GUBA Finished?
 

Guba is US-based.

When they start selectively removing access to content on their service, they lose their "common carrier" status (a legal principle, not an official title).

Since they have already started removing content, that privilege is gone.

They are now responsbible for the legality of any illegal content that remains (i.e. underage content).

This should be entertaining to see play out. :thumbsup

Oh, yeah.. references:
http://www.trageser.com/computers/online/1528.php (9-10th paragraph)
http://www.columbia.edu/dlc/wp/citi/citinoam11.html
http://www.gag.org/news/news_1998-95/2180fin.html
http://www.drmwatch.com/legal/article.php/3376301
http://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/common_carrier.htm

they are us based thats too cool. Bye Bye lol

Wait, I hear footsteps!

It's Chadgini coming to tell you what a crying retard you are, he'll be here any second, I can feel it.

Fred the lapdog is right on his heels ready to deny there's a problem of any kind. "Nothing to see here folks"

Just another night at good ol' GFY.

There's no place like home
there's no place like home
there's....

indeed..

http://www.whois.sc/guba.com

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v...c%20CA%2094111

not to mention it throws their 2257 policy out the window

I agree GUBA is retarded for removing shit and if anything can get them in trouble it would be that. Now there's a possible opportunity for those screaming, will they take it?

I'm not overly familiar with 2257, and am unaware how this would affect it.. they are certainly in some hot water otherwise, though.

I haven't read the complete law but once you start moderating anything you are responsible for what gets posted in some cases. However, boards like GFY moderate and so does Google so perhaps there is a loophole around that too. Shrugs.

I don't know where, but I've seen caselaw that indicates fee-based access puts forth an entirely different set of rules.

From what i've learned after my first year of law school, this post is valid. GUBA did indeed lose thier "common carrier" status once they began selectively removing content from thier service. Now as a moderated exlusive carrier they are responsible for the legality of any and all content and liable to the legal owners of any illegaly distributed content and damages may be saught against GUBA for loss of profit due to illegal distrobution.

:thumbsup

Where are you going to law school?

[/SIZE]UNIVERSITY OF GFY:1orglaugh

cal western

i hear it's one of the best!

Oh shit, it just keeps piling on.

Does tend to get tiresome ..I'm sure the people have spoken and management has listened

I was less concerned with who skins GFY (most of us ignore it anyways), and more interested in the legal aspect of it. Most of the people doing the complaining don't have content on there; the ones who do should get lawyers to draft DMCA complaints.

studiocritic, I guess the big concern at the end is why woudl GFY take money from a company that is clearly and obviously trading on content "borrowed" from other advertisers?

Will you bite that hand that feeds you?

Alex

Simply put, if GFY started listening to you idiots there would be no GFY advertising period. You can find someone with a bitch about any company anywhere.

I can't answer that, as I don't decide who gets to advertise on GFY, nor can I speak for those people responsible for the decisions.

you are right on that.

once you start charging somebody for something, comes a different set of rules.

If guba was a free service, they would be free and clear. However, they are charging access to stolen content they moderate, manipulate, and "redistribute", and they know 99% of the content is stolen.

So, following the common carrier assumption above, this makes owners of moderated message boards, such as GFY, liable for what their users post? I think you also have to take into account the DMCA, I'm noticing most of those articles were written before the DMCA. (although obviously that would be irelevant to 2257)

what is this guba thing?? First time I hear the name....?...















jussssttttttt kiiiiiddddddiiiiiinggggggg :P

From when I researched it years ago YES. However, who is going to sue a message board for posting an image on it? Not very likely so you don't hear much about it.

My interpretation is that with moderation and monetization comes liability. Draw your own assumptions from that.

I think it is one of the reasons why having a user confirm an email address before they get access is important, as you can say "this user, with this email, is the one who posted the image. We have removed it, but you want to talk to him about posting and sharing your copyrighted image".

Message boards that operate in good faith and are prompt at removing offending material are likely not to suffer too much, I think.

Boards that allow users to post 100 images in a row (hotlinking) from another site are asking for it, based on this ruling today.

Alex

There are circumstances where using copyright images/text/material has/is "fair use" such as the news , and parody's.

