On the acquisition of legal rights to sanctioned YouTubers&#39; frozen funds Note: The following is a thought experiment. Since I am no legal scholar, it is highly likely that its wording needs a lot of improvement. Suggestions for improvement would be most welcome. Suppose that the Government of Syldavia has upset the US Government. Suppose further that the latter retaliates with crippling sanctions. As a consequence, Syldavian YouTubers, whose main source of income is now frozen due to the aforementioned sanctions, are at risk of destitution. Suppose that a few amoral investors start a vulture fund to exploit Syldavian YouTubers' predicament. This fund would acquire the legal rights to willing Syldavian YouTubers's frozen funds at a very generous discount, then kindly request that YouTube unfreeze the aforementioned funds. Which clauses of YouTube's Terms of Service would be violated? Which US sanctions would be violated?
There is no law against driving a hard bargain If you were describing real estate owners rather than YouTube channel owners we’d have a term for them: a motivated seller. There is no law against using the fact that someone is desperate to sell to negotiate a lower price: that’s just good business. In general, common law legal systems do not involve themselves in whether a price agreed between two parties was fair: if you want to sell your original Picasso for $1 or pay $1m for a used tissue, that’s up to you. If you have ethical issues with that, don’t do it but it’s not illegal. Legal issues can come up where you are the cause in some way of the motivation. A lender foreclosing on a mortgage is ok. A lender offering to buy the property to avoid foreclosure is not. The first is just enforcing the terms of the contract, the second looks like undue influence and unconscionable conduct. Some countries have laws against profiteering and you would need to look at the legal definition to decide if this is or isn’t profiteering. In the US, it isn’t because their laws only deal with profiteering that damages the government. Some US states have laws against price gouging but these are usually to prevent charging too much, not too little. Which clauses of YouTube's Terms of Service would be violated? None. YouTube does not have any terms about selling your digital assets and we know it happens. Which US sanctions would be violated? It’s impossible to say without reading the sanction. If it’s illegal to transfer money to the sanctioned people then the whole plan falls over because you can’t pay for the channel in the first place.
Copyright Law: Probably Not so long as you are not hosting anything other than a link. (This is a secondary source) Even if academics and technology enthusiasts prefer an absolute right to link on the Internet, the business world has an interest in regulating what information is shared.66 Businesses will protest free linking to their materials if it interferes with their sales or marketing messages.67 If a website operator *1090 desires to restrict certain content from being linked to or integrated in another site, the operator can require a password to view the site or can technically disable outside sites from in-line linking to images or media hosted by the site.68 Youtube ToS: You may have an issue with ToS 4. D. if you have ads on your webpage. Service here is defined as "by using or visiting the YouTube website or any YouTube products, software, data feeds, and services provided to you on, from, or through the YouTube website " But it does seem to allow you to use an embedded player in your site if you wanted. ToS 4. F.
Only a court can decide if use is fair. As Dale stated, we will know whether it was or was not legally fair when a court decides, and it ceased to be appealed. Unfortunately, there is no formula. Remember that fair use is an exception to rules that make copyright infringement illegal, so it occupies a narrow space practically by definition. Fortunately this was already decided (yes, I recognize that this is an old question) Judge Katherine B. Forrest decided in favor of your favorite YouTuber: The Court has held that the Klein video constitutes fair use, and further that the Klein video does not infringe plaintiff’s copyrights. and further that: But even if this Court held the Klein video is not fair use, the Court would still dismiss Claim II because defendants clearly had a subjective “good faith belief” that their video did not infringe plaintiff’s copyrights. Cf. Lenz, 815 F.3d at 1153. It is undisputed that defendants understand the concept of fair use and have an established practice for ensuring their videos make fair use of copyrighted material. But that answer isn't entirely satisfying, is it? Let's get specific. Fair use seems to be something that should be clear to both parties: the copyright holders and the user of copyrighted content. While it is true that the percentage of original content may be of concern, there is no specific percentage nominated in Title 17 Chapter 1 Section 107 of the US Code. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include— (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. It takes vigilance on the part of both parties to cohabit this narrow law. Fortunately, YouTube has recently taken measures to ensure that use that should (presumably in their view) be judged as fair will remain live on their site while a dispute process is pursued. This procedure resolves cases outside of formal legal battles, which can be costly for both parties. However, YouTube has pledged to pay legal fees of content providers that are sued for copyright infringement, in special circumstances (esp. when the use was fair, and when a claimant is abusing, again presumably as determined by some legal counsel at YouTube). They discuss similar matters in their FAQ page. Why did YouTube let an abusive claimant remove my video? YouTube takes action to address cases of abuse and misuse in our copyright takedown processes. While we cannot comment on specific cases or our processes, we do look into abuse of our copyright tools and processes, and have a zero-tolerance policy for claimants we've deemed abusive. Misuse of the copyright process (for both takedowns and counter notifications) can result in termination of an account. And remember that courts love precedent Future cases will likely leverage the decisions made in the case you mention. And while the following does not have any real legal value, you may find comfort in knowing: there are many YouTubers out there that heavily leverage others' content, and their videos are still up. Again this is not strictly speaking a precedent, but you can safely assume that in cases where a high-profile YouTuber (say CinemaSins, for instance) uses content from many content owners, and uses a great deal of it, they will likely have come up against claims of unfair use, and have emerged with an intact channel. The aforementioned avenues that YouTube provides should be utilized wherever possible to stay out of court.
