YouTube has told the McCain campaign they will not reconsider the site's standard ten-day ban on clips that draw DMCA complaints from copyright holders. D.C. insider Declan McCullagh has a copy of YouTube's reply to Monday's letter from a McCain lawyer. Recently, both Fox and CBS got YouTube to yank McCain campaign videos that remixed TV news clips. Question for Daily Kos: Why is Fox News clubbing a Republican presidential candidate? For everyone else, here's the 100-word version:

In a summary judgement issued today, Judge Howard Lloyd of the Northern California Federal District Court declared that online video site Veoh can not be held liable for copyright infringement in a case brought by the Io Group, an adult content producer better known as Titan Media. Users had uploaded clips of steamy man-on-man action to Veoh, including one clip which ran 40 minutes. Rather than issue takedown notices to Veoh, the Io Group sued immediately for infringement. The judge found that Veoh's policies and practices in terms of policing the site — both at the time and currently — were "reasonable." Such practices include fingerprinting video files in order to block identical copies from being uploaded in the future and disabling the accounts of repeat infringers, which the site has done 1,096 times since it's launch, according to the company. The precedent it sets could very well aid YouTube in it's defense of similar allegations brought in the suit by Viacom. After the jump, highlights from Lloyd's decision.When Veoh allowed adult material on the site, it was all about customer service:

This is troubling! The Associated Press has filed 7 Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests against a site called Drudge Retort (unaffiliated with Matt Drudge). The site is a largely user-generated blog that features headlines, excerpts from news articles, links, and discussion. The AP says this practice is a violation of their intellectual property. Some call it blogging! The AP's lawyer is having none of that:

Google's lawyers suggest that Viacom's strategy in its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube is to subvert the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's protection of websites and Internet service providers and "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression." The argument is set forth in a response to Viacom's amended complaint filed in April, which cited 150,000 examples of infringing content, which together had been viewed 1.5 billion times.

The fight for free culture rages on at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they've built YouTomb, a site that scans YouTube for metadata on videos pulled because of copyright complaints and posts screenshots and information such as time online before takedown. Sadly, what they don't do is archive the pulled videos so that bloggers with archives full of dead embeds can make their own fair-use stands. [News.com]

An eagle-eyed Valleywag tipster with a taste for Modest Mouse spotted an interesting new feature on YouTube. Uploads of music videos from the band by non-official sources now carry a link reading "Contains content from Sony BMG," which leads users to the official Modest Mouse page on the site. The unofficial version of the video "Float On" has over a million views — the official version only 235,000. Also, both the official and unofficial versions have had the embed codes which allow users to post the video on third-party sites removed. My question? Whether this is automated by YouTube or if Sony BMG is flagging their videos by hand.

Vivid has taken the first steps by the porn industry to protect their content using the courts, following in the footsteps of Hollywood and the record labels. The adult-film producer is suing the companies behind PornoTube for copyright infringement. Vivid is making the same argument as Viacom has against Google's YouTube — with one significant exception that may have broad consequences for porn on the Web.

American laws and economists may favor YouTube in the United States, but overseas the copyfight is not going well for Google. On Monday, major Indian content owner Super Cassettes Industries won a restraining order against YouTube, forcing it to remove all of SCI's infringing content immediately. SCI also seeks a permanent injunction and damages, according to reports. It's likely they'll get it.

Did you think, after Google announced its YouTube Video Identification tool, that Viacom would drop its $1 billion lawsuit? Don't count on it. Though he told me Viacom general counsel Michael Fricklas was "delighted" with the tool, Viacom spokesperson Jeremy Zweig is saying the tool changes nothing. "It doesn't have any impact," Zweig said. "Or at least it's very premature to try and figure out the impact it could have on the litigation." (Photo by AP)

Months ago, word was that Google had piled up a "war chest" to fund a long-term legal battle against Viacom's $1 billion copyright lawsuit. Was that all talk? Seems so, after Google today launched YouTube Video Identification, a tool to help copyright owners identify and manage their content when it's uploaded to YouTube. With the new ID tool, content owners can block, promote or license their copyrighted content for a share of Google's ad revenue. Our analysis of Google turning tail after the jump.

So much for that. Michael Crook, legendary net griefer and angry issuer of specious DMCA takedown notices, settled with Jeff Diehl and the Electronic Frontier Foundation regarding Crook's crazymaking over the photo of Crook at left. No details on the settlement, but at least part of it apparently required Crook to send out e-mails rescinding his DMCA complaints. Ours, after the jump.