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Media The Courts Your Rights Online

Vimeo Held Covered By DMCA Safe Harbor 51

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a recent 56-page decision (PDF) in Capitol Records v. Vimeo, LLC, a federal court in Manhattan found Vimeo to be covered by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, rejecting Capitol Records' arguments that it was not entitled to the statute's "safe harbor". However, Vimeo is not yet out of the woods in this particular case, as the Court found factual issues — requiring a trial — as to 10 of the videos on the question of whether they were uploaded at the direction of Vimeo users, and as to 55 of the videos whether Vimeo had actual knowledge, or red flag knowledge, as the existence of an infringement."
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Vimeo Held Covered By DMCA Safe Harbor

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  • So what's the backstory behind this for those of us who dont read obscure blogspot blogs.

    • Re:Backstory? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NewYorkCountryLawyer ( 912032 ) <ray@NOsPAm.beckermanlegal.com> on Monday September 23, 2013 @03:44PM (#44927841) Homepage Journal

      So what's the backstory behind this for those of us who dont read obscure blogspot blogs.

      Obscure? You calling my blog obscure?

      There is no "backstory". Just read the front story.

      • Re:Backstory? (Score:5, Informative)

        by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @03:47PM (#44927883) Journal

        I'm not reading a 58 page pdf and the linked blog story is no longer than this summary.

        To save others the work, evidently Vimeo employees uploaded videos of people lipsyncing to tracks owned by the labels. Vimeo is trying to claim Safe Harbor protection because they had no way of knowing users were uploading infringing material.

        • Re:Backstory? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @04:10PM (#44928129) Homepage

          I'm not reading a 58 page pdf and the linked blog story is no longer than this summary. To save others the work, evidently Vimeo employees uploaded videos of people lipsyncing to tracks owned by the labels. Vimeo is trying to claim Safe Harbor protection because they had no way of knowing users were uploading infringing material.

          Close. The one's employees didn't go near at all are those dismissed under the DMCA. All the ones any employee touched in some way, even as little as clicking a "like" button, put on a favorite list or whatever are the ones going to trial because there's doubts as to Vimeo's awareness of infringement. The really brief summary is: If you're looking for DMCA protection, the content is poison. Don't look at it, don't touch it, don't discuss it. Have automated content monitoring and user flagging, but don't go looking on your own and don't mention any specific cases even in internal emails. You have to go very far out of your way avoid knowing what is going on to be punished for "willful blindness".

          • Re:Backstory? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Darkinspiration ( 901976 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @04:27PM (#44928297)
            It does seem insane. I mean how can the court not see that this case is clearly about killing vimeo and by extension video sharing sites. How can they expect all employees to be 100% diligent. It's never going to happen. If the only option to adhere to Safe Harbor is to have google class content filter Youtube is going to be the only game in town in the US.
            • Maybe it's not about killing Vimeo, but rather making it "play nice" the way YouTube has: Pay for sync licensing of the music and support the licensing costs with ads.

              • Re:Backstory? (Score:5, Insightful)

                by NewYorkCountryLawyer ( 912032 ) <ray@NOsPAm.beckermanlegal.com> on Monday September 23, 2013 @04:48PM (#44928529) Homepage Journal

                Maybe it's not about killing Vimeo, but rather making it "play nice" the way YouTube has: Pay for sync licensing of the music and support the licensing costs with ads.

                In my experience, their primary goal in every instance is to put people out of business, if at all possible. YouTube has been 'playing nice' with them for many years, but they haven't dropped the pending case.

              • by Anonymous Coward

                Which sucks and constantly are being abused by copyright holders.
                I have 60 videos on YouTube. All made by me with content made by me.
                Still I get copyright infringement notices and when I challenge them, I get rejected and my score/rating as a YouTube user goes down. At the moment 15 of my videos are infringing some copyright according to them which is a complete lie. But they get the money for the ads.

                I have been very careful not to do anything wrong, not using any content I haven't created myself, video an

                • by anubi ( 640541 )
                  We need to start asking our congressmen, especially in public at these "town meetings" what they intend to do about all this litigation the DMCA is stirring up.

                  Prohibition was unpopular. It got repealed. DMCA is no different. It can be repealed as well.

                  I guess we need to let the record companies sue enough people to make themselves so unpopular that any politician failing to remove DMCA will not see another term in office.
            • Re:Backstory? (Score:5, Informative)

              by NewYorkCountryLawyer ( 912032 ) <ray@NOsPAm.beckermanlegal.com> on Monday September 23, 2013 @04:51PM (#44928589) Homepage Journal

              It does seem insane. I mean how can the court not see that this case is clearly about killing vimeo and by extension video sharing sites. How can they expect all employees to be 100% diligent. It's never going to happen. If the only option to adhere to Safe Harbor is to have google class content filter Youtube is going to be the only game in town in the US.

              The legal fees alone are the killer. Veoh won every round, but had to go out of business due to the legal fees [blogspot.com].

        • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

          I'm not reading a 58 page pdf and the linked blog story is no longer than this summary. To save others the work

          Reading is work? I take it you're a tl;dr, aka "aliterate"?

          "The man who does not read has no advantage over a man who cannot read." -- Mark Twain

          I have no idea why your OP got modded up (although the comment I'm responding to did deserve an upmod). Probably another aliterate (there are a lot of them here, they're easy to spot: "There car's are over they're")

      • Leave it to a lawyer who can't summarize the story in 1 sentence and has to resort to 58 pages to discuss the issue.

  • Especially for mobiles

    lot of music/concert and many other content on youtube will be blocked and say "unable to play on mobile devices please login from PC to view"

    but Vimeo it doesn't matter you can view all content from mobile devices, from overseas, in states, etc and there are no region blocks or content blocks based on device. if you can view it on desktop you can view it on mobile.

    I stopped trying to watch music videos on youtube, and enjoy many uncensored "explicit" videos and rare hard to find video

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