YouTube Is Screwed?

28 July 2007 Written By: Jim KukralComments: 618 CommentsYouTube+Is+Screwed%3F2007-07-28+20%3A32%3A02Jim+Kukral

What’s not clear about this copyright tool for YouTube is if it will effect the millions of infringed videos ALREADY sitting on their network?

I’m very surprised this is coming so quickly. Frankly, I just don’t see how YouTube will be able to survive long term when you enforce this? There are too many videos out there that will NEED to be removed from the network.

I’m going to guess here and say that over 50% of every video they have is infringing on some type of copyright. Can YouTube just stop the news ones? Is that enough? I’m not sure. Fascinating though.

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Jonathan Bailey

The problem here is that, under the law and in the eyes of the court, it is worse for YouTube to let infringing videos linger than to delay the removal of new ones. The DMCA provides protection for hosts, under some conditions, if they "expeditiously" act to remove infringing materials once notified, but, if they don't, they lose all hope of protection.

In short, if they act to remove works after notification, they have at least an argument in their defense, if they don't, they're probably toast.

Though there really isn't anything about this kind of filtering technology in the DMCA, it seems to be an attempt to show good faith and smooth things over with rightsholders.

That being said, I don't think Google relies as heavily on infringing videos as we think. The top videos are almost always amateur content and there seems to be plenty of non-infringing material on the site. Will it take a hit? Absolutely. But I think it can survive it.

At least I hope so...