Timothy B. Lee at Ars: "the MPAA ... urged the Seventh Circuit not to draw a legal distinction between hosting content and embedding it. In the MPAA's view, both actions should carry the risk of liability for direct copyright infringement."

  • LX

    This is the ultimate proof that the MPAA has NOT THE SLIGHTEST IDEA whatsoever about the internet.

    • awjt

      It took from 1990 to about 2010 for hyperlinking to go from the latest coolest shit, to outlawed. LOL, the InnerTubez gets Tr011d by 1t53lf.

  • lvl99

    It’s possible these record companies still believe the Internet is a series of tubes, however it seems they’re trying to figure out whether it’s tubesteaks or tubesocks.

  • Ambiguity

    Geeze. Can’t we, as a culture, just admit that they’re smoking the wrong stuff and dismiss their positions as the ravings of an unstable mind? Must we (and by “we” I include the judicial and legislative arms of government) respond again and again to their delusions?

    At some point doesn’t banging one’s head against a brick wall start to hurt?

    • http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan

      At some point doesn’t banging one’s head against a brick wall start to hurt?

      Of course it does. But if you stop doing it, they’ll just walk off with it.

      The wall, as well as the head, I mean. They’ll let you keep the hurt though.

    • Ipo

       Banging heads into brick walls might just be the solution. 
      Not yours. 
      Start with Judge Grady’s head. 

  • donovan acree

    If the MPAA is loosing all of this money to pirates, how can they afford to keep this level of legal action going 24/7 365?

    • steveboyett

      Not one penny of the money the MPAA and RIAA has earned through litigation has gone to any of the creative artists they represent. Every cent of it goes to enact new litigation.

  • Eric Hunt

    This is not just record companies. A large subset of amateur and pro photographers are very much against direct linking/embedding. They feel it is the same as ‘stealing’ the photo. When these people find out their favorite photo sharing site has APIs that enable the embedding and that they agreed to it in the site TOS their heads spin around.

    • BenjaminBrown

       The internet, how does it work? Durh.

  • Jellodyne

    Is this surprising? They also think linking to a a file is the same as hosting it.

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

    Interestingly this is the second time in less than 24 hours that the recording industry’s lawyer has been part of a post on BoingBoing. Here’s a picture of him:

    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l6HiBXaZrkg/TdqyDp7mIMI/AAAAAAAAHLA/c5iJM0KAHQk/s1600/Nathan+Thurm.jpg

    • IronEdithKidd

      Good pull.

  • awjt

    “Thanks a lot, robot friend.”

  • edthehippie

    ?????????????  harharharhrrharhar !!! ????????????? and soon , remembering a song and singing it to yourself in the shower or car will be copyright violation also ?!?!?  harhahrahrh

    • steveboyett

       They actually tried to do something like this. The RIAA claimed that if other people heard a song played as a ringtone or on your personal music player, it was infringement and you owed them royalties.

  • m1kesa1m0ns

    Careful edthehippie, I once heard Devo laughing like that.

  • MandoZink

    LINKING, the core concept of web pages, is now a violation. WOW!

    I can only imagine what havoc these people could have done to other infrastructures on this planet.

    • MandoZink

      P.S. – I actually do understand linking is not really a violation, YET.

    • That_Anonymous_Coward

      Did you miss them trying to extradite someone from the UK to face charges for violating US law over that?
      Did you miss them taking an entire domain shown to be legal in Spain, all on the claims of infringement made by the **AA’s alone and then having to eat crow?

      This is open warfare on the internet, and people are more concerned about the new Beiber single than stopping the **AA’s buying politicians and laws designed to turn the internet into something they have full control over.

  • Andrew Singleton

    These guys keep proving Charlie Chaplin wrong.

    And the world is a darker place for it.

  • adjam

    Terrible news. I just added automatic Youtube embedding into my site today.
    Typical.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      So you’re the jinx. Thanks, buddy.

  • http://shadowfirebird.tumblr.com shadowfirebird

    Next: Websters to copyright words.  

  • signsofrain

    They’re not gonna stop. They have deep pockets and a lot of influence. Obviously, what they’re doing is nuts, but that nuttiness isn’t obvious unless you’re a nerd or you have a nerd explain it to you. Social groups outside of people who know what IP addresses and ports are are only now beginning to understand what these jerks are trying to do. They may well get what they want, in one form or another. Obviously we need to fight them in the light of day, we need to speak loudly about how important unrestricted (free from monitoring and censorship) communications are, we need to have petitions and protests… but we should also start creating our own communications networks. Wi-Fi meshes, asynchronous networks a-la FidoNET… I don’t know. But we need some internet-like method of worldwide communication that governments and corporations can’t shut down. This is too big, too important to the future of the human race to allow the profit motive to have ANYthing to do with it. 

  • http://bottomlinelawgroup.com/ Antone Johnson

    Nice headline, guys.  MPAA = Motion Picture Association of America = movie studios, not record companies.  Look, I know MPAA and RIAA are basically interchangeable points along the axis of evil, but let’s try to keep them straight.  Mmm’kay?

    • http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

      Right you are! Fixed.