Sometimes though you are right even gfy is in the "wrong" , but not a big problem to deal with.. and the copyright content on gfy that is posted is not what makes gfy money

The danger for GUBA is truly the illegal (underage, et al) content that traditionally comes along with Usenet.

Providers like easynews provide an uncensored, unmoderated access to usenet, and charge for this service.

GUBA is now providing a value-added service by moderating and modifying. So unlike the other providers, they're possibly liable for any illegal content that they brought into their service from Usenet.

I'm not talking about right or wrong, I want to know what the legal liability is.

There are a couple factors in place, as you said, "fair use" (which incidently Google is being sued by Perfect 10 for Google Images and has been sued by AFP over Google News too.)

By the logic in this thread, once an ISP removes content they are no longer a common carrier -- yet, according to the DMCA they have to remove content upon a DMCA request or be liable.

Registered copyright adds significant liabilities to violators. Who is to say a company wouldn't follow the same approach as certain patent holders have? The "not likely" factor is a weak arguement for anything be it liability or why to put your seatbelt on when you get in your car.

You're spot on, and as far as I know (and I searched quite a bit), this is something that hasn't been tested in the courts. It'll be interesting to see when it finally does.

There are so many angles in this situation. This would be a long and interesting legal proceding if ever brought to court. It would definatly set new precident.

It would be interesting if the federal legislators could be assembled in the same room while proposing new laws. And if they had a globally connected network of computers that store information about previous laws.

We could call them a Congress, and an Internet!

I propose we develop this immediately.

well obviously its a tad confusing or we would both be making millions :) but "fair use" as a parody and as news has been backed up "legally" in google's case its a bit more cloudy as they are sometimes selling competing products for searches for copyright text..

example. I can make fun of wendy's ( the fast food chain ) "finger in the chili" , even going as far as using wendy's copyright image in my "parody" , but i cant sell mcdonalds while using the image..

Of course anyone can do anything , and anyone can sue anyone for practically anything so keep that in mind.. I can sue you for quoting me , but its unlikely i would win..

The only true legal test is decided in court , other than that all we can go on is precedence

heres some interesting tidbit on using copyright material as a parody

is L.L. Bean v. Drake Publishers (1987). High Society, a pornographic magazine, published a two-page parody entitled "L.L. Beam's Back-To-School-Sex-Catalog" in its October, 1984 issue. The sexually graphic article, which was clearly labelled as being a fictitious parody, depicted a facsimile of L.L. Bean's trademark.

L.L. Bean sought a restraining order to take the offending issue out of circulation. Bean's suit accused Drake Publishers of a variety of trademark related violations, including trademark dilution. The district court ruled for Drake on many of Bean's complaints, but the court did grant Bean a summary judgment in regard to its claim of trademark dilution. The district court ruled that the crude and sexually offensive nature of the parody had "tarnished Bean's trademark by undermining the goodwill and reputation associated with the mark." The court then issued an injunction barring further publication of the parody to prevent additional damage to Bean's trademark.

Drake appealed on the grounds that the injunction violated its First Amendment rights. The appeals court ruled that the district court had dismissed Drake's First Amendment rights too easily. First, the court stated that the use of Bean's trademark in the parody was an editorial and artistic use, since the parodied trademark wasn't used to promote any goods or services. Second, the court stated that while the parody was vulgar and offensive, it was still entitled to First Amendment protection. Chief Judge Bownes wrote,

Trademark parodies, even when offensive, do convey a message. The message may be simply that the business and product images need not always be taken too seriously; a trademark parody reminds us that we are free to laugh at the images and associations linked with the mark.

In sharp contrast with this case is Mutual of Omaha v. Novak (1987). The Novak ruling came close on L.L. Beans's legal heels, but the Novak majority almost completely ignored the precedent.

In 1983, Franklyn Novak began selling T-shirts and other items emblazoned with a parody of the Mutual of Omaha "Indian Head" logo. Novak's parody depicted the head of a wasted human in an Indian war bonnet and had the phrases "Mutant of Omaha" and "Nuclear Holocaust Insurance" incorporated into the parody logo. Mutual of Omaha sued on the grounds that Novak had disparaged and infringed on its trademark. The district court rejected the disparagement claim but found for the insurance company on the trademark infringement claim and issued an injunction barring Novak from selling his parody merchandise.

