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March 14, 2007
Viacom vs. YouTube: What It Means
Viacom (owner of MTV, CBS and other major media players) sued Google-owned YouTube for $1 billion, alleging “massive” and “intentional” copyright infringement in a federal court in New York yesterday. But many media analysts say the crux of the case lies with interpreting the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
Viacom claimed in its lawsuit that YouTube viewers have watched some 160,000 Viacom clips more than 1.5 billion times.
The lawsuit was not a surprise, according to The Wall Street Journal – at least not to those who predicted the lawsuit after Viacom last month publicly accused Google of copyright infringement last month and told YouTube to remove 100,000 video clips from the Web site (see CNet for more on that).
What It Means
The lawsuit may call into question the entire Digital Millenium Copyright Act, according to Reuters’ analysis.
The DMCA of 1998 has “served as the legal standard defining U.S. copyright law in the digital age, offering a defense widely relied upon by Internet companies against copyright lawsuits. The law limits liability for firms that act quickly to block access to pirated materials once they are notified by copyright holders of specific acts of infringement.” (See more on the DMCA from Wikipedia.)
Newspaper publishers and editors may be interested in the lawsuit for several reasons. Newspapers, as Web site providers, could benefit from the DMCA’s limitations of liability for Internet service providers (ISPs)for third-party content. On the other hand, newspapers, as content copyright holders, also may benefit from possible legal interpretationsthat protectagainstunauthorized posting of content online.
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