This is big news! News agencies are reporting that Google / YouTube has won in their fight against Viacom!
Viacom was (perhaps still is through appeals?) suing YouTube for copyright infringement with ginormous liabilities claimed.
Cory Doctorow is publishing a collection of essays about technology, creativity, copyright and the future of the future. The collection is called "Content".
The New York Times is reporting a story about how a judge, Robert W. Sweet, in New York ruled against the validity of a patent on the human genome.
I agree with the ruling, because the fact of the matter is that the intellectual property not only already existed in concept, but existed in reality, as part of the human genome.
Certainly, the company which researched and identified the genes in question have ventured into unchartered territory in the context of research, but they did not invent or create that territory.
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I've heard much about Rupert Murdoch's angst towards Google for quite some time, but for some reason the lawsuit against Google and YouTube had escaped my attention until recently.
What boggles my mind is this important paragraph which is posted on the YouTube Blog post about the lawsuit:
For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.
I'm not a lawyer, but I get the feeling that actions like those described in that paragraph might even be considered fraudulent in some jurisdictions, especially in light of the following statement, a little further in the blog post:
In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.
This story reminds me of a friend of mine who works in music promotion. His firm was paid by a record distribution company in the US to promote a band, and was given instruction (and permission) to offer free downloads of one song recorded by the band. Pretty soon after he setup the download, the UK region offices served him (and his hosting company) with a cease and desist order.
What lunacy!
Software is a literary form, it is registered using form TX.
Trade Secrets
Include a cover letter, a picture of a screen display, and 20 pages (first 10 and last 10) with no blackouts.
Cover Letter:
To Whom it May Concern,
Enclosed is the copyright registration form TX for a software program entitled "Software Title". This computer program contains trade secrets and therefore the deposit includes the first 10 and last 10 pages of the code without any sections blacked out. The computer program in its entirity is over X pages long. Included in the deposit are critical and unique components of the code significant enough to identify.
No Trade Secrets
Include 50 pages of the code with no blackouts.
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