I'm placing VidAngel's own short film explaining the legal mess on my Movies blog. It's pretty complicated, and even involves North Korea.
Thursday, August 10, 2017
VidAngel seems to have a good answer for censorship, despite legal copyright battle right now
I’ve gotten a few emails from a streaming company
called VidAngel which offers users the capability to filter
content from other streams for objectionable material. The company explains its service here.
The service appears to give parents a way to monitor
content their children see with voluntary means, as opposed to depending on
censorship laws in the past like CDA and COPA that have been struck down.
Filters like this might be helpful to parents concerned
about trafficking risks, now controversial.
But VidAngel has been in a legal battle over DMCA and
copyright with several Hollywood studios, with legal issues to be covered
another time. Hollywood Reporter covers
it here.
I'm placing VidAngel's own short film explaining the legal mess on my Movies blog. It's pretty complicated, and even involves North Korea.
I'm placing VidAngel's own short film explaining the legal mess on my Movies blog. It's pretty complicated, and even involves North Korea.
I did get a press release with these statements:
CEO:
“"We are once again
disappointed by another decision by Judge Birotte that badly misconstrued
VidAngel’s allegations. During the more than seven months it took the Court to
rule, there were a number of highly-publicized events showing that VidAngel’s
antitrust allegations are correct, including the Directors Guild of America’s
assertion of its collective bargaining agreement with the studios to force Sony
to cease offering clean content to home viewers. Such events notwithstanding,
the Court inexplicably denied VidAngel’s request for leave to amend its
counterclaim to allege additional facts in support of its claim. We are
conferring with our attorneys and will announce VidAngel's legal response to
the Court’s ruling as soon as possible."
Attorney:
“The decision in the VidAngel case is one of many recent district court
decisions across the country which have disregarded the admonition of Twombly, in
which the Supreme Court expressly curtailed the role of the district court
judge by limiting their ability to make factual determinations on motions to
dismiss. Here the judge disregarded that rule and further incorrectly
drew inferences in favor of the studios when the law requires the
opposite. We believe there is a high likelihood the ruling will be overturned
on appeal.”
Wednesday, August 02, 2017
Senate introduces sex trafficking bill that compromises Section 230
Robert Portman (R-OH) and others have drafted a “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017”, which would expose Internet publishing
platforms and websites more exposure to downstream criminal liability to
user-generated content attempting to promote sex trafficking or actually offer
prostitution.
The bill is said to be more restrained than the House
version presented here on April 3, 2017.
Portman has said that the bill would only affect service
providers who knowingly publish sex trafficking ads or facilitate them.
The potential for unintended consequences from this bill are
considerable, as I have discussed today on my “BillBoushk” blog and will follow
up on Wordpress soon. Law professor Eric Goldman takes up this matter in a blog
post here.
I've already emailed Electronic Frontier Foundation about this development, and noted that litigation against it could resemble those used against COPA, the Child Online Protection Act, a decade ago.
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