The Utube Blog

News: Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch has the lowdown on the agreement reached by Viacom and YouTube to allow YouTube to redact usernames and IP addresses from the logs of videos watched on YouTube.

Analysis: At least Viacom is not being pig-headed about the way it litigates its copyright lawsuit against YouTube. Although Viacom initially sought the usernames and IP addresses and persuaded the court to force YouTube to turn the information over (potentially in violation of the VPPA), now Viacom realizes the public relations nightmare that was brewing among users of YouTube — who also may watch Viacom shows. This is a sensible narrowing of Viacom’s discovery request because Viacom really wants to go after YouTube, not smaller fish.  Also, it probably takes care of any VPPA problem.

News: YouTube is in serious damage-control mode, after being ordered by Judge Stanton to turn over, among other things, (i) apparently all videos ever removed from YouTube after being flagged, the videos number in the millions; and (ii) for every video ever uploaded on YT, a log of the viewing history of YouTube users, including the IP addresses of users plus their usernames, and the time they watched the video. It’s quite possible this order violates the privacy statute VPPA (as discussed in another post below), but, at this point, not sure YouTube is asking the court to reconsider its order or seek an immediate appeal to protect the privacy interests of its users.

On its blog, YouTube said its trying to convince Viacom to allow YT to redact the usernames and IP addresses to preserve user confidentiality. We’ll see what happens.

As you might expect, many YouTube users are angry about release of their viewing history. Here’s a typical angry comment posted on YT:

“I have an idea, STOP LOGGING IPs. It bothers me that you guys are keeping track of viewing histories by IP for such a long time. Sure, a simple IP doesn’t give out personal information but these bastards are known to contact service providers to attempt and retrieve the personal details attached to an IP, or at least to send scare tactic emails to their customers. You have a staff of friggin geniuses at your disposal, why not get them to come up with a way to REALLY PROTECT our privacy. It was fun watching videos here, but I think I’ll avoid YouTube videos from now on, log out of my account for good and if absolutely necessary, view videos through a proxy. Thanks for trying, but we know and you know you can try a lot harder.”

Analysis: One thing that surprises me is that apparently YouTube keeps the files of all videos ever removed from YouTube — 12 terabytes of files + millions of videos. Offensive videos, pornographic videos, hate videos, apparently all saved by YouTube. Maybe it just takes more work to completely remove them from YT’s servers, or maybe YT needs the deleted files to try to stop copycat repostings of the deleted files?? I don’t know.

News: In the Viacom v. YouTube copyright lawsuit, Judge Stanton ordered YouTube to disclose “all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website,” which includes “for each instance a video is watched, the unique “login ID” of the user who watched it, the time when the user started to watch the video, the internet protocol address other devices connected to the internet use to identify the user’s computer (“IP address”), and the identifier for the video.” You can read the opinion by clicking here.

EFF argues that the court order violates the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). The Judge apparently didn’t think it applied (dismissing it in a footnote).

Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch agrees with EFF and lambastes Judge Stanton for the ruling, though with the “utmost respect.”

Mike Masnick of Tech Dirt agrees with EFF and thinks the disclosure of usernames and videos watched violates VPPA.

Analysis: In terms of the privacy law, the key question is whether online videos fall within “prerecorded video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials” under the VPPA. I haven’t read the statute yet, but my initial “ordinary meaning” interpretation of those words would be that online videos clearly are “similar audio visual materials” to video tapes. There’s really not much difference between online video and a video tape.

Viacom said that it would handle the user data confidentially and just wants to prove its case (more). OK, even if YouTube users can trust Viacom, there are numerous other plaintiffs involved in the class action lawsuit against YouTube who will also receive the information.

Another thing wrong with Judge Stanton’s analysis is the notion that a YouTube “login ID is an anonymous pseudonym” (p. 13). There are plenty of YouTube usernames that are either actual birth names–Esmeedenters, Terranaomi, Judsonlaipply, TayZonday, etc–or usernames that are readily identifiable people in the YouTube community–Renetto, Smosh, Lisanova, Justine, Paperlillies, Hotforwords, Valsartdiary, etc. Sure, many YouTube usernames are not well known, but many others are.

News: Michael Arrington at Techcrunch has the complaint filed by EMI today against VideoEgg + Hi5. Once I read the complaint, I’ll provide some analysis.

News:  I wanted to thank Tom Goldstein at Scotus blog (the premier site for Supreme Court action) and Dan Slater at Wall Street Journal’s law blog for referencing my last post that suggests how the Supreme Court’s decision in the gun case (DC v. Heller) is helpful to speech technologies + the freedom of the press.

The basic pivot point that connects the 2nd Amendment and the Free Press Clause in the 1st Amendment is that they are the only 2 provisions in the Constitution in which the Framers sought to protect a right to a technology — the right to “keep and bear arms” in the 2nd amendment and the right to the freedom “of the press” (meaning the printing press).  I’ve outlined the history of the Free Press clause in an article you can download here.  My article shows that the Framers clearly intended the Free Press clause to be a limit on the Copyright Clause, specifically to prevent the government from directly regulating or restricting the technology of the printing press.  Indeed, the history behind the Free Press clause is strikingly similar to the history behind the 2nd Amendment in terms of both the English abuses in restricting a technology (guns or the printing press) and the Framers’ subsequent ratification debate between Antifederalists and Federalists. 

If the Supreme Court follows the same approach in interpreting the history and text of the Free Press Clause as it employed in the gun case, then the result is likely to be that Congress’s efforts to restrict speech technologies under copyright law would be unconstitutional. 

News: The Supreme Court announced its 5-4 decision today in the gun-control case in District of Columbia v. Heller, declaring the DC gun control law banning handguns unconstitutional. You can download the opinion here. Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion and applied a close textual analysis of the Second Amendment, along with a review of the history of various uses of the words “keep,” “bear” and “arms” in England, state constitutions, and contemporaneous writings.

Analysis: Here are my initial reactions. First, it is amazing that this is the first time in 217 years that the Supreme Court has definitively ruled on the Second Amendment right. That’s a very long time of silence. Second, I’m not an expert in gun control, so I can’t speak to those issues. But for technology companies dealing with speech-related technologies, the Court’s precedent on guns may actually be very good for speech technologies.

As I’ve said in the past, there are only 2 provisions of the Constitution that deal with technologies: (1) the Second Amendment’s “arms” and (2) the First Amendment’s “press,” referring to the printing press. If the Court interprets the Free Press clause in a parallel manner to the way it has interpreted the Second Amendment, it is very possible that Congress’s present or future attempts to regulate speech technologies under copyright law could be unconstitutional.

My theory is laid out in detail in my article “Freedom of the Press 2.0,” an early draft of which you can find online.

UPDATE: A number of people have read this post and may be skeptical about the connection. I’ve written a few more words about the historical connection between guns + the printing press, between the 2nd Amendment and the 1st, on a subsequent post you can find here. Although the Framers were dealing with two very different technologies (guns + press), the origin of and debate over both clauses followed a strikingly similar path.

And I should add Justice Scalia himself cites (p. 29) to a Massachusetts supreme judical court opinion and a 1868 con law treatise (p. 46) that make the direct analogy to the freedom of the printing press and the right to bear arms:

“The liberty of the press was to be unrestrained, but he who used it was to be responsible in cases of its abuse; like the right to keep fire arms, which does not protect him who uses them for annoyance or destruction.”

“The [2nd Amendment] clause is analogous to the one securing the freedom of speech and of the press.”

And then Justice Scalia himself draws the analogy to the First Amendment, although only the free speech clause (free press is often overlooked):

“The First Amendment contains the freedom-of-speech guarantee that the people ratified, which included exceptions for obscenity, libel, and disclosure of state secrets, but not for the expression of extremely unpopular and wrong-headed views. The Second Amendment is no different.” (p. 63)

UPDATE: I’ve just written an Essay on this topic. Click here to download a copy.

