Lawsuits are coming if against video-sharing site YouTube, which Google has already bought. The Football Association Premier League and music publisher Bourne have just filed a suit against YouTube for copyright violations.
The complaint, which contains 39 pages, accuses YouTube of “engaging in, permitting, encouraging, and facilitating massive copyright infringement.” The lawsuit also asserts that the presence of large amount of valuable intellectual property generates interest in the website, resulting in public media attention and increased traffic. The huge traffic increases YouTube’s advertising revenues and projected value as a site, platform or destination.
The law firm which serve as representative of the two newest complainants, is also seeking potential plaintiffs for a class-action lawsuit.
The complainants are specifically annoyed by the fact that Google has the ability to stop piracy on the site, but it chooses not to do so. Recent events known to the complainants have confirmed that the defendants are able to identify copyrighted material on the site and to remove such material if they wish “so long as victims of defendants' infringing conduct agree to pay defendants to do so by authorizing the otherwise infringing exploitation of their works “-- so long as victims of defendants' infringing conduct agree to pay defendants to do so by authorizing the otherwise infringing exploitation of their works.”
However, even though YouTube has the ability to prevent copyright infringement on the site, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act doesn’t seem to require them to do so. Rather, the DMCS arguably protects Google/YouTube from copyright infringement claims as long as the site removes them upon request.