Takedown Notice Process Working For YouTube
from the so-where's-the-issue? dept
For all the talk of how YouTube (or now, Google) would be sued for millions (if not billions) over copyrighted works, it seems that very few people looking at the discussion have looked at the actual law, or the process involved here. Despite the many, many problems of the DMCA, it does protect service providers from being liable for copyright infringement as part of the content that their users post, so long as they follow a notice and takedown process. As the press reported widely last week, YouTube correctly follows this process, so as soon as anyone alerts them to infringing content, they take it down. So, it's hard to see how YouTube/Google is guilty of infringement there. There's also a second issue -- which is that even if the infringing content is there, it should be the liability of those who uploaded it, not YouTube/Google for hosting it. That's why it's actually good (if stupid) to see a British football (soccer) league warn the site that was uploading videos of goals to YouTube rather than just going after YouTube/Google itself. As for why it's stupid, it seems like putting the videos of goals up online on a popular site like YouTube is likely to generate more interest in the sport and the live videos of it, but that's their own business decision to make.