I have just read a very interesting post on the Google vs Viacom lawsuit on Mashable.com (a leading social networking blog).
(N.B. If you are new to the topic check the previous post on this blog for background info).
The Mashable article is very condemning of Viacom in making their requests for logging history, and also critical of the US judge who ruled in their favour on the action, mainly out of anger that Youtube users might now be at risk from facing potential (and probably successful) copyright violation lawsuits from Viacom.
To draw a parallel with another similar high profile case - it is as if Metallica (the famous heavy metal band), who sued Napster over enabling illegal filesharing of their music a few years back, had instead sued Napster for user download histories - with the intention of then researching the details further, hoping to bring direct legal action against the individual users involved.
In essence this is what it seems likely Viacom is doing (and exactly what Mashable alleges is happening).
Now no question this is massively unfair on users who had no idea they were viewing copyrighted material on Youtube, and who might potentially find themselves the subjects of swift legal action from Viacom for doing so. Obviously this will generate massive negative PR for Viacom - and rightly so, but they do not seem to mind too much right now.
However the point that I made in my earlier post remains valid; a massive copyright infringement has occurred which ever way you turn it, and Viacom have suffered as a result of it. They are in the business of making money from their shows, and under current laws they have suffered a loss of earnings through online theft of content.
The only question is; who is the thief that should pay? Is it Youtube (i.e. Google), who facilitated the unknowing theft? Or the users who willingly, though unwittingly benefited from the breach?
Viacom did try to make both pay - but their requests for some of Google’s source code was rejected (a protection of trade secrets), while the logging database request was approved. Basically the former (Google) survived the legal ruling and will suffer only indirectly by virtue of the negative press involved, while the latter (individual users) could possibly face a far greater headache if Viacom pursues legal action.
Draconian as it may seem (and a poor PR exercise) Viacom has a perfectly legal and understandable grievance. It is Google that left users vulnerable to this by not removing such content despite multiple warnings, and thereby betrayed trust on a massive scale.
In essence they stood by and watched as their users committed one copyright breach after another, without warning anyone, and all the while logging the details of every such instance.
Luckily for them their trade secrets have been protected - while ordinary users will have to pay Viacom for the mistake. What must be remembered however - and that which Mashable seems to lose sight of in the author’s (justified) anger - is that it is Youtube and Google that owe users an apology - and not Viacom.
Dejan Levi