iTunes Chart-Toppers (a/o May 22nd):
It's the same argument that was made about Napster back in the 90s. After all, if millions of people wanted to file-swap and build huge MP3 collections, why not let them do it? And, wrap whatever model you could around that activity (or create a better, low-cost alternative)?
Welcome to the same discussion, 13 years later. Here's a guest post from Philip Matesanz, founder of Youtube-mp3.org, which is now under heavy legal attack from Google. Matesanz feels that he has very defensible legal arguments (specifically in Germany), though in all likelihood, he won't be able to defend those arguments.
Google is accusing us of threatening the safety of our users and wants us to close youtube-mp3.org immediately. If we don't comply, they've threatened to sue us. Unfortunately Google has just blocked all of our servers from accessing YouTube so we've had to disable all conversion functionality.
We've refused to close this service and asked if it would be possible to speak to a YouTube representative to find a solution that would be in the best interests of all our users. Since there are tens of millions of real people using this service, we thought Google would be willing to have a quick chat. But the opposite was the case: There was no interest whatsoever in even a simple call; they don't care about all these people that want to use such a service.
We've never put any of our users at risk and have taken measures to protect them from all sorts of threats. Those measures did cost us a lot of money, but we didn't care about that. The reason is that we've never been profit-oriented, but rather user-oriented.
Just to name a few of these protections:
(1) More than 65 percent of all of our page impressions have never had an advertisement.
We could have easily filled those page-impressions with ads - bad ads. We haven't done it because we don't believe that running gambling, pornographic or fraudulent ads is acceptable. Those ads would have paid pretty handsomely, but we choose our users over that money.
(2) We never run pop-ups.
Another decision that lowered our profits drastically.
(3) Our own infrastructure has never stored any logs on disk.
We did this to protect our users from exactly what is happening right now.
We're wondering what happened to Google. It wasn't long ago they lived by their "don't be evil" philosophy, and did what their users wanted. Nowadays, they're ignoring millions of users, while referring to their questionable good intentions. And all the while, ignoring the "TOS" of others to increase their profitability.
To give a few examples:
A great service, but there was a huge outcry in Germany. Most large publishers didn't want Google to scrape content off their sites and profit from that. So what has Google done? They underscored their intention to provide a good service for their users, and therefore ignored the publishers. This whole topic got so popular that even the German government is about to intervene and plans to stop Google with a new set of laws.
Another great service, but there are also publishers and authors that don't want their books to be scanned. Does Google care about this? Of course they don't.
Our service, on the other hand, is requested and used by millions of people. Compared to Google News, our government has publicly recommended that its citizens to make use of so-called YouTube recorders/converters. The rise of such software couldn't have been unexpected for Google, especially since it has happened with other technologies in the past as well. Indeed, the fact that Google is creating such recording software also is particularly exciting.
I also submit to you a brief history on format recording, to further illustrate my argument.
(a) After the radio was invented, people could make use of casette recorders to make a copy of various programs.
(b) After the TV was invented, you could use a video recorder. Nowadays, you can use a more modern product like Google TV...
We've never used the YouTube API to pull any videos from them.
We truly believe that our service is legal. German Courts have ruled that online recording tools are no different from any TV recorder or something comparable.
The German Department of Justice has publicly advised users to download content off of YouTube.
- Write a complaint e-mail to Harris Cohen or YouTube's general mailbox.
- Write about this on your blog, or post this on your Facebook page.
- If you are Larry Page or Sergey Brin: Contact me.
All the best,
Philip
Casey Friday, June 22, 2012
Google has to do things like this to protect themselves. If they don't, they could be sued again by companies like Viacom. Doesn't matter if this company is operating legally or not.
Visitor Friday, June 22, 2012
Google believes people should "share" IP only when Google makes money on it. This threatens their ability to make money from the creative IP of others.
No surprise.
Visitor Wednesday, June 27, 2012
that is true this is all googles idei they want mony they hate the non profit websites like that one
Visitor Friday, June 22, 2012
Short answer:- because the copyright holders of the video content have not give express permission for these videos to be downloaded.
In many cases the rights holders have not given permission for the content to up on youtube in the first place - but that is neither here now there. What is certain is that no express permission has been given for downloaded copies to be made.
It's not rocket science.....
reality Saturday, June 23, 2012
You are on the right track. Just want to add that, Google/Youtube/Youtube-mp3.org and all the people who rip video dont care about rights holders or express permission.
Google/Youtube is not suing out of the goodness of their hearts they are just polishing their image and covering their asses
Mark Saturday, June 23, 2012
THIS. Exactly this.
Visitor Saturday, June 23, 2012
There is no technical difference at the network between "streaming" something and "downloading" something.
MarvinB Monday, June 25, 2012
There's no technical differece but there's an established LEGAL difference. Streaming and Downloading are completely different copyrights.
My issue with youtube is that thier actions against these downloading sites are contrary to the implied usage rules theyve built their platform around. Youtube is an video sharing site, that built most of its content by others (or themselves) reuploading content that was (most of the time) intented to be shared by others. So if we can agree that Youtube is intentionally used as a tool to spread/share video content, if not expressly barred by the uploader from downloading content (see: Soundcloud which has the download/stream only option) it would seem logical that type of activity would be covered by an implied license; so long as the use wasnt commerical in nature.
The bottom line is we need a new systems of copyrights that considers that sharing is the new "default."
Sure! Saturday, June 23, 2012
Millions of programmers want to examine and experiment with the Google Search algos. So why not let them?
REMatwork Monday, June 25, 2012
Most people are perfectly happy to bookmark a YouTube video and just come back and watch that video whenever they want. Trouble is, many times YouTube videos are taken down and you can never watch them again. So a prudent collector will want to download videos that are really special.
Here is an idea, why not give that collector right to own that video? YoutubeMP3 can then have access to a list of registered owners of that video and let them download it whenever they need to, just like you could download from a DVD that you own whenever you need to.
This idea of trusted third-party registration is called a Digital Content Exchange.
Visitor Monday, June 25, 2012
"Trouble is, many times YouTube videos are taken down and you can never watch them again. So a prudent collector will want to download videos that are really special"
Err.. these are videos that HAD NO RIGHT TO BE THERE IN tHE FIRST PLACE.
If you don't own the copyright or have permission, you ARE NOT ALLOWED to Distribute. simple.
If you MAKE something, you can do whatever you wish with such creation (as long as your "creation" isn't simply copying someone elses')
If you want to watch or listen to one of the videos "That are really special" that have been taken down... how about you go buy it? if it's sooo special that you just have to own it, why not support the person(s) who made you so happy...
Antho9 Monday, June 25, 2012
As with other discussions involving drm - thsi YouTube thing is completely irrelevant. I've been able to download any YouTube video I choose for years using the Real Player download function but I never do because most YouTube videos have awful audio and video resolution.
Anonymous Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Are they going to sue the website users?
Visitor Wednesday, June 27, 2012
inamerca its is in the best interist of the xcoperations and not the pepole any more google is bad
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