Illegal Uploads

[RedDuke50]

I was watching a scene from a movie on YouTube and then I had a thought that it could be wrong because it is against the law to upload without permission. So would it be a sin to watch a scene from a movie or a T.V. show or listen to music from YouTube?

Thank you

 

[ahs]

I think, and I may be wrong, that with movies, it’s against the law to copy the movie…but if this was just a scene from the movie, I don’t think that would count.

 

[RedDuke50]

I think, and I may be wrong, that with movies, it’s against the law to copy the movie…but if this was just a scene from the movie, I don’t think that would count.

But I thought that the whole thing was copyright. So if you use even little parts it is bad.

 

[Elizium23]

Frankly I don’t worry about YouTube too much myself.

I am strongly against illegal downloads of music. I never pirate music or videos; I have an infinitesimal music collection but I do have a library of Blu-rays and DVDs. I just don’t listen to popular (or alternative) music anymore and I prefer making my own music as a choir member.

However, if a song or video is on YouTube, I will watch it without qualms of whether it is an illegal copy. Here is my reasoning. It is not worth my time and effort to research whether the uploader holds the copyright to this work. It is sometimes completely impossible to determine if they do. It is not my responsibility to police YouTube for copyright infringement. In fact you can’t report them. YouTube requires copyright infringement to be reported by the copyright holder only. If a copyright holder is worried about infringement of their property then they should be patrolling YouTube themselves, and many do. Have you ever seen a Jay Leno clip on YouTube? What about Late Night with Jimmy Fallon? No? That’s because NBC actively pursues infringement and issues takedown notices as soon as they detect a clip posted. The only way to get clips from those shows is an illegal torrent or the legitimate official website.

YouTube is actually my favorite place for nostalgia. I will look up old 80s goth songs there and sometimes even find the video. I also visit legitimate VEVO accounts and accounts set up by record labels and legitimate content producers. I also run an adblocker in Chrome so I have never seen or downloaded a banner ad from any site I visit. I am rather a selfish Internet user but I don’t have moral qualms about the way I surf.

If you really want to be careful with YouTube, then only visit profiles that you can be 100% certain are run by legitimate content publishers. Record labels should be self-evident, as well as VEVO accounts. Anything else is suspect and shouldn’t be trusted. Also, bring the question to your confessor. He is pastor of your soul and he should be able to help you make a good judgement about what is sinful and what is not.

 

[edwest2]

Pope Benedict has told us to not be indifferent. youtube is a great excuse. For some - who cares if it was uploaded by Bob345O99th? Who cares because I’m getting what I want?

Billions of dollars are being lost to copyright infringement. Even if you believe in nothing, believe the fact that people are working very hard to make this stuff and put yourself in their shoes. And if all the time, effort and money is not worth respecting - where’s the justice in that?

Sure, we have anarchists running around, including here, who believe ‘I have the right to download anything for nothing.’ Why? Because I can!

wired.com/threatlevel/2012/04/viacom-youtube-appeals/

Wake up, my fellow Catholics. Respect your neighbors and their property.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Elizium23]

How are we supposed to respect our neighbors’ property if they won’t even respect it themselves? And how are we supposed to be expected to track down copyright status of everything we enjoy?

We are not talking about downloading and saving files here. We are not distributing these files, and certainly not for money. We are end users of a streaming service that purports to follow all applicable copyright laws.

If a copyright holder is interested in protecting their copyright, they will issue a takedown notice to Google. As far as I am aware, Google is quite compliant about taking down videos that are known to infringe a copyright. So should the onus really fall on the consumer to police copyright of everything we watch on a legal, legitimate service?

Certainly we don’t have the excuse to access an underground filesharing service and download illegal BitTorrents on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” basis. Other public sites may not be as vigilant about hosting copyrighted material. But the vast majority of YouTube’s hosted content is legitimate and clearly licensed to the account holders. Some of it is commercial, and much of it is original and independently-produced. I’m not going to be too worried when I skip from CUTEST CAT EVAR to a 2-minute clip of a handheld video grab of a copyrighted TV show. Not my problem, not my department.

 

[RedDuke50]

I thought it was bad because it was like supporting the something bad. Like supporting the sins of others which is like commiting the sin yourself. So I got worried and so I don’t really watch YouTube anymore.