Staff telling untruths to people concerning copyright violation

I have been notified that someone was told, by one of the "site advisors," that:

I want to inform the staff that this blanket statement is dangerously incorrect. Although user created videos that contain no copyrighted video/music are public domain, already copyrighted videos, even if uploaded to YouTube, do not become public domain and lose their copyright status.

I was surprised at the complete lack of professionalism by this very broad statement that fails to account for the rampant use of YouTube to violate music and video copyright.

Here are some links to clarify the issue. Please find an Intellectual Property attorney on the site and become informed before spreading misinformation that, in some cases, has lead to people being litigated against. Yes, regular people, not just businesses, have been sued and heavily fined over copyright violations.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/01...ht-violations/

Quote: The decision to remove just the music from the unofficially uploaded videos makes sense in the case of fan made movies. But for music videos, it seems like an odd move, since the music studios own the rights to the video and not just the music.

http://www.projectopus.com/node/5202

http://www.reelpopblog.com/2008/05/youtomb-tracks.html

Quote: A research project by MIT Free Culture, YouTomb monitors YouTube's most popular videos to track which ones are removed for alleged copyright violations.


Once again, YouTube themselves make clear what is a violation of copyright:

Important: Do not upload any TV shows, music videos, music concerts, or commercials without permission unless they consist entirely of content you created yourself.
The Copyright Tips page and the Community Guidelines can help you determine whether your video infringes someone else's copyright.
By clicking "Upload Video", you are representing that this video does not violate YouTube's Terms of Use and that you own all copyrights in this video or have authorization to upload it.

However direct linking to the youtube site itself is not copyright violation...

Many of the music producers themselves will upload music videos of their artists in order to increase sales of CDs and DVDs.

__________________

Originally Posted by Gwenyfur

However direct linking to the youtube site itself is not copyright violation...

Many of the music producers themselves will upload music videos of their artists in order to increase sales of CDs and DVDs.

true,some of the links for youtube to here may not work due to the fact that it is copywrited but usually most video's you would copy to a post will work fine unless the video you are trying to post was copywright due to the artiest saying they want it removed

I have a YouTube.com account, and when uploading a video, there is a choice of whether or not to publish the URL or embedding HTML with it. So, an artist has control over that feature.