Video click here

News: p2p software was the bane of the music and movie industry, going back to Napster. Now, Viacom-owned Spike TV is turning to p2p to promote one its upcoming shows called the Factory, which will be available for free downloading and sharing on Limewire and other p2p networks. More from LA Times and Techdirt

Analysis: Viacom, of course, is suing YouTube. So it’s interesting to see one of its companies try to tap into the peer-to-peer networks and free file-sharing of its copyrighted shows. I do think it’s good for Viacom and other media companies to try to promote their shows through p2p networks.

Video here

News: In 2006, Cassandra Malloy delivered a 2-minute valedictory speech–titled “Beatles Valedictorian Speech”–at her high school graduation. The video is below, which she put on YouTube. The speech cleverly used Beatles’ lyrics and song titles to advise her fellow classmates. The Beatles references were mashed together in 1-minute.

Well, apparently in 2007, some other valedictorian made a Beatles graduation speech–titled “the Perfect Beatles Graduation Speech” and posted it on YouTube. The video is no longer accessible.

And, now in 2008, another high school student, 18-year-old Melanio C. Acosta IV, from Circleville, Ohio (who is going to Ohio State!), made a Beatles graduation speech. At first, according to news accounts, he admitted he plagiarized it and gave up his status as valediction. Now, though with a lawyer helping him, he says he only borrowed the idea from the YouTube video, but didn’t plagiarize. He’s even threatening to sue the high school for his valedictorian status back.

Analysis: What’s very interesting is that Melanio Acosta admits to getting his ideas from the 2nd video “The Perfect Beatles Graduation Speech.” But the speaker in the 2nd video, it turns out, might have copied at least the idea for the Beatles graduation speech from Cassandra Malloy, in the 1st video!

I haven’t seen Acosta’s speech, so can’t really say what I think about the plagiarism charge. Obviously, anyone is free to quote snippets from a few Beatles songs and mash them together in a graduation speech. Attribution to the Beatles was clear in the 1st speech by Malloy, and I assume in the other 2 speeches because that’s what made the speech funny and effective.

The more difficult question arises if any of the subsequent speakers simply took the exact same Beatles quotes in the exact same order, with substantially the additional words sprinkled in by Malloy in the 1st speech. Malloy’s speech was very short, but it sounded to me that she added in some of her own original content (it wasn’t just a string of Beatles quotes). So a close paraphrase or copy of her speech without attribution might raise not only a plagiarism issue, but a copyright infringement issue as well.

News: I’ve been revising my latest article titled “Warming Up to User-Generated Content.”  It’s all about Web 3.0, cloud computing, and mashups.  Oh, and I almost forgot, it’s about copyright law, too!

You can download a draft of the article by clicking here.  Below is my latest Abstract for the piece:

Conventional views of copyright law almost always operate from the “top down.”  Copyrights are understood as static and fixed from the Copyright Act.  Under this view, copyright holders are at the center of the copyright universe and exercise considerable control over their exclusive rights, with the expectation that others seek prior permission for all uses of copyrighted works outside of a fair use.  Though pervasive, this conventional view of copyright is wrong.  The Copyright Act is riddled with gray areas and gaps, many of which persist over time because so few copyright cases are ever filed and the majority of those filed are not resolved through a judgment.  In these many gray areas, a “top down” approach simply does not work.  Instead, informal copyright practices effectively serve as important gap-fillers in our copyright system, operating from the bottom up. 

The tremendous growth of user-generated content (UGC) on the Web provides a compelling example of this widespread phenomenon.  The informal practices associated with UGC make manifest three significant features of our copyright system that have escaped the attention of legal scholars: (i) our copyright system could not function without informal copyright practices; (ii) collectively, users wield far more power in influencing the shape of copyright law than is commonly perceived; and (iii) uncertainty in formal copyright law can lead to the phenomenon of “warming,” in which—unlike chilling—users are emboldened to make unauthorized uses of copyrighted works based on seeing what appears to be an increasingly accepted practice.  Although the warming phenomenon has been completely ignored in prior copyright scholarship, warming serves as a powerful counterforce to the chilling of speech, even where copyright law is uncertain.        

