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Viacom Sues YouTube, and About Time Too.

By James Butler | March 14, 2007 |

Video website extraordinaire YouTube, now owned by search engine mogul Google, may find itself in deep trouble before long. Not long after CEO Eric Schmidt commented that media companies will have no choice but to work with online sites, the Viacom Company, owners of MTV, Comedy Central, and Paramount, responded with a 1 billion USD lawsuit claiming that YouTube has committed something to the order 160,000 copyright violations. At issue is whether YouTube has actually violated the rights of Viacom. YouTube asserts that it has met legal and moral requirements by removing content upon request of the copyright holder. Viacom disagrees contending that the basic business model of YouTube is based on copyright infringement. Viacom contends that, “Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.”  

I am more inclined to side with the Viacom Corporation. As the copyright holder, Viacom does and ought to have the sole right to reproduce the work, to distribute copies of the work, and publically perform or display the work. These rights can in no way be lessened or abrogated by the fact Viacom doesn’t wish to devote the necessary manpower to watch YouTube continuously to watch for violations, and even if they did, in all likelihood they would not be able to catch all of them. For instance a search for MTV turns up more than 31,000 references, Comedy Central a little more than 1,000, and Paramount a little under 2,000 and that only includes videos that explicitly reference those terms not videos that may solely be referenced by the name of the work or in some other way hidden from obvious detection. A search for Sailor Moon, a show whose original production run ended 10 years ago to the day, reveals more than 29,000 results including three full length movies in multiple languages and all 200 episodes in varying languages. It would be physically impossible for most copyright holders to search through YouTube to insure their rights aren’t being violated. Consider, we hardly require authors to read every publication in the United States to keep their rights from being violated, we instead insist that publishes refrain from publishing material in violation of copyright and hold them accountable when they do. The proper solution for YouTube here is to own up and take appropriate proactive steps on policing itself. YouTube’s current copyright policy requires (recreated under the public domain doctrine concerning policies and regulations):

1. A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.

3. Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.

4. Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.

5. A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed

All be submitted in writing for each alleged violation. The burden all of this places on copyright owners is excessive and could be easily avoided by YouTube hiring a staff member or two who are charged with proactively dealing with copyright issues. Additionally, YouTube should take steps to prevent users from immediately replacing a removed clip with another one. Naturally, some violators would still get through, but in fairness to YouTube, at the level of volume involved it’s understandable and just the good faith effort to prevent the violation of copyright would go a long way towards soothing the ruffled feathers of copyright holders.

About James Butler

James Butler is a student at Austin Peay State University pursuing a double major in both Chemistry and French. On campus he is particularly active with the Gay Straight Alliance and also somewhat less so with the AP Playhouse. Politically, he is often described as a libertarian, although he would personally affiliate himself with Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.

Email: jbutler19@apmail.apsu.edu

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4 Responses to “Viacom Sues YouTube, and About Time Too.”

1. Bill Larson Says:
   March 15th, 2007 at 6:26 am

   Viacom’s suit is nothing more than a cynical misuse of the court system as a tool in the complex game of negations between businesses. By your very own arguments both you and this website are liable for your use and posting of Youtube’s trademarked and copyrighted corporate logo. Viacom is also totally ignoring the principle of fair use, and the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA which grant to sites like Youtube and Google Video protection from the actions of their users. The real issue is that copyrights have been twisted far beyond what the founders of this nation intended. To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; Copyrights created under the Constitution were for 7 years and one renewal for another 7 years was permitted. They also required the creator to take affirmative action by sending a copy of the work and a registration form to the Library of Congress. Now thanks to rapid approach of Mickey Mouse’s expiring copyright and the eternal greed of the Disney company, copyrights were retroactively extended, no longer require any registration, last for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years (For corporate works they last 95 years*). Does this sound limited to you? To me, it sounds like a theft of the public domains by corporations. It certainly does not promote the arts and sciences, instead it represses the very cultural fount that Viacom and Disney drew upon during their rise to where they are today. The intricate balance between the rights of the content holder and the rights and needs of the public have been seriously knocked out of kilter and seriously need to be restored. * Corrected dates, I was in a hurry when I write that earlier.

2. James Butler Says:
   March 15th, 2007 at 8:49 am

   Actually, copyrights were last extended in the Sonny Bono Act in 1998 with the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (signed by the beloved Mr. Clinton no less) which extends copyrights to 70 years after the death of the author for individual works, and 120 years from creation or 95 years after publication, whichever expires first, for corporate works. As such, Mickey Mouse, for example would enter the public domain in either 2023 or 2036 depending on whether the rights were held by Walter Disney or the Disney Corporation. Of course, all of that ignores the moral objections to expiring copyrights anyway, but that’s another article. Also, on the use of the YouTube Logo, I believe the use to be protected under fair use exemption satisfying all 4 concerns of fair use, being primarily intended for journalistic use for public edification and also criticism of the company, the work being a company logo intended to provide graphical represenatation of the company, the logo being only a small portion of the work owned by YouTube and not being substantial as to the actual content of the site, and finally that the reproduction of the logo herein does not materially affect the market value (none) of the logo or of YouTube’s service, aside from any inherent damage from criticising their company, which has been held to be protected.

3. Bill Larson Says:
   March 23rd, 2007 at 9:25 am

   [youtube width="400" height="326"]WILyl6lt7vU[/youtube] Enough said!

4. guruoo2 Says:
   March 25th, 2007 at 7:56 pm

   http://media.putfile.com/Jon-Stewart–The-War-on-Xmas-2006 (snicker)

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