
Megaupload to Universal: You’ve Got Some Explaining To Do - Garbage
http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-to-universal-youve-got-some-explaining-to-do-111228/
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tibbon
Perhaps its just me, but when I read about the UMG/Megaupload thing I can't
help but thing that UMG did this an intentional stab against a
rival/competitor and alleged piracy service, hoping that no one would notice,
but someone did notice.

Now instead of owning up to anything (let's face it, the music industry has
never been one based on honesty), they are going to dig in their heels and try
to deny everything, eventually pegging the blame as a 'clerical error' on some
intern or lower management?

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I haven't seen anyone on the side of
UMG make any salient points that would show otherwise.

~~~
yock
Isn't "clerical error" essentially the same excuse that Kenneth Lay & friends
made about the frauds perpetrated by Enron? In that case, they alleged that
intentional bad acts were carried out by employees and that the executives had
no knowledge of their activities. This prompted new law stipulating that
company executives could no longer claim ignorance of illegal activities by
employees as a defense.

Is "clerical error" the new refuge of this same mentality? _"We can't claim
they broke the law without our knowledge, but we can claim they made a
mistake."_ Can we, and should we, make this similarly illegal? Or should we
stike closer to the core issue, where executives may be lying about their
knowledge of fraud/mistakes to deliberately take advantage of any benefits
that may arise from them? Is this even practically enforceable?

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jfoutz
Anybody can claim anything, that's the whole point of an adversarial judicial
system. ideally the other side will poke holes in the defense's argument.

One, perhaps worthwhile, change would be to tie penalties to income. it's
impossible for a corporation to do jail time. $100,000 would be a lot for most
people, but for many corporations this is a tolerable sum. being held
accountable for, say, up to 10% of revenue would get some attention.

~~~
jeltz
In anti-trust cases the EU has fines tied to the earnings of a company. I
believe they can go as high as 15% so for large corporations like Microsoft it
can become quite the sum. I believe Microsoft were fined 1.5 billion euro
before they gave in to the demands.

~~~
tibbon
I worry in the US that fees like this would be accused as being 'job killers'
by their friends in politics.

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richardburton
I read this and my heart sank:

 _Universal later added that it had a deal with YouTube to take down content
even if it doesn’t infringe their rights._

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sek
Youtube already denied this.

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tibbon
Link/citation/source? Very interested in this.

~~~
skymt
Here's the Ars Technica article on the matter: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2011/12/umg-we-have-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2011/12/umg-we-have-the-right-to-block-or-remove-youtube-
videos.ars)

YouTube's statement was added as an update at the end of the article.

~~~
barredo
> Update:YouTube provided Ars Technica with the following statement: "Our
> partners do not have the right to take down videos from YouTube unless they
> own the rights to them or they are live performances controlled through
> exclusive agreements with their artists, which is why we reinstated it."

So, certain companies have access to some sort of Youtube backend and they can
shut videos and such without prior Youtube/Google permission (due to time
limitation, I'd guess). Although Youtube/Google has the power to overwrite any
changes made by these 'partners' (don't know which word to use).

Does that seem right?

~~~
ryanhuff
Considering how Google has handled "customer support" in other areas of their
business, the "override" option sounds like a cop-out.

What Youtube/Google should have done is require an arbitration system funded
by "rights-holder", backed by monetary damages if they abused the system.
Instead, we seem to have a system with no downside-risk for the media
companies of over-reaching.

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soulclap
everyone who was around in the amiga scene days knows that kimble is a very
'special' person, to put it politely.

i love him for going all the way regarding the 'mega song' issue though. and
besides that, he is one of the few (?) people who came back rather strong
after going down when the 'dot-com bubble' bursted.

