The site is easy to clone, as a large number of similar sites show (I can't even remember which one is the original, if one exists). And like most of their legal action, this one will reduce rain from bad PR; Anyway, piracy will increase. That's where I wanted to put Hydra metaphor, if this article is not more than 1000 words.
Why is interesting, they don't think harder about this and try something more effective and interesting? May be for music videos, YouTube version only half of the songs, and then there's the link to the site of the artist, where there is a more secure player and miscellaneous purchases and share links. Or 10 seconds of the movie on YouTube prior to the actual release of the other. Or just admit that, when you let the cat out of the bag, you are unlikely to get it back into piracy, when people steal things. Piracy not people taking the content that you have given them and watch it somewhere else. TubeFire and nothing but simply a shortcut to the users will have the opportunity to anyway. Unfortunately this difference requires a judge to understand tech issues such as this, and these judges are in these days is not enough.
I know, music and film associations famously impervious to reason, but it's not stupid.
[via TorrentFreak]