Novak appealed the decision. In a majority decision, the court of appeals affirmed the lower court's ruling. The court ruled that Novak's parody would create confusion among consumers as to whether or not Mutual of Omaha was sponsoring Novak's merchandise and therefore violated both federal and state laws. The majority stated that although the parody had political content, Novak could have expressed his views in many other ways besides parodying the Mutual of Omaha logo. Thus, the court did not consider the injunction to be a violation of Novak's First Amendment rights. The majority ruling only mentioned L.L. Bean in a single footnote, stating that Novak did not violate Bean's precedent, since the Bean ruling was based on the "editorial or artistic" use of a trademark and the Novak case was based on the confusion issue.

Circuit Judge Heaney vigorously dissented with the majority:

The majority's holding sanctions a violation of Novak's first amendment rights. The T-shirts simply expressed a political message which irritated the officers of Mutual, who decided to swat this pesky fly buzzing around their backyard with a sledge hammer. ... We should not be party to this effort.

Heaney expressed serious doubts that anyone would confuse Novak's "Mutant of Omaha" parody with the real Mutual of Omaha. Furthermore, the insurance company had not given any evidence to prove that the parody had hurt its sales or reputation in any way. Heaney stated that nobody could doubt that Novak was using the parody to point out the folly of nuclear war, and he pointed out that scholars have rejected the idea that parodists must use "adequate alternative means of communication." And finally, Heaney argued that a trademark is "a form of intangible property that itself conveys or symbolizes ideas." Therefore, an attempt to enjoin a trademark parody censors the content of the expression more than the manner of the expression and so violates the First Amendment.

In comparing L.L. Bean and Novak, it is worth noting that the rulings in the cases run counter to intuitive logic. An offensive, sexually-oriented parody that could conceivably "tarnish" a company's image was found to be protected, whereas a milder, fairly non-offensive parody was enjoined.

interesting tidbit from the judge in a more recent case..
---------------------
a fair use which prevents a claim of copyright infringement." The court agreed that parody usually qualifies as a fair use, but it also stated that using copyrighted material for solely commercial purposes was illegal. Judge Haight wrote:

I'm reading about an AOL case involving Usenet and the DMCA, I don't think the old common carrier concept means anything beyond what the DMCA states in section 512 a...

"A service provider shall not be liable ... for infringement of copyright by reason of the provider's transmitting, routing, or providing connections for, material through a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, or by reason of the intermediate and transient storage of that material in the course of such transmitting, routing, or providing connections, if (1) the transmission of the material was initiated by or at the direction of a person other than the service provider; (2) the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider; (3) the service provider does not select the recipients of the material except as an automatic response to the request of another person; (4) no copy of the material made by the service provider in the course of such intermediate or transient storage is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to anyone other than anticipated recipients, and no such copy is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to such anticipated recipients for a longer period than is reasonably necessary for the transmission, routing, or provision of connections; and (5) the material is transmitted through the system or network without modification of its content."

Beyond that, a good lawyer would have to interpret specifically what that means.

and I don't think parady has anything to do with any of this whatsoever

that's a very good excerpt.. pretty much affirms what we believed earlier in the thread. :thumbsup

from my lessons on obligations and contracts, i have learned that "common carriers" should exercise extraordinary diligence in their affairs.... now, what happened with Guba?

they were providing a web frontend to usenet groups that have copyrighted images and other illegal content.

then, they started selectively removing content.

now they have a selectively-censored service.

I love armchair lawyers :thumbsup

point was just that keeping copies of the images/videos in that fashion wouldnt fall under "fair use"

Am I the only one who thinks this post is out of character? :1orglaugh

Was just answering the question, not saying to go out and do it because they can't touch you. I researched this a bit when I had a social networking site in 2003 and they were posting images that looked stolen as their profile image. It appeared it was better to not moderate at all than to remove things that might be infringing. I didn't dig too much deeper because I got rid of the site soon after.

I love you Smokey... If I was a woman or medical science would allow it, I'd have your baby.