YouTube Sued

It was bound to happen. YouTube has been sued by Viacom for one billion dollars. The charges? Why, "massive" copyright infringement, of course. The old-school studios are never going to see YouTube or its clones as free promotion for the media they sell; it’s just "infringement" to them. It’s only been six months since Google’s much-discussed $1.65 billion purchase of the video-sharing website — not really enough time to develop and put in place any sort of automated system for removing infringing videos. However, Google has made some great strides in doing just that. In fact, Google offered its partners access to tools that help identify and remove infringing materials from the YouTube website. By necessity, this has to be a collaborative effort from both parties since it’s hard to build tools to search and remove videos when you don’t know what it is you’re looking for. Undoubtedly, a difficult process, but if anyone could do it, Google could. Is this not a "reasonable effort" on Google’s part to address the problem? It’s not as if they’re simply thumbing their nose at the issue!

It could be that Viacom isn’t just looking for compensation…perhaps they’re trying to take on the legality of the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Safe harbor is provided to limit liability if a company makes a reasonable effort to remove the copyrighted materials from the site. But what constitutes reasonable effort? It seems as if Viacom wants the courts to decide…to spell it out in black and white. If that’s the case, then Viacom may have gambled by initiating such a precedent-setting lawsuit. Google isn’t going to roll over on this one and they certainly have the money to fight back. Bringing the legality of the DMCA into the court system may indeed change the law, but not necessarily in Viacom’s favor.

In the meantime, where does that leave us, the lowly content-grazers? With lots and lots of user-gen. Oh yes, we will now see the true traffic-driving power of the "cat video." (What? You don’t visit YouTube for the cat videos? Uh-oh…)