

Justin.TV Reaches 1 Million Users - jmorin007
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/justintv-reaches-1-million-users/

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startingup
What bothers me about both justin.tv and scribd (as an occasional angel
investor, though not in anything related to those sites) is the mass of
copyrighted content. I am not sure what PG feels about sites whose business
model depends on illegally posted copyrighted content - I am asking in the
context of his idea number 1 (RIAA problem) ...

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LogicHoleFlaw
My personal inclination is to say "cross that bridge when you come to it."
Something as innocuous as StreamFile will certainly be used to unauthorizedly
distribute copyrighted content, but that is the responsibility of the
uploader, not the service provider.

One of the few reasonable aspects of the DMCA is the approach to "Safe Harbor"
provisions. So long as the service provider makes reasonable efforts to take
down content when provided a conforming takedown notice, it is in the clear.
The individual uploader is held responsible for any infringing activity. The
one weakness of the system is the ease with which some parties send out
takedown notices for content which they do not actually have authority to take
down.

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startingup
But knowingly looking the other way makes me uncomfortable - "knowingly
looking the other way" is what is really involved here. Legal issues aside,
there is an ethical question involved (regardless of your opinion of RIAA).
Civil disobedience is one thing, but profit motive and civil disobedience
don't mix.

That's one reason I have stayed away from companies with business models like
this.

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LogicHoleFlaw
I think the difference here is that civil disobedience involves breaking the
law in order to uphold some moral standard. Under the current copyright law's
safe harbor provisions, no law is being broken by a service provider who is
willfully, evenly blind and non-encouraging to the infringements by individual
users so long as the provider complies with takedown notices. Knowingly
waiting for and responding to the notices is what is required by the law. I
choose not to see it as "looking the other way" any more than google or
youtube is looking the other way.

The current copyright regime is unsustainable in this digital age. RIAA/MPAA
tactics are unconscionable. There must be a better system. I think there are
both ethical and business advantages to being part of the solution rather than
just shying away from the problem. I think that avoiding developing a
promising technology like justin.tv just because users can potentially use it
to infringe copyright is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

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nickb
Congrats! Anyone care to speculate what the cause of that spike is?

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jasonlbaptiste
illegal content

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atog
1 million in about 16 months! Congratulations!

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morbidkk
especially after kiko

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emmett
Hey, Kiko was awesome!

Google Calendar _still_ doesn't have a fully featured quick add, and you
_still_ can't preview events with mouseover.

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drusenko
beat us to it you bastards :)

