When you boil away all the legalities, perspectives, and masks, the issue of Viacom suing Google is a fight between the old media and the new media. However, what makes this attack pronounced is that up until the web, Viacom was the new media. In the face of the old boys, both Google (think YouTube and gmail) and Viacom (think MTV, Paramount, and Comedy Central) appeal to the hip, young generation. Therefore, they are in direct competition. However, unless Viacom gets its web strategy together, it will remain a relic of the MTV era. The legal battle between Viacom and Google.
In regards to the actual issue at stake here, I believe that Google has the upper hand. Viacom’s case rests upon a ruling by the Supreme Court that Grokster should be held responsible for copyright infringement committed by its users. However, Google has a much stronger case in the safe harbor created by DMCA Title II. The act clearly states that a service provider is not responsible for copyright infringement committed by its users, providing it removes the infringing material upon request. There lies the crucial difference between the YouTube case and the Grokster case. Grokster was created and engineered to allow the sharing of any and all files between users. Due to the easy availability and limited liability, users used the service to create a trove of illegal content. Obviously, Grokster did not take adequate steps to prevent copyright infringement. In contrast to this, YouTube was created to allow average people to share their lives through videos. Users grabbed on to the idea and happily shared videos ranging from science to video reporting. Only a small portion of the vast video archive infringes upon copyright and YouTube removes the infringing material when notified. Google has a sounder legal grounding than Viacom.
As an outcome of this case, I believe that YouTube should improve their copyright notice to include an easier submission process and more information. They could also develop a simple computer-driven backend process. However, I can understand how hard this could be - especially when dealing with videos, a medium not easily understood by computers. Regardless, I feel that any simple check YouTube can create will be welcome. For instance, the way I approach this issue in my own web 2.0 application is that when a user submits textual data a google query is sent out. Then, if a close text match is turned up the article is tagged as possible plagiarism. Once tagged as plagiarism, the authoring user is notified of this and given a chance to defend their case a. Meanwhile, a small alert of possible plagiarism is created which includes a simple vote procedure. If enough votes (as determined by user “value”) are submitted confirming that the content is plagiarized, the content’s author is notified once more. If they do not respond within five days, the content is automatically removed until further notice. Although this procedure is not perfect, it is one way to combat copyright infringement. However, if YouTube were to simply improve their policy page, I believe that should be enough. In this age of social media, I think the masses who create the content should also be the ones who decide if the content is legitimate.
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