In the last couple years, thousands of world wide web users have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America, also known as the RIAA. The charges: copyright infringement. With widespread accessibility of high speed internet, it has become more and more effortless for people to just download their favorite tunes, music video or movies or simply create their own internet radio playlists. Over the years, this trend has become such a common practice that the filmmaking and music industries eventually noticed drastic decline in their sales. This observation compelled the RIAA to sue Internet users who had been identified downloading copyrighted materials.
RIAA Lawsuits
When the counter measures against these downloaders did not deliver the desired outcomes, the RIAA modified their tactics a bit. Instead of going after the downloaders, the RIA is now after folks that share more than a thousand files in a certain timeframe. Internet Service Providers have been put on notice that they need to control their subscribers; it almost seems that the RIAA is attempting to place the burden of ensuring the copyright law is respected by Internet users on the backs of the user's respective ISPs. In a way it makes sense: you share illegal files, you lose your Internet connection, you suddenly have no way of uploading files for unlawful distribution.
YouTube Copyright troubles
The same ideas apply to YouTube, the third most popular website on the Internet (as per Alexa ranking). YouTube dealt with a number of controversies even before it became the number one video sharing site. First, its name was controversial: another website that sounded like YouTube filed a lawsuit when their site became overloaded with traffic from users searching for YouTube. In the following years, several companies sued them for allegedly failing to encourage adiquate copyright protections by allowing its users share copyrighted materials, accusations for which YouTube is most likely liable. What's fascinating about this is that anyone with an internet connection can enjoy free online music without paying subscription or other fees.
YouTube's Stance
YouTube's primary defense is its terms of service, which request users not to upload any content that is owned by someone else without the permission of the latter. Because YouTube doesn't have the regulation and the ability to filter the videos uploaded by its users, numerous unauthorized clips of copyrighted materials are being shared daily.
YouTube indicates on its website that the burden of ensuring copyright protection is left up to copyright holders. There is a (DMCA) form and processes on the same page that allow copyright holders to apprise YouTube of copyright infringement.
YouTube's latest approach to enforcing copyright protection is aimedat video clips that contain copyrighted music as a soundtrack. They have devised a sound-scanning system that queries soundtracks for copyrighted music in the course of processing. Then, based on which recording company holds the copyright, YouTube either prevents the sound from playing or plays ads to enable YouTube to pay royalty fees to the copyright holder.
The verdict: audio and other copyrighted content on YouTube is not going away; YouTube has shown aptitude for solving any issues that pop up before, and there's little doubt that they'll find a way to work with recording companies and other copyright holders to be able to continue exhibiting the content that everyone wants to see.
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