News:  My buddy Doug Berman has already blogged about this interesting story involving YouTube and criminal sentencing.  Two teenagers in Florida pulled a “fire in the hole” prank at a Taco Bell.  Basically, the kids went through the drive-thru and then, before leaving, threw a soda at the employee through the window, yelling “fire in the hole.”  The boys captured the prank on video and posted it on YouTube.

Well, the Taco Bell employee did some great detective work on YouTube and then located the boys on MySpace and then called their mothers.  According to the news report, “as part of their sentence, the teens had to write, film, and post their video apology on YouTube, as well as pay $30 to clean the restaurant and serve 100 hours of community service.”

The Taco Bell employee said that she wants a face-to-face apology, however.

Here’s the apology:

News:  The Stanford Fair Use Project scored a major victory for fair use yesterday in a case pitting Yoko Ono Lennon (along with Sean Ono Lennon, Julian Lennon, and EMI Blackwood Music) against the producers of the movie “Expelled,” which seeks to debate intelligent design and evolution (with a slant to the critics of the adequacy of evolution).  The district court rule that using 15 seconds of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in the 1 hour 39 minute movie was likely a fair use.  You can find the opinion on Lessig’s blog.

Analysis:  I haven’t seen the movie, but, by the description in the opinion, the movie’s use of the 15 seconds of the John Lennon strikes me as a very easy case of fair use.  The movie producers were using the Lennon song in order to show its naivete in thinking we can live in a world with “Nothing to kill or die for/ and no religion too,” or that a world without religion is even desirable.

News: One of my students showed me this nifty website founded by some bright kids at MIT.  The group is called MIT Free Culture — I take it inspired by Larry Lessig — and it tracks 230,348 videos on YouTube to see how many are removed for alleged copyright violations.  So far, 4,948 such videos removed from YouTube, presumably based on DMCA notices.

Analysis:  These are interesting numbers. Of course, we don’t know how many of these copyright claims were legitimate.  And we don’t know how MIT Free Culture chose its sample.  So, putting aside all those variables, the number of DMCA notices seem rather low — by my math, a little over 2% of the total videos in the sample.  So that suggests that a lot of the content on YouTube is not infringing or copyright holders don’t mind.

News: One of my students brought this controversy to my attention. It’s delicious. Prince performed Radiohead’s Creep at a concert at Coachella. Some audience member taped it and posted a clip on YouTube apparently. Prince’s people then filed a DMCA notice demanding the removal of the clip. But Radiohead’s Thom Yorke wants the clip back up because Radiohead owns the copyright to the song. (More)

So now it’s back up on YouTube:

Analysis: Radiohead’s right that it owns the rights to the song. Prince is just performing Radiohead’s song, so he has no copyright to it. He might have an anti-bootlegging claim as a performer, but that falls outside the purview of the DMCA notice-and-take down procedure. So it’s not clear to me what YouTube should do when Radiohead wants it up.

News: Both Tech Crunch and Silicon Alley Insider have excellent posts about the startup site Red Lasso. Basically, Red Lasso acts as a free Tivo-like service for bloggers, to enable bloggers to search Red Lasso’s copied content from TV and radio and then create embeddable clips for blogs.

Analysis: One huge problem: Red Lasso has no copyright permission from the TV and radio networks to copy their shows for this service. By the reports, all that Red Lasso is doing is copying the shows on their own and then offering it to the public (though now in private beta version) to create embeddable clips. This kind of activity falls outside of the DMCA safe harbors, and Red Lasso will be very hard pressed to defend this as a fair use. All of the TV networks have their own websites to disseminate their own copyrighted content as they wish — typically with advertising.

My friend told me about this interesting Internet project started by the Center for Court Innovation, a nonprofit think tank seeking “to promote justice system reform in the US and abroad.”  The Center is using YouTube to spread word about its project.  In this video, the Center relates personal stories related to drug addicts in New York who are trying to pull their lives together.

The Center’s YouTube channel can be found on this link.

More from CNN.

