I am pretty sure this amounts to fraud on the part of Rumblefish.
Seriously, Rumblefish's behavior reminds me of a certain CEO I used to work for. The guy would rip off just about anyone he could (including his employees) by exploiting loopholes. Some of the exploits worked, others didn't. But, he would hold out a carrot just far enough to avoid a critical mass of lawsuits.
Google's business model seems to involve fucking over anyone who can't sue them.
Google's business model is reducing overheads in business processes in order to scale them down to the point where anyone can use them. This involves eliminating human participation from their side as much as possible.
"By keeping on their good side" would be my stab at that one. If the advertisers trust Google to take their side, they're more likely to spend money. Nothing particularly 'evil' about that or anything, just how it works.
Apparently all it takes to kill someone's AdSense account is one person reloading and clicking through ads a few dozen times. This is pretty fucking horrible on Google's part.
Here's the loophole. Your EULA with YouTube states that YouTube may take down your videos for any reason. YouTube also has a side deal with certain large rightsholders that they may take down videos at any time for any reason.[1] It is implied that these takedowns will be only for DMCA purposes, but since the companies never have to officially file a DMCA notice, there are never any legal repercussions for false takedowns.
Nice, eh?
[1] (Edit) Well, they are only supposed to take down videos for good reason, but we haven't seen YouTube enforce that. Either way, this is between YouTube and the rightsholders; the DMCA doesn't get involved.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/umg-we-have-...
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/12/16/youtube-denies-that...
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111216/01463417102/explan...
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/megaupload-viral-mu...
It looks like it's not the easiest claim to prosecute, but in the case of YouTube videos where the content is entirely original and thus cannot be owned by a music label, the only hard part would be proving lost income. If that can be done, then the label can be held liable for actual and punitive damages, and legal costs.
Shouldn’t this prevent YouTube from relying on the common carrier defence - they're are clearly manipulating and policing the content [to benefit their commercial interests] and not acting as a common carrier.
What troubles me more is that they're somehow allowed to deny individuals their copyrights - they're putting other peoples advertising next to your content presumably without waiting for it to be acceded to. They should surely, to keep lawful, take down dubious content until the ownership of rights has been resolved.
In some jurisdictions I'd have thought that they couldn't add a EULA that would allow them to use third-party copyright material without explicit permission. That is when a corp claims your uploaded material and YouTube simply decide to add ads for that corp and send earnings to that same corp then this should (and I contend probably is in some places where YouTube are operating) be unlawful.
In short: Google are actively infringing copyright. Is a EULA statement really sufficient to make this lawful?
'Misrepresentation of ownership causing damage to another party or benefit for oneself' is generally fraud (criminal too), but intent tends to be weighted far more than status. That said, the test is usually a good faith belief that one is the legitimate owner, and I don't know of many bots with that sort of discretion.
That's not how copyright works. If you make an original work, it can be identical to a copyrighted work and not be infringing. It's only a problem if you make your work from the copyrighted one.
"Infringement of Copyrighted Photographs Under U.S. Copyright law, you violate the copyright owner's exclusive rights of copying and/or to create a derivative work by creating a work that is a copy of or "substantially similar" to another's. The courts determine whether the two works are substantially similar by comparing them and evaluating whether copyrightable elements have been used in the second work. A court is much more likely to find an infringement if the subject of the photo has been "set up" by the photographer and contains creative and original elements, compared to a photograph of subjects that already exist, such as in nature or a structure such as the Golden Gate Bridge."
http://www.photoattorney.com/2008/11/does-derivative-work-vi...
The case you quote is not so easy, though.
The tough decision is if New English Teas intended to violate copyright, and if the Red Bus photos were original enough to claim copyright.
The judge decided that the Red Bus photos were original enough (creator claimed 80 hours of work), and New English Teas had used the original photos earlier on, and was made to remove them, so there was clearly intent to violate copyright. However, I'm not so sure if the Red Bus photos were original enough, or if there was intent to mislead buyers into thinking the New English Teas were Red Bus licensed.
pretty sure - just guessing, sure from some other knowledge, or just misusing words?
fraud - like, they have committed a crime in some jurisdiction?
I am pretty sure this amounts to uninformed speculation.
Though in the realm of copyright, "slander of title" might be the more appropriate phrase.