Viacom Says "YouTube Depends On Us"

Anonycat writes "Michael Fricklas, a lawyer for Viacom, has an opinion piece in the Washington Post laying out Viacom's side in their $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube. Fricklas asserts that the DMCA's 'safe harbor' provisions don't apply because YouTube is knowledgeable to infringement and furthermore derives financial benefit from it. He also argues that putting the onus of spotting infringement onto the content providers represents an undue burden on them. Fricklas caps the argument by stating, 'Google and YouTube wouldn't be here if not for investment in software and technologies spurred by patent and copyright laws.'"

Comments

If Viacom would ...

[Organic Brain Damage]

lobby Congress to alter copyright law in the USA to change the duration to something more reasonable, like 50, 60, hell, even 70 years from the date of original publication, I'd be more sympathetic to their case. With the current: "nothing from the date of the creation of the Mouse will ever enter the public domain situation", I've got zero sympathy for copyright holders.

Re:If Viacom would ...

[elrous0]

I remember back in college when we had to study copyright issues in our graduate level history classes ("fair use" for academics and all that). We were taught the whole "70 years and it's in the public domain" thing. The law has been changed so many times since, and thinned out so much, that no one even bothers TRYING to teach copyright issues anymore. Essentially, the new paradigm is "If it's not in public domain already, it probably never will be." And FORGET trying to teach fair use in the post-DMCA era.