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March 18, 2007
Viacom sues Google!
An important part of the issue of intellectual property in the internet age has come to a head. Just under a week ago, the media giant Viacom, who owns Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon among others, "slap[ed] Google with $1 billion lawsuit" for displaying its copyrighted content on YouTube, a user populated video site. For more complete details see the following links:
Viacom claims that YouTube 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."
"Viacom said YouTube has avoided taking the initiative to curtail copyright infringement on its site, instead shifting the burden and costs of monitoring the video-sharing site for unauthorized clips onto the 'victims of its infringement.'"
The problem is that because YouTube’s content is user populated, Google has very little control over what is posted. Even when they take copyrighted material down, users repost it. Personally, I don’t believe that you can hold Google accountable for what its users do (according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act "companies are off the hook if they remove copyrighted content promptly when it is brought to their attention."). However, holding users responsible is also problematic (i.e. the RIAA approach). In short, no one wants to be held responsible, but, according to the owners of the copyrighted material, someone must be. Do we make the providers of the services used for illegal purposes, the users who posted illegal material or both groups accountable? Perhaps, in the age of the internet, information belongs to everyone and no one has done anything wrong...
Posted by brackme at March 18, 2007 03:24 PM