It was obvious that once Google bought YouTube there would be a spate of complaints about the copyright-breaching which was the custom rather than the exception on YouTube. Following protests after the take-over YouTube took off a large amount of pirated material — the figure of 300,000 clips is bandied around with no substantial evidence that this is the figure. Just make it a lot.

Now Rupert Murdoch enters the fray because News Corp. owns Twentieth Century and anything of this nature would be done with his knowledge and his active support.

Twentieth Century Fox has subpoenaed YouTube to learn who uploaded pirated copies of episodes of television shows ‘24′ and ‘The Simpsons’.

This is very, very different from a take-down notice with which YouTube should have complied in an instant. YouTube is being forced to name the sinners who put the stuff up there in the first place.

(It is always possibly that a decision might come back and bite Rupert Murdoch on the bum for MySpace, owned by News Corp. is full of stuff which breaches copyright.)

Involved in the current matter is a four-episode season premiere of thriller show 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland, which has appeared ahead of its TV broadcast, and 12 episodes of the Simpsons were being distributed on YouTube by a subscriber called ‘ECOtotal.’

Fox said it officially notified YouTube about the episodes and requested immediate removal. I checked and they are not there and my guess is they were removed straight away.

So what happens now?

On its track record YouTube may, but only may, comply. It did it last year with a similar request from a movie studio. But that was before Google bought it and Google has shown it does not back away from a subpoena.

It is widely and falsely believed that in the United States this activity falls under the safe-harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The idea being that yes, you can bung it on the Internet. If the copyright holder complains you have to take it down and that is that.

Not so. It simply is not so.

Maybe the safe-harbor provision can keep YouTube in the clear. That is a maybe. But it does nothing to shield the uploaders. The point of the provision was to make sure that web sites were not punished for behavior they could not control. This does not apply to people who behave naughtily.

Copyright holders can still apply for subpoena and find the individual who did the deed and then there is no safe harbor; just a nasty legal storm at sea which will cost serious money. For Fox to hammer ECOTotal all it has to work from at the moment is an e-mail address which gets you nowhere unless you are very lucky. It is using the subpoena to get the rest of the information.

So why is Fox doing this? Perhaps because unless someone takes a stand YouTube could become a peer-to-peer delivery mechanism for video-sharing. The article on this site Movie downloads taking off: the good news and the bad news refers to this.

One other thing. This is a good test of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Whatever the result you can expect serious changes in YouTube.

Related:

Entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 4:21 am under Google, Piracy, YouTube.

Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
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