The US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan just ruled that YouTube will have to defend itself from a Viacom lawsuit in court. Viacom sued YouTube in 2007 for $US1 billion, alleging that it was responsible for the huge amount of copyrighted material that was uploaded by YouTube users.
US copyright laws are designed to protect the “fair use” of copyrighted content such as mash-ups and remixes — or they were, at least, until the advent of DMCA Takedown Notices. The Dutch government has taken notes on America’s IP failures and is reportedly looking to explicitly protect such DMCA fodder, much to the chagrin of the European Union.
Universal Music’s legal department sure has been busy! Late last week UMG had a song defending Megaupload removed from YouTube on a false copyright claim. Then on Monday, the company had a news report removed on the same grounds.
Disney, Fox, Universal, Columbia and Warner Bros have locked on to their next target in the battle against movie piracy – web-based digital locker site Hotfile. Claiming the site encourages and even rewards users for sharing copyrighted material, the court papers were filed in Miami yesterday.
The federal government rarely hands fair use proponents cheerful news – usually it’s quite the opposite. But a judge of the 5th Circuit Appeals Court has ruled that circumventing DRM for non-infringing purposes isn’t illegal, contrary to years of precedent.
Microsoft is going to withdraw their complain against Cryptome, after shutting them down yesterday. Cryptome published Microsoft’s no-longer-secret guide to help governments to uncover your online secrets. Host Network Solutions says the site will be back online later today. [ReadWriteWeb]
Microsoft has a 22-page document which outlines how they store all your private data in their online servers. The document also tells government agencies how they can get it. But, oh surprise, they don’t want you to see it:
