YouTube hosts uploaded video clips of up to 10 minutes in
length, and as well as amateur videos it hosts clips from copyright
material.
Los Angeles News Service filed a lawsuit last week that claims
that YouTube Inc has allowed its users to upload and download its
copyrighted video footage. The clip in question shows the beating
of truck driver Reginald Denny by gang members during the 1992 LA
riots.
LA News Service owner Robert Tur is suing over the footage. "The
scope of the infringements is akin to a murky moving target," says
the lawsuit, according to news site Hollywood Reporter Esq. "Videos
uploaded are not identified by copyright owner or registration
number but rather by the uploader's idiosyncratic choice of
descriptive terms to describe the content of the video – tags -
making it extremely impractical to identify plaintiff's copyrighted
works."
Though YouTube Inc has not commented on the case, a lawyer for
electronic rights pressure group the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) believes that the site is protected.
"YouTube has an important legal shield, the so-called "online
service provider safe harbors" created by Congress as part of the
DMCA [Digital Millenium Copyright Act]," wrote Fred von Lohmann at
the EFF's site. "One provision, Section 512(c), was designed
to protect commercial Web-hosting services, which feared they might
be held responsible for the posting habits of their customers."
"If you're Verio and hosting hundreds of thousands of Web sites
for clients around the globe, you can't afford to be sued every
time one of your customers copies a photograph from a competitor's
Web site," wrote von Lohmann. "Because YouTube essentially stores
material at the direction of its users, it can find shelter in the
same safe harbor that Web-hosting providers do."
Von Lohmann did warn that the protection of the DMCA disappears
if the business in question "receives a financial benefit directly
attributable to the infringing activity", and that as the firm
grows more successful it will receive less protection.
That protection is irrelevant in the UK, says another
intellectual property expert. Kim Walker is a partner who
specialises in media law at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind
OUT-LAW.
"In the UK it is not relevant whether or not YouTube gains
economically out of it," said Walker. "They are like a hosting
company, they can't be expected to know everything that goes on
their network, but when someone brings an infringement to their
attention they have to take it down."
"They can still be liable if they have knowledge of an
infringement; they are subject to e-commerce regulations that means
they are obliged to take material down," said Walker.
The UK law could apply to YouTube if it could be shown that the
infringement took place in Britain, said Walker. That means that a
TV company, for example, could sue under UK law if the person
viewing the material was UK based.
"Because this is intellectual property, the law that applies is
that of the place the alleged infringement took place," said
Walker. "That applies even if the servers are in Madras or the
Channel Islands."
