Google: If Viacom Can't Figure Out Which Videos Are Infringing, How Can They Expect Us To Do So For Them?
from the good-question dept
Following Viacom's Washington Post editorial explaining why it believes it would be easy for Google to police YouTube for copyright-violating works, a lawyer from Google has responded. He starts out first by explaining the important reasons for having a safe harbor provision (protecting platforms from the actions of its users). However, he then points out that Viacom has been making mistakes, forcing content offline that wasn't actually infringing which leads him to note perceptively: "Viacom seems unable to determine what constitutes infringing content, [yet] its lawyers believe that we should have the responsibility and ability to do it for them." If even Viacom is unable to police its own content correctly, how can they claim that it's no problem for Google?