By Richard Scarlett
Back in March, when a frustrated Viacom decided to slap Google with a $1bn lawsuit for hosting copyright-protected video clips on YouTube, it probably didn’t realise that it’d end up taking on the entire social networking system – and challenging our basic human right to freedom of expression in the process.
But according to Google, it’s doing just that.
Taking a break from its quest for world domination, Google has kept an unusually low profile since news of the impending lawsuit broke. However, it seems that during this conspicuous quiet period, the search giant has been conducting a search of its own. Through a legal library. The result – plead ignorance with a defence strategy so ridiculous that it might actually work.
In deciding to take advantage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act - which protects a company from liability for copyright infringement if it is just the medium by which others post unlawful content – Google is well and truly scraping the barrel and has set out to test the limits of this flimsy ‘safe harbour’ law.
I say flimsy because surely this law can never work in the case of user-generated websites such as YouTube etc. Even if the host were to comply with the regulation and take down the offending material when instructed to, the problem is only solved until some other user decides to hit the ‘repost’ button. That’s simply the nature of the social networking beast.
But no matter how it’s dressed up, YouTube is generating traffic from other people’s material –and is already looking at ways to monetise its profile. Google has a tricky blame-shifting task on its hands to convince a court otherwise – and if successful, the lawsuit could set a major precedent and cause a key part of the social networking phenomenon to die a sudden and highly publicised death.
However, in the throes of desperation, Google has actually stumbled upon a good point. YouTube aside, Viacom’s claims could seriously threaten the way that many people interact and exchange information, news, entertainment and pure opinion on a daily basis. And if this case were in fact to set a precedent, how then would it be regulated? Would the content of blogs such as this come under direct and constant scrutiny?
The question now becomes that of who is actually liable for what we post online – the offending user, or the host? Although it may initially be seen as Google frantically clutching at straws to defend its $1.65bn impulse buy, this new twist may actually form a legitimate defence.
If it were anyone else I’d say that there was very little hope of success, but because of Google’s gritty egotism and self-importance (read arrogance), I think that they may just get away with it this time.
In fact, my money’s on a 2008 launch of Google Legal Services 2.0.
Comments