It is way cheaper to ban everything in sight than have the copyright holders' lawyers banging at your door for infringement. All the rest is just bad support, but ustream are covered by their terms: "[...] we also reserve the right to terminate the Site, Services or your access thereto at any time and for any reason". Using this kind of service as your unique way to broadcast is not the way to go. Next time you are using a free service with such terms, google for all the other similar services and use them as well. "Always have backups" applies everywhere.
Maybe. Until nobody is banging on your door because they don't trust you to provide the service you say you are going to provide. Notwithstanding fair use (which really takes a judge to decide), it wouldn't be hard to come up with a list of clips that will be shown and get promotional permission to show them. These are essentially free ads, FFS!
Alternative: maybe it's time for some good fair-use cases to be heard.
Yeah, that pesky cartel, trying to protect their stuff. How dare they! This case isn't a case of the copyright cartel -- the content producers gave permission for usage. It's a case of inferior software being used. Copyright law isn't the problem, shitty software is. UStream ought to have a way to pre-authorize content to prevent this stuff from happening in the first place. They should have been more aware of the quirks of their system and planned accordingly. This is just an example of bad technical leadership on the Ustream team.
