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YouTube Asks Court to Dismiss Mexican Movie Tycoon's 'Untimely' Piracy LawsuitErnesto Van der Sar, 24 Jun 11:08 PM Earlier this year, Spanish-born m

YouTube Asks Court to Dismiss Mexican Movie Tycoon's 'Untimely' Piracy Lawsuit Ernesto Van der Sar, 24 Jun 11:08 PM Earlier this year, Spanish-born movie tycoon Carlos Vasallo sued YouTube over various piracy related claims. The actor and producer own the rights to the world's largest collection of Mexican and Latin American movies, many of which are illegally shared on YouTube. 'Unfair Content-ID Requirements' While copyright allegations against Google and YouTube aren't new, the case carried an interesting allegation. According to Vasallo, YouTube would only allow him to join the Content-ID copyright protection program if he agreed to a revenue share deal and released all possible piracy claims that took place in the past. These discussions took place in 2015 and the movie tycoon refused to agree to the terms. Instead, his company Athos Overseas continued to rely on standard DMCA takedown notices, of which it sent more than 100,000 over the years. YouTube responded to these takedown requests and removed the infringing material. However, pirated movies continued to be uploaded. This prompted Vasallo to take YouTube to court, accusing the video platform of willingly profiting from copyright infringement. 'YouTube Profits from Piracy' The complaint covers a wide range of allegations and claims. Among other things, the movie tycoon argues that YouTube failed to take reasonable steps to anticipate and filter potential copyright infringements. Monitoring and filtering is not a requirement under US law but Vasallo points out that YouTube has the ability to do so. It allegedly chooses not to filter, in order to profit from infringing content on the platform. "While YouTube is a known leader in the subject industry with access to the resources necessary to detect and prevent the exploitation and infringement of copyrighted materials, YouTube foregoes its use of the referenced resources to further its profit-driven purpose of monetizing all uploaded videos," the complaint alleged. 'Statute of Limitations Expired' This week YouTube responded to the lawsuit. The video platform and its parent company Google don't discuss the allegations in detail but point out that, for many claims, the statute of limitations has expired. For example, the unfair and deceptive trade practice claims, which apply to YouTube's requirements to join the Content-ID system, have a statute of limitations of four years. These four years have already expired. "Those discussions are all alleged to have occurred, in their entirety, in 2015, and whatever claims Plaintiff might have based on YouTube's offer fully accrued at that time," YouTube writes. Dated Copyright Infrigements Many of the copyright claims fail as well, YouTube argues. The Copyright Act has a three-year statute of limitations for copyright infringement and many of the alleged violations took place earlier. "Here, Plaintiff points to numerous alleged infringements and violations that occurred before that [three year] window, and the Complaint makes no effort to take account of the limitations period," YouTube notes. "It is not Defendants' or the Court's job to sort out what claims Plaintiff can actually assert within the Copyright Act's lookback period. Instead, the Court should dismiss the copyright causes of action with instructions that Plaintiff may assert only such claims that accrued after May 3, 2018." More Grounds to Dismiss The statute of limitations is not the only problem area as YouTube sees deficiencies in other claims as well. For example, the movie tycoon accused the platform of allowing users to remove 'copyright management information,' which would violate the DMCA. Copyright management information includes metadata such as the ID3 tags but, according to YouTube, it's not clear what the company did wrong or failed to do. "The Complaint does not identify any copyright management information that YouTube supposedly removed from any video containing Plaintiff's copyrighted works, let alone allege any facts to support a plausible inference that YouTube did so intentionally..," YouTube writes. All in all, YouTube believes that the complaint is insufficient in its current form and the company asks the court to dismiss the lawsuit. — A copy of YouTube and Google's motion to dismiss, filed at a Florida federal court, is available here (pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. The Pirate Bay's Crypto 'Pirate Token' Slowly Fades Away Ernesto Van der Sar, 24 Jun 09:54 AM It's no secret that The Pirate Bay is into cryptocurrencies. The site started accepting Bitcoin donations in 2013 and later added Litecoin and Monero. The Pirate Bay was also the first large website to start mining cryptocurrency by using the computing resources of its visitors. This was a controversial move, but one that was followed by many other sites. It nonetheless came as a surprise when the torrent site started promoting a "Pirate Token" out of the blue last month. While we predicted this type of move years ago, the release wasn't initially backed by any information. Mysterious Token Launch The only hint was an image that linked people to Pancakeswap, a decentralized exchange where people can trade cryptocurrencies from user-generated liquidity pools. This includes Pirate Tokens, but what these tokens were for wasn't immediately clear. Even TPB staffers were left in the dark, noting that the site's operator has "a history of jumping on questionable fads." Only after the news started circulating in the press did more information become available. The Pirate Bay added a "token" page to the site where it explained that it was a "soft launch". In the future, the token could possibly be used to donate to moderators and uploaders, or access VIP content in the future. At that point, the Pirate Token had a market cap of nearly a billion dollars, which adds up to a lot of donations. However, the person behind the coin still held over 99.9% in their possession. That position remains unchanged today. Underwhelming Looking at the activity over the past month, we have to conclude that the interest in the Pirate Token is rather underwhelming. Not just that, interest is also fading, just like the price. When we first mentioned the project, one coin was selling for nearly $10. Today, this has dropped 80%, with the price currently sitting at $2. The broader crypto crash certainly hasn't helped here, but looking at the number of transactions, there simply isn't much activity. At the time of writing there are 487 Pirate Token holders, which is fewer than a month ago. The number of transactions per day has tanked as well. There were hundreds of daily transfers earlier but that has now dropped to an average of one per day. Token Page is Gone Most telling, perhaps, is that the "token" page that was linked on The Pirate Bay homepage has now disappeared (archived copy). There is no longer any reference to the token on the site, as if it no longer exists. The coin's market cap is still a sizable $200 million at the time of writing but, needless to say, its future is quite uncertain. Hoping to find out more, we reached out to the official contact address for the Pirate Token weeks ago. That email remains unanswered. It is certainly possible that the coin will make a revival in the future, but we wouldn't bet on it. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©2021 TorrentFreak | Office 21338 PO Box 4336 Manchester, North West M61 0BW United Kingdom Web Version   Preferences   Forward   Unsubscribe     Powered by Mad Mimi®A GoDaddy® company