Last week's ruling favoring Google over Viacom has been billed as a victory for YouTube, but it's really a victory for copyright pirates.
Basically, the court threw out a suit against Google for illegally allowing copyrighted material owned by Viacom to be posted on its website. The case was summarily dismissed, with the court claiming that YouTube had no way of knowing whether copyrights were infringed, and therefore had no liability. Even though they then turned around and put ads on that material.
Basically, that says that anyone can pretend that his head is in the sand and "allow" files - as in movies, music and books - to be posted and "shared" . . . make money off the process . . . and have zero liability or responsibility to the original creator.
Pawn shops should be so lucky.
Viacom general counsel Michael Fricklas called the ruling “fundamentally flawed,” and vowed to appeal. “It is, and should be, illegal for companies to build their businesses with creative material they have stolen from others,“ he said, adding that “legitimate websites shouldn’t have to compete with pirates.”
(Story here.)
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