News: Back in August 2007, I reported on the 6 copyright lawsuits filed against YouTube. Well, it appears that in 4 of those cases, the lawsuit has been dropped voluntarily by the plaintiff. At least a few of the plaintiffs (Robert Tur, Cal IV publisher) joined the class action in New York against YouTube.

Another key development: Mayer, Brown attorneys Richard Ben-Veniste, Andrew H. Schapiro, and A. John P. Mancini, have now been brought in to be the attorneys of record for Defendants YouTube, Inc., YouTube, LLC, and Google Inc. They replace the law firm of Bartlit Beck Herman Palencher & Scott LLP, and its attorneys, Philip S. Beck, Mark S. Ouweleen, Rebecca Weinstein Bacon, Shayna S. Cook, and Carrie A. Jablonski. I don’t know the reason for the change in lawyers, but it’s definitely an interesting switch. I used to work for Mayer, Brown! Ben-Veniste is famous for being one of the Watergate prosecutors. He doesn’t specialize in copyright law, but neither did Philip Beck, the lead counsel Ben-Veniste is replacing.

One thing that is striking to me is that now all the copyright cases are located in the Southern District of New York. I wouldn’t necessarily think that strategy helps YouTube, which might have been helped by having several different courts consider some of the novel issues presented in the cases. This is pure speculation but maybe the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the New York cases persuaded all the others to drop their suits and join them?

Here’s an update on all the cases.

(1) DROPPED: Robert Tur’s suit in California for the Reginald Denny beating video (with a request by Viacom + NBC Universal to file an amici brief). Tur just dropped his suit to join the class action suit with Premier League in (3) below.

( 2) Viacom’s suit in the Southern District of New York (for Daily Show, Colbert Report, Sponge Bob, South Park, MTV clips, etc.) Just had a scheduling conference; apparently will have another. Philip Beck Richard Ben-Veniste of Mayer, Brown is now YouTube’s lead counsel. Don Verrilli is Viacom’s lead counsel. Judge Louis Stanton is presiding. Viacom International, Inc. v. YouTube Inc., 07-CV-02103. (Case docket from Justia)

(3) English Football Ass’n Premier League (soccer division) and Bourne Co. (U.S. music publisher) suit, with a request to certify a class action, in the Southern District of New York. So far, the Rugby Football League, the Finnish Football League, the National Music Publishers’ Association, and Knockout Entertainment Limited, Seminole Warriors Boxing, Robert Tur (from the 1st lawsuit), the Federation Francaise de Tennis, and Ligue de Football Professionnel. have also joined in the action. Also joining the class is New York-based Cherry Lane Music Publishing, which “owns more than 65,000 copyrights, including the publishing rights to music from Elvis, Quincy Jones, and the Black Eyed Peas.” Max Berger is lead counsel for Premier League; Philip Beck Richard Ben-Veniste of Mayer, Brown is lead counsel for YouTube. Judge, TBD. The Football Association Premier League Limited v. YouTube, Inc., 07 CV-3582. (Case docket from Justia)

(4) VOLUNTARILY DISMISSED: David Grisman, a mandolin player who performed with the Grateful Dead, along with his partner Craig Miller and company Dawg Music. They are also seeking to certify a class action of musicians against YouTube in the Northern District of California. Joseph Tabacco is lead counsel for Grisman. David Kramer is lead counsel for YouTube. Judge Susan Illston is presiding. Grisman v. YouTube, Inc., 2007cv02518. (Case docket from Justia)

(5) DISMISSED: The New Jersey Turnpike for use of certain surveillance footage. Suit in New Jersey. Judge Katharine S. Hayden is presiding. New Jersey Turnpike Authority v. YouTube, Inc., 2:2007cv02414. (Case docket from Justia)

(6) VOLUNTARILY DISMISSED: Country music publisher Cal IV, which owns rights to the songs by Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, and others. Also seeking a class action, this one in Nashville. Daniel Girard is lead counsel for Cal IV. James Doran and Robb Harvey, two Nashville attorneys, represent YouTube. Judge Robert Echols is presiding. Cal IV Entertainment v. YouTube, CV-00617 (Case docket from Justia) JOINED THE CLASS ACTION IN SDNY.

News:  Sweden has charged four individuals related to the website The Pirate Bay with copyright infringement.  They reportedly are the operators or financiers of the site:  Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom.   (More)

Analysis:  From the description, The Pirate Bay helps people find movies/songs being shared through BitTorrent by locating the files and providing links to them.  I haven’t explored the site myself, but it does sound at least somewhat like Napster.  Not sure if it has a centralized index of titles stored on its servers (like Napster did), but it helps to locate unauthorized files of third parties.  By the write-up on Wikipedia, The Pirate Bay seems committed to leading a movement for online file sharing and against the traditional copyright approach.

News:  Seeqpod is a search engine that locates music files on the Internet and allows you to play whatever you find on a music player that appears on the Seeqpod page.  The music is not stored on Seeqpod, as I understand it, but on third party sites that are identified in the search engine.

Warner Brothers Music has sued Seeqpod for copyright infringement.  Seeqpod will be invoking one of the safe harbors under the DMCA for search tools.  Ars Technica has an excellent discussion, as does EFF’s Fred von Lohmann.

Analysis:  I’ll have more to say after I read the complaint.

News: Ken Auletta has a must-read article about Google titled “The Search Party” in this month’s New Yorker. It has some mention of YouTube and Viacom’s lawsuit. One interesting quote is that CEO Eric Schmidt seems willing to test the scope of copyright on behalf of users:

In addition, Schmidt said, copyright “is not an absolute right,” and has to be balanced by “fair use.” When I asked whether Google wanted to push the envelope on privacy and copyright, he said, “That’s probably correct. If there’s a legal case, we’re going to favor the legal one that favors users.

News: According to SCOTUS blog, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether to review a case involving a criminal law that prohibited “video voyeurism.” Basically, a guy (an elected constable) sat in his car in the parking lot and videotaped a woman (fully clothed) through her balcony window for 1 hour or so, on at least 5 different occasions. Anyone passing by her window could see her.

As described by the Mississippi Supreme Court, the facts of the case were as follows:

“Eddie Gilmer was an elected constable in Madison County at the time of his alleged criminal behavior. He served warrants in Madison County, including at the Pear Orchard Apartments in Ridgeland, Mississippi, where Debra Clayton occupied a second-floor apartment. In March 2003, Clayton noticed that Gilmer would arrive at the Pear Orchard Apartments in his official vehicle marked “Madison County Constable, District Number 3, Eddie Gilmer” around 9:00 p.m. and park his car in a space in the apartment complex parking lot with his vehicle facing Clayton’s apartment about 87 feet from her balcony. Gilmer would stay in his parked car for an hour or an hour and a half before driving away.”Clayton contacted the police about Gilmer’s suspicious behavior. Consequently,police officers conducted five separate surveillance operations. Officers captured Gilmer on tape, recording Clayton with a hand-held video camera while she was sitting inside her apartment in front of her balcony door, which was open about eighteen inches. The evidence demonstrated that, while filming, Gilmer often zoomed in on Clayton’s chest and crotch area. Eddie Gilmer was convicted of 5 counts of violating Mississippi’s video voyeurism statute (Miss. Code Ann. 97-29-2006) and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Analysis: I have not researched the law in this area, so these are only my uninformed initial impression. The due process challenge raised by Gilmer is that the statute as interpreted by the Mississippi Supreme Court is vague–i.e., it does not adequately provide fair warning on what is proscribed. This is a basic constitutional challenge studied in law school.

Gilmer also raises a First Amendment challenge to the statute. This to me is the most interesting. Gilmer argues that the criminal statute is overbroad because it can criminalize the conduct of “anyone legitimately using a video camera.” Implicit in the argument, it seems to me, is the notion that people have a First Amendment right to videotape what is open in plain view to the public. I will think about the merits of that position some more.

Don’t worry, Perez wasn’t booted for long.  He’s back up.

