Copyright Chaos

Over the weekend, the New York Times had an op-ed piece by Lawerence Lessig on the ever more interesting topic of copyright law.

He pointed out something that I did not know. The Supreme Court has deferred to the Congress the decisions on how new technologies affect copyright law. You could say that the Supreme Court encouraged Congress to update the law by the creation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

In the 1984 Sony Betamax case, the Supreme Court stated that the Congress would have to create new rules concerning copyright if technology were to make them necessary. The Betamax case decided it was legal to “time shift” or record a television show on a VCR so that it could be watched at a later time. Another important case in digital media was RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia. This case established that it is legal to “space-shift” music from a CD to an MP3 player.

The Lessig article focuses on how the Supreme Court has decided to take on the role of law maker and create new laws. Specifically, the Supreme Court decided in the Grokster case that it was illegal to provide technology that induces copyright infringement.

Viacom has sued YouTube for copyright damages to the tune of one BILLION dollars. Under the DMCA, a service like YouTube is protected under the “safe harbor” provision. This provision protects the creator of a service from being sued if someone uses the service to violate copyright law. For example, if someone used a Sony video camera to record a movie still playing in a theater, the MPAA cannot sue Sony.

Because users have posted copyright protected content to YouTube, Viacom says YouTube should pay. As a user of YouTube and many other streaming services, I don’t want these crazy suites destroying these free services. I have waited long enough to get a streaming service that lets me upload as much content as I can create (for free) and then streams that content to any number of people (for free) for as long as I choose to store my content (for free) on their servers.