YouTube is accused by media conglomerate Viacom of copyright
infringement in a $1 billion court case that could prove a vital
testing ground for the legal basis of businesses grounded in
user-submitted content.
Google said that it not only complies with US copyright law, but
that it goes "far beyond" its legal obligations in the way that it
protects content producers and owners.
Viacom is suing YouTube in a New York court for copyright
infringement, alleging that YouTube profits from the videos it
hosts that infringe its copyright.
Viacom owns television stations such as Comedy Central, MTV and
Nickelodeon, and says that YouTube is liable for copyright
infringement even when it is users who publish clips from its shows
via the site.
Google says that YouTube is protected by US Copyright law which
shields it from liability if it did not publish the material and if
it acts swiftly to take it down once informed of its existence.
Viacom sought more than $1bn in punitive damages, despite the
copyright legislation only allowing actual or statutory damages.
The court ruled in March that it could not seek punitive
damages.
Its suit claims that Viacom-owned videos have been viewed more
than 1.5 billion times, breaching the US's Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA).
Google denies that it has broken that law. In fact it claims
that the law was written with services such as YouTube in mind.
"Viacom’s lawsuit challenges the protections of the DMCA that
Congress enacted a decade ago to encourage the development of
services like YouTube," said Google in its defence, lodged with the
court. "Congress recognized that such services could not and would
not exist if they faced liability for copyright infringement based
on materials users uploaded to their services. It chose to immunize
these services from copyright liability provided they are properly
responsive to notices of alleged infringement from content
owners."
"YouTube fulfills Congress’s vision for the DMCA. YouTube also
fulfills its end of the DMCA bargain, and indeed goes far beyond
its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their
works," said the court document.
The DMCA contains what is called a safe harbor provision, which
is what protects companies from liability for material uploaded by
third parties. It is this which Google believes will protect
it.
Viacom, though, claims that Google deliberately ignores its
obligations in order to turn a profit on advertising on pages.
"YouTube strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to
curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant
traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden –
and high cost – of monitoring YouTube on to the victims of its
infringement," said Viacom in its original claim.
"YouTube is a significant for-profit organisation that has built
a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to
others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate
parent, Google. Their business model, which is based on building
traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is
clearly illegal," it said.
YouTube warns users as they upload material that they must have
permission to do so, something which could help it defend itself in
court. Both sides in the dispute have asked for a jury trial.
Google said in its court submission that the case could alter
the very nature of the internet if it goes Viacom's way.
"By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for
internet communications, Viacom's complaint threatens the way
hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information,
news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression," it
said.
