If it is the law of the land, and it is an unnecessary burden for those in the real economy, I don’t see why the itnernet people should be exempt.

Youtube did gain popularity by being a place people can go find music videos…you could even make play lists and have your own version of MTV, just with only songs you liked (and no reality shows).

In their unwillingness to pay for that content, which radio stations and video stations have to do, they are free riding. That is why no videos are available on youtube in germany, in fact not even home edited videos with musical content.

If I open a bricks and mortar store I have to pay rent and insurance, and if I play music in the store I have to pay fees for that, and I am liable to unfounded lawsuits and the like.

I don’t understand how the internet should always be a free for all.

Get rid of the laws that let John edwards get rich with their junk lawyering….at the same time limit copyright to somehting legitimate, and not some 90 years, and let those in the physical world, as well as those in the virtual world all play by the same rules.

and please stop inventing straw men.

I am not saying they should be cleared, but I am surprised how much youtube gets away with, especially in the childrens genre and music videos…..youtube would only be a marginal success if it were all home shot video of little freddy winning a karate contest.

If people want to go after the deep pockets of google, fine…people do it with real world companies all the time. As long as courts are seen as a lottery, why should they be exempt? Major tort reform and 2×7 year copyright would take care of most of the problems.

That fat loser Kim Dotcom did diddly but make his scam dollars off of copyright infringers.

So please, cry some more, Megaupload fans. Your tears nourish me.

I am in the internet business and I don’t want the gov’t meddling around with it. I feel like this is a fight we’ll eventually lose and the govt will just shrug their shoulders and wonder “what happened to the internet?- it used to do so well”, and move on to the next thing.

but megaupload, which is not housed on American soil gets taken down in a dawn raid?

the simple fact is that most “internet” companies work because of the scaleability of it, which means that personnel costs are miniscule…you write the code once, and it replicates itself. This is the apparent advantage of it….this means that youtube claims it is an unjustifiable expense to expect them to check all the content that is hosted by them….well, it is not considered an undue burden for Barns & Noble ot check that they aren’t offering books in their store that are in infringement of copyright, or pornographic outside of the realms of what is legal for broad sale or the like.

These are real expenses that are expected in the real world, and the internet world should not be free to claim impossibility simply because they have some code in place which might catch some of it.

Strippers in a lot of places would make a lot more money if they could offer s** in the champagne room, with legitimate deniability by the club management…but simply putting up a “no groping” sign with no control or enforcement isn’t enough.

If internet companies are building their business on scalability, they better allot some more capital for actual human control and enforcement procedures.