July 19, 2007
It was recently announced that Dailymotion.com, a user-posted video clip website based in France, was ordered to pay a fine in excess of $30,000 for copyright violations present on its website. According to the Forbes.com article (link below), the French court issuing the decision ordered Dailymotion to pay “a symbolic one euro to Christian Carion, the director of the film Joyeux Noel, as well as 23,000 euros to the film's distributors.” This dispute began when the film was first “discovered” on Dailymotion back in February, and although it was taken down upon request, it was subsequently re-uploaded by a user and re-removed by Dailymotion. According to the Forbes article, Catherine Mullen, the Executive Vice President of International Operations for Dailymotion, noted that the ruling categorized Dailymotion as a “hosting company” instead of a “publishing company,” and that this particular case “started well before the current implementation of an industry-leading set of anti-piracy tools for copyright owners which, we believe, goes well above and beyond what the court would expect of a hosting provider." Dailymotion.com does have a mechanism for copyright violation notifications (link below), stating in part that “Dailymotion does not permit copyright infringing activities and infringement of intellectual property rights on its Website, and will remove all Content if properly notified that such content infringes on another's intellectual property rights.”
Forbes.com Article: LINK
Dailymotion.com: LINK
Dailymotion’s Copyright Notification Webpage: LINK
Forbes.com Article: LINK
Dailymotion.com: LINK
Dailymotion’s Copyright Notification Webpage: LINK
1 comments:
The judge condemned DailyMotion to pay (limited) damages, that is correct. But the court also confirmed a key point, which is that DailyMotion is a hosting provider and not an editor. This is very meaningful since this is core to the value proposition of being a user-driven platform dedicated to creativity and self-expression. In other words, DailyMotion can operate under the safe harbours guidelines provided for in the European Directive on the matter. Noe that is in contrast to the case of Lafesse-MySpace whereby MySpace was condemned as an editor. Another point to note is that the payment is not effective immediately if DM appeals; this is rare under French Law. What the judge wants to ensure is that DM uses all the means in its power to fight piracy at upload. The methods that have developed and deployed by DM (there are a number, some of which we do not disclose as we consider them to be a competitive advantage) were not used in this case. So all-in-all we are comforted in our ability to run the business as a hosting company and monetize our inventory. This legacy lawsuit will be superseded by the efforts and methods put in place to fight copyright infringement very proactively. I see Metacafe and DailyMotion as the best of breed in this regard. Just have a look at places like www.tv-links.co.uk or alluc.org and see how much content is driven by other "brand names" in the segment, including YT for that matter youtube.
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