Legal liability for Tube viewers???
 

It will be interesting to see where this ends up going.

Users of YouTube and other video-sharing sites could face $750 per clip penalties if they have watched a video that was uploaded without the copyright holder's permission.

Copyright infringement in the United States strict liability offense. What this means, is that users are liable when they illegally copy works, even if they're not aware that this is wrong, or that the work is protected by copyright.
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-993...l?tag=blogFeed

I've never heard of them going after the viewers of copy infringed material. Vivid Entertainment has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against PornoTube. When that is done and PornoTube is toast, the others will fall. If not before. There is no proven business model in running a tube site. Do they really think that they make money from AFF memberships?

Is suing the pirates, those doing the sharing, a way of making money and deterring people from stealing?

It's not making money. It's recouping losses due to some ignorant douche-drinker giving away your expensive content to thousands of freeloading sacks of cunt, and thusly decreasing the value of your members area.

Hey, this ain't talking about suing the pirates.

Everytime a surfer watches a stolen clip, they are liable for a $750 fine per clip. So if you watch 10 illegal clips, that would be $7500 in fines you have to pay.

Just imagine the backlash against the sites when the lawyers subpoena the server logs, and file 10,000s of those kind of fines.

Hmmm, I wonder......|goodidea

tubes sites not going any place. A few big ones not even in the states, so who you going to sue? Also boot leg videos tapes on the streets and malls are a worst problem, they have not stop them. Free porn is here to stay

Great idea, should scare even more surfers from viewing porn and drive more people to encrypted file sharing programs.

Sounds like an easy way out instead of targeting the pirates.

Most of the tube site shows the # of vids watched by the user. All they need is a calculator to add up the fines.

It's kinda like that camera that takes a pic of you running the red light.

I wonder the reaction of the wives getting a "the bill". Saying "You have illegally watched x amount of stolen porn" and "Please pay this amount to avoid prosecution"

tube sites are just for the porn industry what mp3 and divx were on peer 2 peer networks a few years ago... MPAA and RIAA fought it b4 turning it into new media sales.

You can either see tube sites as a threat or as an opportunity.

Not a chance in hell that anyone who watched a video on youtube is going to be slugged with a fine. Totally ridiculously.

I don't see anyone going after end users - realistically. I don't understand how some of these sites get around 2257 issues - or are they?

I agree that it is not realistic to go after the end users of the tube sites.

How would an end user even know if he's watching something that's legal or not?
waste of time and energy.


How many webmasters continue to support companies that run tube sites?

People only care about making money. I guess you could count me in on that as well.
I send traffic to AFF, AFF buys ads on tube sites, I support tube sites :(

I could stop sending traffic anywhere, but all that would do is lose me money.

Vivid is suing AEBN, yet they still have their movies on AEBN. Titan sued AEBN a few years back. AEBN backed up the brinks truck and Titan rolled over like little bitches.

fucking mess we're all in.

They will never sue the viewers. IMO

In my limited experience, that has no bearing in a copyright case - if you use it, it's your responsibility to ensure you have the right. I've filed and won two cases in the mainstream internet world. For most judges, it's an open and closed case, you had my material, I can prove that it's my material, you knew you weren't the creator of said material, you can't prove that you had the rights to use said material, you pay.

It's just like walking out of the store with the goods in your pocket - it's fucking steeling - even if someone else put the stuff in your pocket.

And YES we need to get the fuckers that are steeling our material - along with the "enablers" - and if the "enablers" are out of our reach, so be it, the fuckers steeling it (consuming it) still need to be fucking burnt.

Every time one of us says it's OK, for whatever lame fucking reason, we become part of the problem. I've lost count of the people in this industry who have proudly announced that they have never paid for a download (music, porn, software) because they know how to cheat the system. Now is that the type of person you want make business plans with? Not me! |crazy|

When are we going to quit saying that we can't stop it so it's OK - IT AIN'T FUCKING OK.............

It's happened before and will happen again.

Suing the viewer is unconstitutional and violates privacy. This is a bloody outrage. Program owners go ahead sue the fuckers pirating your goods, but the surfer? Fuck sakes. Where's Vin Diesel and a senator's sports car when you need him?

Unconstitutional? |jester|

I wouldn't wanna spam, but ROTFL

Reminds me of some legalize I ran across when reading about the video patents.

As an example if you drive a GM car to work, and it happened to have some patented part that was being used illegally, they could sue you for your wages because you are profiting from the illegal use.|confused|

I don't think the constitution mentions privacy.

Or are celebrities unfairly having their constitutional rights taken away?