The U.S. could pass a law directing Apple to create software for fair compensation. Similar statutes have been passed in wartime compelling companies to do all sorts of things and companies don't have all of the rights of individuals. If it can be done (not obvious in the case of existing products in the market place), it might be possible for the government to compel it to do so; if it can't be done, it can't be compelled and not all things are possible retroactively. There would also be a constitutional contracts clause issues with such a law impairing contracts between Apple and its customers when applied to existing phones retroactively. Whether it could require Apple to create a law enforcement back door depends upon whether 4th Amendment privacy rights trump the creation of a means to do so. There is an expectation of privacy in electronic records, but it is not absolute. But, there is no law on the books requiring this from Apple. It does not flow naturally from existing powers of law enforcement under existing statutes. It goes beyond what a subpoena would ordinarily require someone to do, and a subpoena is the main means by which governments compel people to provide information. In my opinion, a court faced with that question would rule that a statute requiring Apple to do this prospectively would be constitutional, but no such statute exists. However, this is currently an open legal question because there is no statute of the kind that have been litigated in a manner that produced a binding precedent.
You can't own a database; you might, however, own (have) the copyright to a database if you created it or the creator transferred that right to you. You can also possess a copy of a database: the question is whether it is legal. "Leaked" implies that it is taken without permission, so you might be in violation of copyright law by possessing a copy. The only databases that would escape copyright protection would be those US government works, things put in the public domain, and things publically licensed to allow copying. Plus, any database whose content fails to exhibit a modicum of creativity (Feist). A database might be inherently illegal (at least in your hands), so it would depend on what the content is. The first thing that comes to mind is a database from a child-porn website, which contains numerous illegal images: see section 110 of Title 18. "Leaked" information might involve violation of 18 USC 1030 (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act), which prohibits unauthorized hacking. It does not directly prohibit being in possession of a hacked database: but you might still be prosecuted as an accessory after the fact. (That is one of those ad libitum areas of the law where there's no way to know for sure what is and is not "okay"). If they do prosecute you, you might rely on Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514, where because it was a matter of "public interest", propagation of illegally obtained material was held to be protected by the First Amendment. Also there is the case of the Pentagon Papers. At the federal level, there are no controls over storing credit card information so if you get a copy of the Target or Home Depot hacked database, there's no federal law against that (if we discount "accessory after the fact"), but there are circumstances in Minnesota where retaining such information could be illegal.
If by "streaming," you mean "having my web browser create temporary copies of media from an online source so that I can view it," then Canadian law is unclear. I can't really do better to demonstrate than to cite a few articles on the subject. According to Alex Buonassisi and Jennifer Marles of IP law firm Oyen Wiggs: [...] it is not entirely clear that receiving an unauthorized stream of a copyrighted work in Canada does not infringe copyright. At best, this activity could be said to fall within a grey zone. According to Sandy Kang writing for law school blog IP Osgoode: As for users of such websites, it is currently uncertain whether their act of streaming video would be found to infringe. According to Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor specializing in IP: The most controversial sources are unauthorized streaming websites that offer free content without permission of the rights holder. [...] Those accessing the streams are unlikely to be infringing copyright, however. As you can see, there is a variety of expert opinions on whether streaming pirated movies is an infringement. The section under debate is 30.71 on temporary reproductions, especially subsection (b): It is not an infringement of copyright to make a reproduction of a work or other subject-matter if (a) the reproduction forms an essential part of a technological process; (b) the reproduction’s only purpose is to facilitate a use that is not an infringement of copyright; and (c) the reproduction exists only for the duration of the technological process. I don't want to duplicate what articles above have already stated, but I'd like to dive deeper into Bishop v. Stevens, [1990] 2 S.C.R. 467, cited by the first two articles as a similar case (reaffirmed in 2015 after a few rounds of statute amendments). In it the Supreme Court held that prerecorded "ephemeral" copies used to facilitate a broadcast was an infringement. The key piece of reasoning is: [... the broadcaster] has not established that, at the time of their enactment, the sections of the Act providing for the right to broadcast a performance must have been understood to include the right to prerecord. Even now it remains fully possible, and quite common, to broadcast live performances. To me, there are two key differences why this logic might not directly transpose to the streaming pirated movies situation: "Ephemeral" prerecorded copies aren't necessarily "temporary" copies within the scope of section 30.71 above, particularly subsections (a) and (c) might not strictly be met. This case discusses the point of view of the broadcaster which is analogous to the hoster, not the end-user. While making ephemeral/temporary copies might not be strictly necessary for broadcasting, viewing online content necessarily creates at least a temporary copy on the end-user's computer. Two other random notes: None of the involved sections have a "reasonableness" or "should have known" clause whereas they are present in other parts of the Copyright Act. This means whether its legal should theoretically depend strictly on the facts (i.e. if it turns out to be illegal, pleading "oh I didn't know it was pirated" won't work). Funny enough, I don't actually see anything in the law that would differentiate between streaming online pirated video and your example of something illegal being aired on TV provided its digital (presumably some part of the TV has a temporary copy too).
What is allowed and what happens are different things; this is why we have police, courts and prisons. If everyone followed all of the laws all of the time we would need none of these. The videos are copyright and without the permission of the copyright holder (the NFL) you cannot reproduce or distribute them. A defense to copyright violation is if the usage is fair use or fair dealing. What you see on line is: Done with permission of the NFL Fair use as it is being used to comment on or analyze the performance; like a critic's book review. Unlawful and not pursued (yet) because the NFL considers it not worthwhile.
No, it's not illegal... Ads are shown as a contract between the site that hosts it and the advertising company. The contract does not stipulate that customers need to buy something, in fact, the contract can't force the customer to buy anything! At best, the contract can pay the hosting site based on the ad being shown, clicked, or any sale made after it. ...but you will do exactly the opposite Advertizement is made to put your own brand into the head of people. In fact, most ads don't have any effect on people. As I am writing this, ads for a kid TV, travels to Turkey and the primetime films for the weekend on the TV-station I have on are shown. I have no intention of consuming any of these advertised products. Impact of a campaign is measured by two metrics: people reached, and people responding. People reached is measured in clicks. People responding is measured in changes in earnings or sales. Clicking the ad increases the reached rating. If the rating is bad, the ad campaign is just ineffective... which leads to the most paradoxical thing: Bad advertisement and good advertisement both lead to more advertisement - bad to level out the missing response, good to maximize the response. By clicking on the ad you just funnel more money to the ad industry. When does it get illegal? [DDOS] The only way it would become illegal is if John Doe sets up a computer - or rather a botnet - and has that network click the ads thousands of times per second. Google can handle easily 83,000 searches per second, twitter gets more than 9000 tweets that are distributed to millions of people, Tumbler and Instagram handle together about 2500 posts per second. In fact, every second, more than 100000 Gigabytes of traffic run through the net. To have an impact on one site, you need to be truly a large number of calls... and then it is called a DDOS. DDOS is illegal under the CFAA, in this case 18 UC 1030: (a)Whoever— (5) (A)knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer; (b)Whoever conspires to commit or attempts to commit an offense under subsection (a) of this section shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section. In the UK, you'd break the Computer Misuse Act of 1990 section 3, because denying someone else service via DDOS is unauthorized, clearly unauthorized, and prevents access to any data (the website) on any computer (the server): (1)A person is guilty of an offence if— (a)he does any unauthorised act in relation to a computer; (b)at the time when he does the act he knows that it is unauthorised; and (c)either subsection (2) or subsection (3) below applies. (2)This subsection applies if the person intends by doing the act— (b)to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer But can a DDOS be protest? [NO!] Anonymous attempted to petition to make DDOS a legal form of protest in 2013. The petition got 6,048 of the 25000 signatures needed to warrant an answer by the white house - unlike people in 2016 asking for a Death Star. At least it prompted Joshua I. James to write a research paper about the proposal in March. He too points to the CFAA and Section 5A, especially the sentence I quoted above. Among a lot of stipulations, he points out that internet protest in the shape of a DDOS would need to follow the same rules as a legal protest on the streets - which for example demands that entrance to businesses can't be blocked, and one is not allowed to harass employees and customers. According to the general rules for legal protest as given, there are still a number of challenges. First and foremost, entrances to businesses should not be blocked. In terms of DDoS, if sustained denial of service takes place, then access (entrance) to the server (business)is eﬀectively blocked. This means that, at a minimum, sustained denial of service should be considered as a non-legal approach to protesting. Thus, he concludes sustained DDOS is per se can't be a legal protest, and even a non-sustained DDOS would impact people using the site in a way they will deem harassing - which means that even a non-permanent DDOS can't be a legal protest. And then comes the final blow: DDOS, unlike a real protest on the streets, can't, by its very nature, inform people of why there is protest, even if it were a form of protest! This means that nobody knows it is meant to be a protest and not a normal DDOS, and as it can't convey what the action is about, it can't be a proper protest.