http://www.youtube.com/t/howto_copyright
I think it's great you don't want to post copyright infringement links here at T-P. Please don't. Please also recognize that YouTube is completely aware of the crime involved and liability incurred by publishing on the web, links to copyrighted material.
SOPA is not written to cope with these supposed aberrations at places like YouTube. In general, it's not written to address social networking sites. It's written to address "file sharing" sites.
You do understand the difference? YouTube, Facebook, Twitter--will all survive if we can get to the point that copyright infringement as an industry, DIES.
File sharing sites will certainly not survive if SOPA or some refined version goes into US law.
Just out of curiosity, I'd like to know if anyone here knows what's with the YouTube lengths. IIRC, originally, YouTube limited the vids uploaded to 10 minutes. Now it's 15 unless you have a special dispensation:
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/a ... swer=71673
Seems to me, youTube has gone to necessary and sufficient lengths to insure complete motion pictures can't be loaded into their system. I'd expect any federal judge to agree, so any feature films on YouTube really ought to be considered aberrations that youTube has already tried to safeguard against, based upon their policy of thwarting copyright infringement.
I'm not here doubting that such aberrations exist, but I'm noting they are certainly not the norm.
And really, YouTube vids have pretty shitty support. I can't imagine trying to watch a feature film through YouTube. This is why "file sharing" sites exist--because YouTube does not support IP theft.
BTW Scott, if you do indeed know there are feature films on YouTube, I certainly hope you've notified them, or are you an accessory to such theft?
As to the charge that modern times make the concept of copyright outdated--that's just absurd. It's akin to saying that because 3D lithography makes it possible to back-engineer and duplicate any physical item, that patents shouldn't exist. It's a hopelessly confused and naive position that even elementary examination shows to be obviously and stupidly wrong. It makes me wonder how many people here think before they type. Holding such a position makes one sound like the Chinese--moral reprobates.
Which raises the obvious question: how many people in this thread, virtually everyone here apart from myself; who are arguing that personal property should not be protected, count yourselves Communists? That's the position you're supporting.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis