The Concerned Streamer

In Jason Hardin’s lecture on Tuesday, September 22, we briefly discussed the website called YouTube with regard to how it is used and whether or not it could be considered a copyright infringement. On the one hand, he argued, the information made available on YouTube in the form of movies, music videos, or simple song recordings, could be considered one, giant copyright infringement. After all, many people posting this information did not make—and do not own the rights to—the works being posted. However, Mr. Hardin also mentioned that the idea of streaming, as is usually the case on sites such as YouTube, is not necessarily copyright infringement. Although YouTube users are able to stream—or view—the material, one does not usually have the option to “download” or “save” it. In other words, those of us streaming the music video are not necessarily committing copyright infringement because we are not taking it. After listening to the lecture, I agree with this conclusion: those posting to YouTube are committing copyright infringement if they post copyrighted material that is not their own, but people streaming on YouTube are not because they don’t save or download it—they are only able to view it. Should a user download or save, however, I would consider that to be copyright infringement.