Viacom's $1bn lawsuit against popular video sharing site YouTube has escalated further, with parent company Google filing court papers in the US claiming the case could threaten the free exchange of online information.
Google submitted new court papers to a New York judge on Friday that said the firm "goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works".
Making service providers liable for the actions of their users would, said Google's lawyers, "threaten the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression".
Under the terms of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, service providers are protected if they act swiftly in cases of reported copyright infringement.
While Google claims to have abided by the DMCA, Viacom alleges that YouTube's business model relies on "a vast library of copyrighted works" and that it struggled to keep count of unauthorised clips on the site.
The case, which was initiated by media giant Viacom in March last year, describes YouTube as part of an "explosion of copyright infringement" online.
Viacom last month claimed the site hosted 150,000 clips of its shows, including MTV Unplugged, South Park and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Shows from Viacom subsidiaries including MTV and the Comedy Central have been watched "an astounding 1.5bn times" on YouTube, according to the company.
Industry pundits have predicted that the case will end with an out-of-court settlement, while others have discussed the increasing conflict between those seeking to protect copyright and advocates of the internet as an open communications medium.
Mike Masnick, a copyright expert on TechDirt, said media companies still thought of the internet as a content platform, whereas internet companies saw it as a communications medium.
"That's a problem for anyone who comes from a world of broadcast media, and it creates all sorts of problems for copyright law that is designed mainly to protect a broadcast-style media," he wrote on TechDirt today.
"The DMCA ... puts the onus on the communicator not to be breaking someone's copyright, leaving the communications platform out of it.
"Hopefully, the court will recognise the reality that the internet was always a communications platform, and it's just the broadcast media who are trying to force it to act more like a broadcast system," Masnick said.
· To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 7278 2332.
· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
 |  |
No comments:
Post a Comment