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| Court Rules Embedding Video Is Not Copyright Infringement |
Flava Works, Inc. v. Gunter came to a close after the ruling was passed in favor of the defendant, Marques Gunter, the sole proprietor of myVidster.com. The court also ruled that watching an infringing video does not constitute copyright infringement.
The case began in 2010 when the adult video production company, Flava Works, sued video bookmarking website myVidster,for copyright infringement. The Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued myVidster a preliminary injunction in July 2011. It was then appealed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
The court ruled Thursday that embedding a video that infringes on copyrighted material is not a violation of copyright law. For example, if you found an episode of The Simpsons on YouTube and embedded it in your blog, you would not be violating any copyright laws. That holds true even if the person who uploaded the video ripped it straight from The Simpsonsseason 3 DVD. However, the person who uploaded the video is in violation of the law.
The court’s decision also protects those who watch illegally uploaded copyrighted videos. Judge Richard Posner wrote in Thursday’s ruling:
“…As long as the visitor makes no copy of the copyrighted video that he is watching, he is not violating the copyright owner’s exclusive right … His bypassing Flava’s pay wall by viewing the uploaded copy is equivalent to stealing a copyrighted book from a bookstore and reading it. That is a bad thing to do (in either case) but it is not copyright infringement.”
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