In dismissing an infringement lawsuit, a Los Angeles federal judge has ruled that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects California web-video host Veoh.
It is the second time that Veoh, a YouTube-style service, has won protection from the courts under the DMCA, which immunizes web hosts from liability if they remove infringing content at the owners request via a takedown notice.
Universal Universal Music Group, which brought the copyright case, claimed Veoh was a copyright scofflaw, allowing its users to post material that repeatedly infringed its copyrights.
The two rulings, (the first one was brought against Veoh by a gay porn site) are not binding on the appeals courts or the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has not squarely addressed the issue. The same legal spat is now before a New York judge in Viacom’s $1 billion suit against YouTube.
An interesting line from Friday’s Veoh decision says that web hosts do not have to enable copyright-filtering technology, even though many do, including Veoh and YouTube.
“UMG has not established that the DMCA imposed an obligation on a service provider to implement filtering technology at all, let alone technology from copyright holder’s preferred vendor or on the copyright holder’s desired timeline,” U.S. District Judge Howard Matz of Los Angeles ruled.
The ruling finalized a preliminary decision from January.
Universal vowed to appeal the latest order.
“The ruling today is wrong because it runs counter to established precedent and legislative intent, and to the express language of the DMCA. Because of this and our commitment to protecting the rights of our artists and songwriters who deserve to be compensated for the use of their music, we will appeal this ruling immediately,” the music company said in a statement.
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Original article at Threat Level
krapper writes “The Obama administration has unveiled a government ‘app store’ designed to push the federal bureaucracy into the era of cloud computing. The change means some federal employees will begin using services like YouTube, Gmail and WordPress, which store data on private internet servers instead of on those paid for with public money. The process will start small but will ramp up quickly, Vivek Kundra, the US chief information officer, said in a blog post on Tuesday. ‘Our policies lag behind new trends, causing unnecessary restrictions on the use of new technology,’ Kundra writes in the post on WhiteHouse.gov. ‘We are dedicated to addressing these barriers and to improving the way government leverages new technology.’ The app store is designed for federal employees doing official government business and is not intended for use by the public..”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Geoffrey.landis writes ‘In Britain, libel laws are censoring the ability of journalists to write stories about bogus science. Simon Singh, a Ph.D. physicist and author of several best-selling popular-science books, is currently being sued by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for saying that there is no evidence for claims that visiting a chiropractor has health benefits. A year earlier, writer Ben Goldacre faced a libel suit for an article critical of Matthias Rath, who claimed that vitamin supplements can treat HIV and AIDS in place of conventional drugs like anti-retrovirals. In Britain, libel laws don’t have any presumption of innocence — any statement made is assumed to be false unless you prove it’s true. Journalists are running scared.’
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader writes “Copyright law has previously been used by some states to try to prevent people from passing around copies of their own government’s laws. But in a new level of meta-absurdity, the attorney general of Oregon is claiming copyright over a state-produced guide to using public-records laws. That isn’t sitting well with one frequent user of the laws, who has posted a copy of the guide to his website and is daring the AG to respond. The AG, who previously pledged to improve responses to public-records requests, has not responded yet.” The challenger here is University of Oregon Professor Bill Harbaugh.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Geoffrey.landis writes ‘In Britain, libel laws are censoring the ability of journalists to write stories about bogus science. Simon Singh, a Ph.D. physicist and author of several best-selling popular-science books, is currently being sued by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for saying that there is no evidence for claims that visiting a chiropractor has health benefits. A year earlier, writer Ben Goldacre faced a libel suit for an article critical of Matthias Rath, who claimed that vitamin supplements can treat HIV and AIDS in place of conventional drugs like anti-retrovirals. In Britain, libel laws don’t have any presumption of innocence– any statement made is assumed to be false unless you prove it’s true. Journalist are running scared.’
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader writes “Copyright law has previously been used by some states to try to prevent people from passing around copies of their own government’s laws. But in a new level of meta-absurdity, the attorney general of Oregon is claiming copyright over a state-produced guide to using public-records laws. That isn’t sitting well with one frequent user of the laws, who has posted a copy of the guide to his website and is daring the AG to respond. The AG, who previously pledged to improve responses to public-records requests, has not responded yet.” The challenger here is University of Oregon Professor Bill Harbaugh.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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