A litigation electromagnet
Popular video sharing site YouTube managed to avoid getting into big trouble in its early days. Perhaps due in part to the concept's newness at the time, various entities simply didn't seem interested in dealing with YouTube. But Google's acquisition of the company changed all that. It was as though a switch was flipped: Google's deep pockets and YouTube's increasing popularity meant that not only were more videos of everything imaginable being uploaded, but taking action against the service might actually show some results.
And so YouTube became a massive lawsuit electromagnet, attracting legal challenges from across the country and around the world. Google has maintained that most complaints should fall under the DMCA's Safe Harbor provision—meaning that a web site operator cannot be held liable for infringing material posted by one of its users as long as it complies with removing copyrighted material upon request.
That argument hasn't stopped everyone, however, from trying to hold Google and YouTube accountable for the content it hosts. In what follows, we look at the legal landscape so far and what the implications of the lawsuits might be for YouTube and sites like it.
Full article: arstechnica.com
