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Google's YouTube: Is NBC copyright lawsuit near?

Google’s YouTube: Is NBC Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Near?
Written by Donna Bogatin, Contributor

Will NBC be the next major media company to sue Google’s YouTube for “massive copyright infringement”?

YouTube: What is NBC’s end game? I asked in January, citing Rick Cotton, NBC Universal general counsel, on the NBC-YouTube “difficult balancing act.”

YouTube class action lawsuit: Has YOUR copyright been infringed? is the latest copyright infringement action against Google’s YouTube, filed Friday.

Also on Friday, the NBC-YouTube guessing game intensified with NBC joining Viacom in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against YouTube last summer by Robert Tur, owner of Los Angeles News, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

NBC’s Cotton in January:

Sand is running out of the hourglass…more than half the videos on YouTube featuring NBC Universal’s television and films are unauthorized…There is only so much we can do. As fast as a clip is taken down, YouTube users can always put up another.

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Has the sand finally run out, four months later?

Not exactly. NBC continues its ambiguous relationship with YouTube:

1) Cross promotional deal with NBC YouTube channel,

2) Regular take down requests to YouTube to remove unauthorized uploads of NBC copyright content,

3) Public chastising of Google’s YouTube. 

Now, NBC is piggy backing on the legal actions of Los Angeles News and Viacom against Google’s YouTube, but has not initiated a copyright infringement lawsuit itself.

Under its interpretation of the DMCA, YouTube would be free to set up a business that knowingly infringes copyrighted video works on a massive scale by copying, publicly performing, displaying and disseminating those works, according to the brief NBC and Viacom filed Friday.

Contrary to YouTube's claim that it cannot block content, it is widely reported that YouTube has the human and technological resources to filter uploaded content when it serves its business purposes, NBC and Viacom said. 

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NBC is also serving its own business purposes by seeming to continue the “difficult balancing act” with YouTube.

By showing allegiance with Viacom over Google, however, NBC may very well be readying a lawsuit of its own against Google’s YouTube for massive copyright infringement.

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