Can You Really Prevent Copyrighted Media From Being Uploaded?
Managing an online service can be quite complicated. Not only do you have to think of the costs of bandwidth, servers, utilities, and even administrative overhead, you also have to worry about the legal implications. For instance, if you were to run your own blog or website, it would be your responsibility to make sure you do not post illegal or potentially damaging stuff on your site. But if you host millions of people, and let them have the power to put up just about anything they can then you can expect complaints to come left and right.
Take for instance MySpace and YouTube. These pillars of the user-driven content world have been snapped up by the big fish—in this case News Corp. and Google, Inc.—for billions of dollars. These allow multimedia uploads from just about any person who signs up for an account. MySpace was founded on the creators’ love for the indie music scene. YouTube, meanwhile, was designed from ground up for sharing of user-contributed videos (but the tendency is for users to upload television shows and movie clips).
However, with this is the very high likelihood that users will upload their favorite songs and videos that are copyrighted, and this is tantamount to illegal music and video sharing. It’s very easy to just rip all the songs of your entire CD collection into MP3 and upload them to your MySpace account. Before, there was no one stopping you from doing that, and MySpace would only remove your illegally-shared files upon request from the artists (or any authority). But now, we have news that they’re changing that.
MySpace’s policy, like that of YouTube, has been to remove copyrighted material when requested to, but the move to harness Gracenote’s technology marks a more active role in preventing copyright violations. It is tied to the news that MySpace.com will soon start selling songs from unsigned bands, with an eye toward eventually marketing songs from major record companies as well.
MySpace is thinking of banning the upload of copyrighted material outright, even as you upload them. While I think this is a noble effort to curb online piracy, I don’t think it will work in the long run. It seems like MySpace is kissing up to the music industry bigwigs and sacrificing their users in the process. And with user-driven sites like MySpace, it’s all about the users. If you start pissing off your clientèle by starting to become too strict, then you risk losing the best thing about your business, and that is its popularity and the freedom enjoyed by the users.
So can you really prevent copyrighted media from being uploaded and shared online? I’d say yes. But it would be a bit nasty.
[tags]copyright, news, myspace, youtube, video, music, file sharing, mp3, intellectual property[/tags]
