Google Sends Repeat Infringers To Copyright School

maczealot writes "Google is launching a new 'Copyright School' for use as a re-education tool for offenders on YouTube. The apparent purpose being to head off additional legislation, lawsuits, regulation and other negative impacts to the site. They even have campy cartoon videos for this school."

What they should do...

[Haedrian]

Is force copyright owners who flag videos for no reason whatsoever to watch that as well.

Re:Founding Lesson

[Barrinmw]

Hey now, no author will write a book unless they and their family will be able to profit from it for their life plus 70 years, its true, just look at history before copyrights lasted that long, no books were ever written.

Don't infringe copyright (unless you're a megacorp

[syousef]

"Hi kids, today's topic is copyright law and how we're allowed to copy anything we like because we're a multi-billion dollar company and can afford more lawyers than God, while you're just a schlep at a computer who's going to have their ass sued and thrown into jail.

By the way have you heard of Google books....that's right if you can't find it at a used book store, chances are we've copied it to put online.

So remember kids, don't infringe copyright. Let us do it for you, and enjoy the ads!"

Re:Finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Force violators to attend "school" and try to educate them about the law and the dangers of violating it

For copyright infringement? what dangers?

Re:Finally.

[bieber]

Neither solution makes any sense. Mandatory traffic school is no better a remedy for traffic violations than this "copyright school" is for copyright infringement. Not that the two are really comparable, because no one is going to be forced to watch these videos in lieu of being fined, but lets go with the analogy for now. People don't violate traffic laws because they don't understand them, they violate traffic laws because they don't think they'll get caught. Same goes for copyright. "Educating" infringers about laws they almost certainly already understand isn't going to do anything...well, I guess in the case of traffic violations it makes for an effective transfer of money from citizens to the companies that run the traffic schools...

Re:Finally.

[somersault]

People really don't understand copyright - I've seen hundreds of videos with things like "I DO NOT OWN THIS SONG", "No Copyright infringement intended" etc. Admitting you don't own a song does not make it legal to copy it, and you are taking part in copyright infringement just by uploading a video you don't have copyright on. Whenever I've tried to point this out to people, I get the usual Idiocracy "you're a fag and your shit's all retarded" type responses from morons.

Re:Finally.

[sco08y]

I get the usual Idiocracy "you're a fag and your shit's all retarded" type responses from morons.

I call bullshit. Even on the odd chance one of them didn't abbreviate "your" as "ur", no one commenting on Youtube uses apostrophes correctly.

Re:Viacom

[russotto]

What really gets me is that all you have to do is ask permission. Write to your favorite band, ask them for permission to use a song that you love, and, chances are, they'll give you permission.

Chances are they don't even own the rights, and so can't give you permission.