Copyright Disputes Reach New Heights

Webcasting copyrights may have reached new proportions according to the Washington Post. Unfortunately it might be more of a detriment more than anything. Battles over copying of video from television to internet could literally put some websites out of business. The problem is that most of these video casts have been considered as available for free to the public.

Basically broadcasters don't want anything shown via the web. They are pushing for 50 year rights to anything broadcasted on a television. That's quite a statement if nobody even owns those rights.

So, for example, say ABC or Yahoo offers a broadcast or webcast of a movie no longer under copyright protection, historical footage of a news event or a live feed of a breaking story -- no one could make a copy of that program and rebroadcast it to others.

This isn't exactly good news for the webcasting industry. The one fallacy I see is that the laws probably only hold true in the US. People will find ways to get around what is trying to be enforced.