As has been splashed across the front page of the Drudge Report this week, Michael Moore's documentary Sicko has been leaked to the Internet. Not only is it available via a torrent file, it is also been posted on Youtube. Ironically, Micheal Moore doesn't seem to care because he must not realize that his producers are in this to make money, and people don't generally pay for something they can see for free.
I've seen a couple of papers that have been published about this on SSRN, and even more have been published as it relates to the music industry. As far as television, the moving consensus appears to be that for so-called "free" shows, the onus falls on the one who uploaded the file, while the blatantly pay shows (e.g., movies and perhaps cable and pay-tv shows) may have dual liability.
While I don't have time at the moment to give my position on the subject, I would say that the short answer is that I agree that the copyright holder should be able to go after the uploader and perhaps the downloader who keeps the file, but probably not the casual online watcher. Whether YouTube or Google or whoever is also going to be liable remains to be seen, although my reading of the Grokster case would suggest that their liability extends only so far as their willful ignorance or outright disregard of copyright laws. I guess we'll see what the California courts decide at summary judgment.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Sicko and the move toward a uniform copyright approach
Tags:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment