That’s right, it worked for the RIAA!

So the RIAA has for the past few years been destroying the lives of music fans for minor transgressions against the industry which apparently had no real effect on record sales. According to them – it is working.

It’s no suprise that another major player in the entertainment industry – YouTube – is trying the same thing. YouTube had a deadline to implement a technology which would remove, filter, or block the copywritten programs which are still very easy to find on their site. The deadline came and went, and no technology was implemented. Now they’re handing over information on users, well, one user so far, to Fox because he/she posted episodes of 24 before they were actually aired.

Now posting copywritten material to YouTube is a violation of their TOS as well as illegal, YouTube hasn’t been able to get a handle on it – although Google apparently does not have the same problem. Personally, I think the industry should sue YouTube, not for the names of users but to physically shut down YouTube until they can implement these blocks.

Sure they’re big, sure they’re owned by Google, but if the constant assault on Microsoft for various legal violations is any evidence – size does not and should not matter. Shut the site down, problem solved.

This isn’t a case of a distributed P2P network with nameless and faceless servers numbering tens of thousands across the fruited plain – this is one site, one corporate entity, which has made quite a bit of money off the backs of copyright holders without retribution. I think it’s about time they paid up.

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