Okay, so any time bootleg video or anything else pops up on YouTube and I post an article about it I can’t help but throw in a little quip about how that site just continually just breaks all copyright laws ever written. The site supposedly blocks videos longer than 10 minutes so as to avoid the uploading of full movies and television shows, this is obviously not true as you will soon see. YouTube founder Chad Hurley was quoted in BusinessWeek after the $1.65 billion Google buy saying, “We have always respected copyright holders’ rights. What this deal allows us to do is to focus on that more than before… It allows us to have the resources to focus on this.” Uh… Come on Chad, without the copywritten material I can only assume YouTube’s viewership would drop by about 75%. Granted, that still makes it an extremely well visited site, but I don’t think it would have attracted Google if that were the case.
As for all this copyright stuff and how well respected copyright holders are over at YouTube I found a little something called Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on good old YouTube… Yup, the entire movie in ten parts. Right now the DVD sells for anywhere from $17.49 – $23.99 at Amazon.com, which means anyone watching via The Tube is taking money out of Warner Bros. pockets. Considering the bandwidth size of a flash clip in moderately decent quality that runs for 15:03 minutes as does part number one, which has been viewed 10,704 times and was added on November 25, 2006 I would think those copyright respecters at YouTube would have jumped on this. However, they haven’t.
With that said, we bring you the first 15 minutes of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, for the rest go here where you can also find X-Men: The Last Stand… You know why we can? Because Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 says that the the copyrighted material must “reside” on the hosting service… This material doesn’t reside on RopeofSilicon so I guess we are allowed to show it? Truly I can’t believe Google bought into this legal nightmare, they seem smarter than that. At least not so soon Googs.
