NBC Universal joins Viacom in the fight against YouTube
NBC Universal has joined forces with Viacom to fight YouTube over the uploading of copyrighted material to the Google-owned file sharing site.
Viacom and NBC Universal (NBCU) have filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief in the Robert Tur copyright case against YouTube, according Reuters.
A ”friend of the court” brief, also known as “amicus curiae”, relates to information that is submitted to a court by someone who is not a party to the case being heard.
Robert Tur, a Los Angeles news operator, sued YouTube in July last year for allowing its users to “share” his famous video of trucker Reginald Denny being beaten up by a mob in the 1992 Los Angeles riot.
YouTube has tried to have the case dismissed, but Viacom and NBC Universal have stepped in with a friend-of-the-court brief that opposes this move.
The brief argues that in “operating its own commercial Website, YouTube engages in activities that are reserved to the copyright holder”. The brief also reveals that NBCU is deeply unhappy that its material has been disseminated by YouTube and “other similarly operated Websites”.
“NBCU has a strong interest in preserving the strength and viability of all of its legal rights and remedies in response to such conduct,” the company said.
While NBCU hasn’t launched it own court case against YouTube, Viacom hit YouTube with a $1 billion court case in March. YouTube is also facing a copyright suit brought on by the English Football Association.
Viacom said in March that it had tried to come to some agreement about its content with YouTube and its owner Google.
“After months of ongoing discussions with YouTube and Google, it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users,” Viacom said in a statement.
“Filtering tools promised repeatedly by YouTube and Google have not been put in place, and they continue to host and stream vast amounts of unauthorized video … Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.”
YouTube is one of the most popular web sites on the Internet, and it’s a great vehicle for budding video directors to upload and share their videos with millions of people. But clearly it needs to sort out its relationships with the owners of commercial copyrighted material before its business model becomes sustainable, otherwise YouTube will become a very expensive acquisition for Google.
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May 8th, 2007
I wonder if YouTube would be subject to same degree of litigation if it wasn’t owned by Google…