Youtube & Copyright A Presentation by Iain Chudleigh

What is Copyright? Copyright Noun The exclusive legal right given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, film, or record literary, artistic, or music material, and to authorise others to do the same. (Apple)

Google Scholar Google Scholar allows the user to easily and quickly find articles and journals about more or less everything, this photo shows a search result for YouTube Copyright, it was a good place to start for this project. It instantly found related articles which were relevant to todays news.

Viacom Against YouTube In 2007, Viacom sued YouTube for $1 Billion. Viacom, mostly known for owning MTV, sued YouTube for showing over 160,000 clips without authorising it with them, gathering a total of over 1.5 billion views combined. (BBC, 2007) Other companies, including the BBC, started uploading short extracts of their shows in hope to draw in the, at the time, 70 millions users, to get them to their own site.

Money Making Schemes YouTube has always had a problem with copyrights, the website does not view videos before they are uploaded, relying purely on the copyright owner to file a complaint. Until recently there has not been a way to easily find copyrighted music on YouTube but now “YouTube has introduced Video ID, which compares the audio in the video to a database of copyrighted content with an aim to reduce violations” (Guardian, 2009) Some of the videos with copyrighted material are taken down, however, the majority of them have advertisements placed before or after the video, this creates revenue for Google, the owners of YouTube, allowing them to create a profit off of other peoples work.

One Stands Against the Many Stephanie Lenz recorded her 13 month old son walking & dancing to a song, “let’s go Crazy” by Prince. It was barely audible in the background and only lasted for about 20 seconds. (ABA Journal, 2009) This did not stop Universal Music Group, UMG, from filing a complaint to YouTube as they owned the right to the song. YouTube responded by removing the video off of their site, to UMG’s request. This is not rare, but what Stephanie did next definitely stood out over the majority of cases. Lenz filed a counter-notification, claiming that she had not breached any copyright laws and that she should be allowed to use the song under the Fair Use Policy. Amazingly it worked & the video was re-uploaded by YouTube. _________________________ Not all videos containing copyrighted material will be found, in 2009, over 10 hours of video was uploaded every minute, and that number is ever increasing.

Music Starts to Vanish Copyrights have destroyed some peoples chances to display their work on YouTube, some artists post covers of their favourite songs. Juliet Weybret posted herself playing the piano and singing a cover of the song “Winter Wonderland” (New York Times, 2009) This video was taken down after only a few short weeks, after a complaint from the owners of the song, Warner Music Group. The video was never re-uploaded, and is just one of many cases where peoples work goes unseen. Most will never even try and fight back for their video. Those who keep uploading copyrighted material end up with their accounts being shut down, so all their videos are deleted.

“YouTube Should Try Harder” There is an on-going dispute over whether or not YouTube should be held responsible for the actions of its users, in this case, users uploading copyrighted material which is not their own. Viacom claim that YouTube should do considerably more to monitor the activity of their users to try & cut down on the uploading of copyrighted material. However the court responding by saying that YouTube can only really respond to the “knowledge of specific and identifiable infringements of particular individual items” (Northwestern Journal of Technology & Intellectual Property, 2011) & could not respond to the general knowledge of infringement; that just was not possible.

ABA Journal, 2009 Steven Seidenberg 1st February 2009 “Copyright in the age of YouTube” ABA Journal Apple, 2011 Copyright definition :: Apple Dictionary BBC, th March 2007 “Viacom will sue YouTube for $1 Billion” BBC News Guardian, 2009 Katie Allen November 2009 “Google seeks to turn profit from YouTube copyright clashes” London, The Guardian New York Times, 2009 Tim Arango 23rd March 2009 “As Rights Clash on YouTube Some Music Vanishes” New York Times Northwestern Journal of Technology & Intellectual Property, 2011 Stephen McJohn February 2011 “Top Tens in 2010: Copyright & Trade Secret Cases” Page 327 References