News: Robert Tur (of LA News Service who shot the famous footage of Reginald Denny’s beating) was the first person to sue YouTube for copyright infringement. Well, after other plaintiffs (with deeper pockets) later sued YouTube in other jurisdictions, Tur decided to have his case dismissed to join one of the class action suits in New York. That way, Tur won’t have to pay legal fees himself, but can free ride on the work of the attorneys already in the case.

In a somewhat unusual move, YouTube opposed the dismissal, basically desiring the case in California to proceed forward (or presumably have Tur’s claims completely extinguished). The district court, however, ruled in favor of Tur, allowing him to join the other case in New York. (More)

Analysis: YouTube probably felt relatively good about its chances of prevailing in California and hoped to score a first victory that could influence other courts. We’ll now see which court will be the first to decide in 2008.

For more about all the copyright cases against YouTube, visit here.

News: In Norwood Middle School, in a suburb in Ohio, a 13-year-old eighth grader beat up a 12-year-old girl in the locker room. The 13-year-old had her friend videotape the beating and it was later posted on YouTube. After much complaining, the victim’s parents and school officials eventually got the video removed from YouTube. But it still exists in a news video posted by a Cincinnati news station.

Video contains violence: viewer discretion advised

Analysis: This is a serious problem. Schools need to investigate why teenagers are engaging in this kind of behavior and develop a “zero tolerance” policy. And YouTube needs to get more involved, too. If you type in “girl fight” on YouTube, there seem to be numerous videos of young girls fighting. (I’m guessing there are videos of guys fighting, too.) I haven’t watched all these fight videos (it’s possible some have already been removed), but here’s one video that is shockingly still up on YouTube. The video was posted a year ago on YouTube and has over 880,000 views. I debated whether even to include the video, but I concluded that it may help to focus attention on what’s really going on.

Video contains violence and profanity: viewer discretion advised

I’m not sure what exactly is the right answer. Obviously, you want to stop these fights from happening. But if you can’t, there is some benefit in having a video — it’s powerful evidence that law enforcement can later use to catch and prosecute the perpetrators.

News:  Prince has hired the service Web Sheriff to patrol YouTube for unauthorized videos of his music and concerts.  So far, reportedly the Web Sheriff has asked YouTube to remove 1,000 unauthorized clips.  John Giacobbi, managing director of Web Sheriff, says, “At the end of the day, if you take copyrighted music and film off YouTube, most of its business would be gone.”  (More)

Analysis:  I hate to say it (because I used to be a big fan of Prince) but Prince is washed up.  The worst concert I went to last year was Prince in a hotel bar in Las Vegas.  The performer was two hours late (apparently, that’s his MO) and then performed songs that were unrecognizable to most.  You had to pay extra for seats, so most people had to stand or sit on the floor for two hours or more.  I would have had no problem if the show times were accurately reflected on the tickets, but the promoters of the show obviously must have known that it would lose a lot of customers if the tickets said “Prince, 12:30 a.m. to 3 a.m.”   

News:  On Tuesday, Universal Music sued video sharing site Veoh for alleged copyright infringement.  The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York, where 2 copyright lawsuits have been filed against YouTube.  According to Wired’s account, Veoh runs a peer-to-peer network called “Veohnet,” which is different from YouTube’s architecture (YouTube stores all files on its own servers).  Like YouTube, though, it’s expected that Veoh will raise a defense based on the DMCA safe harbor. (more)

Analysis: The more copyright lawsuits that are filed, I think the greater chances that one or more of these suits will reach all the way to the Supreme Court.

News:   Here’s why. Sorry, this is not about YouTube. This is about a pro bono case I started working on over six years ago at the Stanford Center for Internet & Society, Golan v. Gonzales, which was just decided by the 10th Circuit on appeal.

As lead counsel and Stanford Law professor Larry Lessig describes in detail, this is a major victory for the First Amendment as it bears on copyright law. The fight is not over yet, but this is an important first step.

You can read more about the Golan case from Chris Sprigman (also an important lawyer who worked on the case, now teaching at Virginia Law School) here; from Howard Bashman of How Appealing here; and even a post from William Patry at the Patry Blog (though he confesses he once “had thought [the argument] made no sense at all”).