Is it okay to use Youtube?

[Oruwaith]

I frequently use the Youtube site to listen to movie soundtracks, or watch tv shows, that have been uploaded by other users. I am asking because I wonder about copyright laws that a person may have violated to get the music uploaded. But, I am not sure, they may have bought the music on itunes, or something like that.

I am kinda leaning towards it being okay.

What do you guys think?

 

[Swiss_Guy]

It’s ok. Chech out Silent Night in German (Schtille Nacht). Great song.

But many things it isn’t ok to use it for

 

[Trishie]

Like many things, it depends on what you use it for. There are many good Catholic videos, and moral videos online, and there is good music and bad. Like most things, if you use it for god, it has value, if for bad, then best to avoid it.

God bless you in your desire to do what is pleasing to God.

 

[merne9]

billions of youtube users around the world think it’s ok. i think it’s ok too.

 

[ChildOfTheLight]

The way I see it, laws have to be fair to everyone right?

Well, all a person has to do now to protect their copyright on Youtube is write in. I take their silence as a sign they agree, because if they don’t even simply notify youtube, it’s close enough to consent.

The law saying we have to get permission has even become unfair in a way. Many people want their music/movies seen (yeah…even the big stars) which means if they don’t want to report it, they shouldn’t have to provide explicit permission to have it kept up, and the poster shouldn’t have to seek it (law inconvieniences both parties involved).

Normally, you may say, people who don’t want their songs/movies up shouldn’t have to put up with it, but with an action so simple as writing in saying “remove all of the material copyrighted by me”, it’s more unfair to go with the law, and make those who want their songs/movie up suffer.

Anyway, this here is coming from someone who threw a fit over “illegal” music being played around her last year, only to be explained to by her friends that the world sometimes works too quickly for laws to change in accordance. Laws become injust sometimes when lifestyles change.

Since then, I’m more tolerant to U-tube, but I still don’t use it for these purposes much myself.

Hope this helps,

CotL

PS: Just so you know, I don’t feel we should try to justify all our potentially-illegal actions to avoid having to follow the law (at some point we need t be obedient), but copyright is a special law (has many loopholes already) and youtube is a special case.

 

[SecretGarden]

As long as you use it in good taste for example youtube has some wonderful footage and Catholic films which is good to watch. You do need to be watchful of some garbage such as those who post videos that are either theologically offensive or just pure theologically wrong. There is also quite a bit of purely immoral stuff on it that you should avoid.

If it becomes an addition, then you might want to cut down and avoid.

 

[Germaine_Lucia]

I have a rule where I only view things that are unavailable for me to buy, or I have already bought, so that nobody is losing money from me viewing it.

But, there is lots of videos on YouTube that have been uploaded legally, and are fine to watch regardless.

 

[Oruwaith]

Thank you for all your responses!

I have found that the entire soundtracks are released in places like Rhapsody, AmazonMP3 and iTunes in a relatively short amount of time. That kind of answer my question about the copyright. I was worried that these people may have gotten the music from a site illegally because they had it on Youtube soon after the release of the movie. But, now that I know that there is a good chance that they got it from the sites I mentioned previously, I am more inclined to go back to listening to my favorite music feeling more confident that they didn’t break the law.

In response to those saying that the stuff I watch/listen to needs to be morally acceptable, I agree and the stuff I was listening to, which I was questioning, is not immoral. I mostly listen to music, it is not often that I actually watch shows, or movies, on Youtube. Here are some examples of the stuff I listen too:

Lily’s Theme ( Harry potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2)

You Are The Pan ( Hook)

The Wardrobe ( Chronicles of Narnia 1)

Obliviate ( Harry potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1)

Arrival To Earth ( Transformers)

Bridge of Khazad-dum ( Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring)

End Credits ( Cast Away)

Let me know what you guys think.

P.S. I mean whether or not they are morally acceptable. But, if you want to actually give your two cents on the actual music, you can send a private message.

 

[edwest2]

I think the question is, Why did XYZ2033 post the video or TV program in the first place? It’s obvious, in some cases, that someone took a video camera and got the TV show right off their TV. Radio stations pay money every time they play a song.

Copyright means right to copy. If you are unsure, find out.

Here are a few words from Viacom:

news.viacom.com/news/Pages/youtubelitigation.aspx

Peace,
Ed

 

[Will_S]

As far as the question of copyright goes, violating copyright is wrong because it is breaking the law, not because the right to control copying is a natural right or because some “owner” is being deprived of his property when you copy something.

So whether or not it is ok to watch/listen to YouTube is entirely a question of law. In the USA, copyright law places no restrictions on the viewing of content on a website by Internet users, even if that content is copyrighted and is illegally available on the website in the first place. The responsibility is placed instead on the owner of the website, who must Immediately, upon notification of potential copyright infringement by a copyright holder, remove the potentially infringing content from the website.

The upshot is that it is perfectly legal for you, as an end-user, to watch anything you wish on YouTube. Since it is legal, it is also not sinful, at least from the point of view of the copyright situation.

 

[Will_S]

One more thing. Whether a person who uploaded some song or video to YouTube paid for the material themselves is completely irrelevant. When someone buys a song or video, they purchase the right to possess a copy for their own use, not the right to make other copies by, for example, uploading the material to YouTube.

 

[Oruwaith]

One more thing. Whether a person who uploaded some song or video to YouTube paid for the material themselves is completely irrelevant. When someone buys a song or video, they purchase the right to possess a copy for their own use, not the right to make other copies by, for example, uploading the material to YouTube.

Yeah, that was kinda brought my attention yesterday by my sister. Thank you for the response though!

 

[DeoJuventute]

I assume that it is therefore wrong to burn YouTube songs onto a disk, correct?

I have a copy of the Divine Mercy Chaplet which I put on a disk off of YouTube–do I need to burn it or is it okay to just throw it away?

 

[Will_S]

I assume that it is therefore wrong to burn YouTube songs onto a disk, correct?

I have a copy of the Divine Mercy Chaplet which I put on a disk off of YouTube–do I need to burn it or is it okay to just throw it away?

It’s not clear that it is necessary to destroy the disk.

If, for example, you are talking about the EWTN divine mercy chaplet, then it is probably better to buy the DVD from EWTN.

On the other hand, the continued presence of the video on YouTube indicates that EWTN doesn’t mind if people view the video without purchasing the DVD, and format shifting for personal use (by, for example, saving a copy of the YouTube video) is legal as long as the original “broadcast” is legal.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

As far as the question of copyright goes, violating copyright is wrong because it is breaking the law, not because the right to control copying is a natural right or because some “owner” is being deprived of his property when you copy something…

Oh really?

The law in this case is based in morality. Someone who works hard to create something is morally entitled to compensation from those who benefit from his work. By benefitting from that labor you are morally complicit in the theft, even if you were not the original thief. You can say it is a small amount of damage, but that is no more morally defensible than petty theft from a large corporation. You can say that the wrong was only committed by the one who posted the pirated material, but accepting known stolen goods is complicity in the theft. You can say that the owner of the material has only to complain and the posting will be taken down. But that imposes an undue hardship on the owner of the material. He cannot possibly spend all his time looking for pirated version of his work. That is just like saying that physical theft is OK because the owner just needs to find the thief and ask for his property back.

I suppose to your way of thinking, that if I somehow discovered a pirated copy of a popular movie posted in high definition, that I could invite 100 people over to my house to watch it for $5 apiece and make a cool $500, all without any moral consequences.

 

[Will_S]

Someone who works hard to create something is morally entitled to compensation from those who benefit from his work.

This is not true as an absolute statement. If it were then libraries would be immoral.

By benefitting from that labor you are morally complicit in the theft, even if you were not the original thief. You can say it is a small amount of damage, but that is no more morally defensible than petty theft from a large corporation. You can say that the wrong was only committed by the one who posted the pirated material, but accepting known stolen goods is complicity in the theft. You can say that the owner of the material has only to complain and the posting will be taken down. But that imposes an undue hardship on the owner of the material. He cannot possibly spend all his time looking for pirated version of his work. That is just like saying that physical theft is OK because the owner just needs to find the thief and ask for his property back.

There are a couple of things that you are missing:

One thing is that copyright is not a natural right. No one naturally has a right to restrict copying of some work they have created. Copyright is a limited right created by law. If copyright were a natural right, then it would not be of limited duration. After all, it’s not ok to steal someone’s jewelry just because they have owned it for a long time years already, but it is ok for anyone to reproduce and sell books from anytime before the early 20th century, because the copyright on those works has expired.

Another is that copyright is not theft. Theft is when you take possession of someone else’s property, thus depriving the rightful owner of the use and enjoyment of that property. A copyright infringer does not deprive the copyright owner of the use and enjoyment of the copyrighted work. If copyright were theft, then it must always have been theft, and forbidden by the 7th commandment. If so, then all the monasteries of medieval Europe were continually breaking the 7th commandment as one of their primary occupations was to copy books (without securing licensing or paying a fee to do so).

Lastly, a simple look at the history of copyright shows clearly that the concept simply didn’t exist more than about 300 years ago. At the time of Shakespeare, for example, there was no copyright law and books were copied by printers all the time. One of the earliest seeds of copyright law was the efforts of the Church to control the printing of sacred texts, such as missals, and Bibles. But this was not done out of an abstract notion of copyright as we think of it today, but was rather a matter of preventing sloppy and error-prone editions of these important works being produced by unscrupulous printers out to make a quick profit.

I suppose to your way of thinking, that if I somehow discovered a pirated copy of a popular movie posted in high definition, that I could invite 100 people over to my house to watch it for $5 apiece and make a cool $500, all without any moral consequences.

Not at all, because to do so would be to break the law, which does not permit non-holders of copyright to publicly perform copyrighted works. Limited personal use, however, is often permitted by law. Recording television shows for later personal viewing, for example, is legal.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

This is not true as an absolute statement. If it were then libraries would be immoral.

There are a couple of things that you are missing:

One thing is that copyright is not a natural right. No one naturally has a right to restrict copying of some work they have created. Copyright is a limited right created by law. If copyright were a natural right, then it would not be of limited duration. After all, it’s not ok to steal someone’s jewelry just because they have owned it for a long time years already, but it is ok for anyone to reproduce and sell books from anytime before the early 20th century, because the copyright on those works has expired.

Another is that copyright is not theft. Theft is when you take possession of someone else’s property, thus depriving the rightful owner of the use and enjoyment of that property. A copyright infringer does not deprive the copyright owner of the use and enjoyment of the copyrighted work. If copyright were theft, then it must always have been theft, and forbidden by the 7th commandment. If so, then all the monasteries of medieval Europe were continually breaking the 7th commandment as one of their primary occupations was to copy books (without securing licensing or paying a fee to do so).

Lastly, a simple look at the history of copyright shows clearly that the concept simply didn’t exist more than about 300 years ago. At the time of Shakespeare, for example, there was no copyright law and books were copied by printers all the time. One of the earliest seeds of copyright law was the efforts of the Church to control the printing of sacred texts, such as missals, and Bibles. But this was not done out of an abstract notion of copyright as we think of it today, but was rather a matter of preventing sloppy and error-prone editions of these important works being produced by unscrupulous printers out to make a quick profit.

Not at all, because to do so would be to break the law, which does not permit non-holders of copyright to publicly perform copyrighted works. Limited personal use, however, is often permitted by law. Recording television shows for later personal viewing, for example, is legal.

It is easy to discount the rights of the creators of intellectual property if you are not one of them. I’ll bet you would feel differently if you had to rely on the sale of your software to put bread on the table.

 

[Will_S]

It is easy to discount the rights of the creators of intellectual property if you are not one of them. I’ll bet you would feel differently if you had to rely on the sale of your software to put bread on the table.

As a computer programmer, I support a limited copyright. I don’t support the current life plus 75 years term of copyright, and I don’t make the mistake of thinking that copyright is a matter of natural or divine law.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

As a computer programmer, I support a limited copyright. I don’t support the current life plus 75 years term of copyright, and I don’t make the mistake of thinking that copyright is a matter of natural or divine law.

Do you sell multiple copies of your software directly to the end users? Or do you work for a company that sells the software? If you work for a company then I could understand how you would not feel personally cheated by piracy. Your fortunes would be only indirectly affected by the fortunes of your employer. On the other hand, if you are the whole company, then I would be surprised if you didn’t feel cheated when you see people taking advantage of your software without paying.

 

[Will_S]

Do you sell multiple copies of your software directly to the end users? Or do you work for a company that sells the software? If you work for a company then I could understand how you would not feel personally cheated by piracy. Your fortunes would be only indirectly affected by the fortunes of your employer. On the other hand, if you are the whole company, then I would be surprised if you didn’t feel cheated when you see people taking advantage of your software without paying.

Copyright law gives software developers a right to control the duplication of software they write. Software developers are free to use that right to create an artificial scarcity of their software, which causes my software to have market value and makes it possible for me to sell access to the software. That is a legal business model and it is my right under copyright law to pursue that business model if I wish.

However, my business model, in that case, is based upon an artifact of law. Only the artificial scarcity enabled by copyright law gives software any value. Software naturally has no market value because it can be duplicated infinitely at negligible cost.

If I feel cheated because someone “pirates” my program, then it is because I wrote the program with the expectation of taking advantage of my legal rights to profit from my work. If there were no copyright law, then I would have no reason to feel cheated (and perhaps I would also have no motivation to write the program in the first place).

To get back to the original topic, if I am a filmmaker or a singer or a songwriter, etc., and people are using YouTube to watch unauthorized copies of my work, then the people watching the video aren’t my problem. Most of them are probably unaware that the video is infringing in the first place. It is the person who uploaded the video and, possibly, the website owner or ISP, if they are knowingly tolerating the upload of infringing material to the website. That is why copyright law aims to help copyright holders fight unauthorized upload and hosting, rather than trying to criminalize the online consumption of that content by the general public.