Mark Cuban continues the only coherent copyright analysis of YouTube. In today's entry (see below), he includes a lawsuit by a videographer against Youtube. Two main points: If YouTube is living within the DMCA safe harbor laws, then it a) cannot receive a financial benefit from a video (yet there are banner ads above all videos) and b) if it is just a passive hoster of content, how can it claim a license to the content hosted on its site.
Perhaps Google can do magic - but to me this is / always has been clear as day. The lawsuit document I just read is also straighforward and coherent. As much as I like YouTube, there is no way they should win this lawsuit.
The LA Riots Videos vs Gootube - The Actual Filing
Nov 14, 2006 16:36:00 GMT
To say the stakes are huge would be an understatement. The filing references a very interesting point. If you are under the safe harbor rules, and merely a conduit to others hosting files, how in the world could you give yourself a license to those files ? In other words, Youtube owns what you just uploaded, and can do anything they want with it, without limitation, but at the same time under the DMCA they want to be considered only a conduit that falls under the safe harbors .They cant have it both ways. gonna be interesting !