After Viacom made news early this month by filing a $1 billion lawsuit against Google/Youtube, news outlets made a point of describing and explaining why Youtube had been legally in the clear up to now, under most legal interpretations of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The reason was the “good faith” provision of the law, which made it legal to allow companies like Youtube host user-posted illegal content as long as they immediately removed it after being notified of it’s illegal status.

Most techies I’ve talked with interpret this part of the DMCA as one of its few saving graces, and that provision has allowed the growth of user-generated content sites such as Youtube and Myspace. But now, the big corporate suits may have finally figured out a way to exploit the good faith exemption with a loophole that involves nothing more than reams and reams of good ol’ legal paperwork.

Take the case of Wendy Seltzer, who posted a clip of the NFL’s copyright notice on Youtube to use as an example of “fair use.” According to poster Implied Oral Consent at Slashdot.org:

You know how the NFL puts up those notices before every game saying ‘This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL’s consent is prohibited?’ Well, Ars Technica is reporting that Wendy Seltzer thought that that was over-reaching and posted a video of the notice on YouTube. Predictably, the NFL filed a DMCA Take Down notice on the clip. But Ms. Seltzer knows her rights, so she filed a DMCA Counter Notice. This is when the NFL violated the DMCA, by filing another Take Down notice instead of taking the issue to court — their only legitimate option, according to the DMCA. Unfortunately for the NFL, Ms. Seltzer is a law professor, an EFF lawyer, and the founder of Chilling Effects. Oops!

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Every Day Should Be Saturday, which is basically the best sports blog on the Internet, gave a quick little shout out to Marketplace today.

I will be happy to accept this not only as a complement to myself, but as a complement to all public radio and specifically Marketplace. But is also a complement to EDSBS, in that the folks there aren’t listening to ESPN Radio all day.

Yes, that is Charlie Villaneuva.

I know that as a sports fan, this week I should be focused on March Madness, and nothing else.

But it still shocks me sometimes how naive these globally famous athletes can be. What, you didn’t think your Steroids and HGH receipts were going to be made public? Maybe you shouldn’t have shipped them to your house via DHL, then.

And, even worse (thanks to Deadspin via Free Darko), we now can see that there is a whole Flickr photo group of random people in photos with professional athletes in, shall we say, compromising situations. I really do think these people live in an alernate universe.

Maybe these athletes need to learn about the brave new world of the Internet — and take some lessons from job applicants, who know how dangerous cyber gossip can be.

The German government has restarted talks about putting a speed limit on the entirety of the country’s famous Autobahn freeway system.

New York Times German correspondent Mark Landler covered the controversy in the diary-style A4 feature, “Pfaffenhausen Journal”, where he compared the speeds to the takeoff speed of a commercial jet.

Funny, I had the same analogy and a similar story on Marketplace two months ago, to the day. Maybe this time, the German environmentalists may have a little more impact.

Like the rest of Europe, over the next few years Germany hopes to meet strict E.U. environmental standards. And to do that, the German government has started to talk about a new speed limit on its major highways.

In early February, I was working on a story for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, when I met and talked with a unique and funny German music researcher, Albrecht Duemling.

After learning about his past, that included stints in the United States, I worked with NPR on a story about Duemling and his work, rediscovering music from people persecuted by the Nazis.

The story aired on Weekend Edition Sunday, and focuses on Duemling’s Berlin-based musica reanimata.

In an effort to gain support, Duemling decided to branch out and include the better-known works of persecuted musicians who survived in exile. Eric Zeisl, for instance, was an Austrian Jew who fled Nazi rule in 1938. He moved to Hollywood and went on to compose music for many popular films including The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Deumling was recently awarded the European Culture Prize for his work.