Io v. Veoh: Important ruling for sites comprised of 'user-generated content'

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/required-reading-user-generated-content-sites-io-g

by jasonbentley • 18 years ago

61 13 18 years ago

The article is a good summary, but you should really read the entire ruling. Really important stuff for any company that takes advantage of the DMCA safe harbor.

lux2• 18 years ago

This is a good day for user-generated site owners, and it sounds like their willingness to comply with the law is what saved them. I guess that's the difference between them getting off the hook and other sites who just "play dumb" to having tons of illegal content and end up being held responsible for it. Still, with many such sites nowadays, they're just providing search results, not much different than Google...

calvin• 18 years ago

"Still, with many such sites nowadays, they're just providing search results, not much different than Google..."

Veoh, YouTube, and "such sites" host the videos and aren't search engines. Since the videos in violation would be hosted on their servers rather than merely linked to, they have much different requirements under the DMCA and copyright law than Google.

lux2• 18 years ago

I guess I wasn't clear, but that last line was referring to the other sites, the ones "playing dumb" about having tons of illegal stuff on them and doing nothing about it. Generally, many of _those_ sites nowadays are simply search engines (many torrent sites or sites like binsearch, for example), which seems to be how they argue around having to care about copyright issues. Thanks for pointing that out though, better to be clear :)

MicahWedemeyer• 18 years ago

Just remember: Veoh had the deep pockets necessary to fight this in court and take it all the way to a decision. While that may be the case for larger sites, it's totally different for the small sites. If you can't afford the court costs to defend yourself, you lose as soon as the suit is filed.

aston• 18 years ago

Not entirely true. The US runs completely on case law, so having a precedent like Veoh helps you out a lot. People will be less willing to even take you to court if they see that it's likely they'll lose under a similar ruling. And if you do get to court, your burden will basically be to live up to whatever Veoh did.

jrockway3• 18 years ago

Not to mention that a judge will usually throw out a case that looks exactly like another one. If you are a small site like Veoh and you get sued, this case will decrease the likelyhood that your case ever goes to trial. (And that's where the expense is.)

ars• 18 years ago

Take a look at page 16, line 28 in the decision :) Also page 6 line 26.

I don't know if judges should really be using wikipedia that way - what if it was vandalized on the day they checked it?

JesseAldridge• 18 years ago

The lines in question:

"Neither side explained precisely what a Flash file is, but this court understands it to be the name of a file format used to transmit videos over the Internet. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_format."

"The court takes judicial notice of the Wikipedia definition of “IP address” as to the fact that an IP address may be shared by multiple users. This is not a matter that is subject to reasonable dispute."

SirWart• 18 years ago

I think I need to resolve more arguments with "This is not a matter that is subject to reasonable dispute."

astrec• 18 years ago

Is "Site complies with law, wins law suit" less of a story than "Judge cites Wikipedia definitions in ruling"?

In this city a high school student who cites Wikipedia without a secondary source gets a (provisional) F.

If Wikipedia is an authority sufficient for the judiciary the world really has transitioned from the Britannica era.

jrockway3• 18 years ago

I don't think that's particularly important. What an IP address is and what a Flash video are weren't really important to the case. It sounds more like the judge was curious.

If Wikipedia was vandalized and the judge based his ruling on incorrect information, that would be grounds for an appeal, I'm sure.

Wikipedia may not be 100% correct, but I think we all use it as a starting point. A lot of times it is correct, and it gives us the background information we need to understand other sources. Not something I'm going to complain about. (Cue the inevitable responeses -- "I hate the Wikipedia admins", or "I'm so smart I never need to look anything up." Yeah, yeah. Tell someone who cares.)

boredguy8• 18 years ago

Print encyclopedias are as flawed as Wikipedia in lots of important ways. From an old post of mine in response to an anti-wiki article (http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=111504A)

The article by Robert McHenry misses the point in a phenominal way. In order to demonstrate the flaws of the system, one would need to show where an earlier edition said something to the effect of, "There is a lack of clarity regarding the birth date of Hamilton. While we know his birth month and day, there is some debate over the exact year. Dates vary between 1755 and 1757, but as Hamilton himself used 1757, that will be the date of reference used in this article." was deleted. Had he submitted such a change himself, the article would have been somewhat better.

As for statements of opinion, shall we reject "The New Encyclopedia Britannica" because it says, "Korean artists were generally inferior to the Chinese and Japanese in technical perfection and precision"? I won't even bother to list the host of other errors in that edition on a single topic: Korea. (http://kennedy.byu.edu/staff/peterson/Multivol/Multibooks.ht...)

Anyway, the point is that until one demonstrates that good information is regularly being destroyed by bad information, one has not built a case for the need for change.

jrockway3• 18 years ago

Is Io going to appeal? Personally, I don't get excited until the Supreme Court rules. This "victory for user-generated content sites" could easily be overturned.

Io v. Veoh: Important ruling for sites comprised of 'user-generated content'

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