education and free speech

Awww... isn't that cute? The teenagers frequenting YouTube are using it to become enlightened and to express dissent.

and that the lawsuit threatens the viability of its popular YouTube video-sharing Web site

Well 'if' it does (yeah right - might just dent their wallets though and make YTubes' chance of turning in a proft about another 10 years later...!), they better come to some agreement then - quicksmart!

G must have known that being sued was a possiblility when they bought it - so now they are trying to worm out of it by calling to action all 'similar sites' on a heart strings number.

Deal or No Deal G!

arguing that it has not infringed on the rights of the media company

So Google doesn't think that hosting and showing copyright videos is copyright infringement? They knew that YouTube had videos subject to copyright long before they bought it...well they should have anyway!

lawsuit threatens the viability of its popular YouTube video-sharing Web site as well as others like it.

Google should have thought about that before they spent a vast amount of cash on buying a website!

I expect some sort of deal to be struck soon.

Our nation was founded on the fundamental principle that all citizens have the right to watch some guy launch bottle rockets out of his butt.

I do not think this will fly. Site owners have to show some amount of reasonable responsibility. Especially if they are making money off the site via advertising.

Site owners have to show some amount of reasonable responsibility. Especially if they are making money off the site via advertising.

DMCA says otherwise.

Google should have thought about that before they spent a vast amount of cash on buying a website!

They did. They really want this fight. They need the DMCA safe harbor provisions for this other little business they run called a search engine.

I'm not badmouthing the DMCA either - it is what it is, and can be both good and bad at times.

Sell that Google stock now, and get back in when they take the knockout punch.

and the real winners are.......:

"Google Case Spells Windfall For Lawyers"
"For the firms, high-profile equals high fees. If litigated, the case would rack up hundreds of millions in legal charges, according to litigation consultants"
[forbes.com...]

>> They really want this fight. They need the DMCA safe harbor provisions for this other little business they run called a search engine.

I am not a lawyer, but this case seems--at best--too close to be used as a precedent. Google is risking a lot, if this is their strategy

It will be interesting to see how a judge rules on this. I am sure it will get appealed right up the ladder.

YouTube [..] is protected from charges of copyright violation under the Hosting Safe Harbor of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Kwun said. Under the provision, service providers that host other people's content are "safe" from liability if they quickly remove material a content owner alleges infringes on their copyright.

The thing is that no matter how quickly YouTube removes popular but infringing material, someone else will be uploading a fresh copy. It will be interesting to see what a judge thinks about that.

of course Google would say that, they spent how many billions into Youtube?!

>The thing is that no matter how quickly YouTube removes popular but infringing material, someone else will be uploading a fresh copy.

And it is the copyright holder's job to find and report the fresh infringement to the ISP. The law is clear enough on that subject.