Another copyright item: YouTube turned over user data to Viacom’s Paramount Pictures after the studio persuaded a federal judge to issue a subpoena requiring the site to fork over details about a user that had uploaded dialog from the movie “Twin Towers.” YouTube complied, and on June 16 Paramount sued the maker of the 12-minute uploaded video, Chris Moukarbel, for copyright infringement, in federal court in Washington.
The total capitulation on the part of YouTube seems, at first blush, a complete departure from the philosophy of Google, soon to be YouTube’s new corporate parent.
“YouTube seems to have given up too easily,” said Laurence P. Colton, an intellectual-property lawyer at the firm of Powell & Goldstein LLP in Atlanta.
Earlier this year, Google successfully fought a Justice Department subpoena that it turn over massive amounts of search data needed for a quantitative analysis designed to support an Administration legislative effort.
However, in the case of YouTube’s quick consent to the Viacom-spurred subpoena, the Government wasn’t asking and the amount of data sought was limited…to one individual. There weren’t too many arguments in YouTube’s arsenal to fight an order by a federal judge to help a copyright holder identify an infringer.
Still, it’s not a comforting development and it’s a signal, as if one were needed, that YouTube is now part of the Internet establishment, less the renegade and more the likely defendant in scattered legal actions. Moukarbel ultimately settled with YouTube, but sounds wistful about the good old days (say nine months or so ago) when YouTube was wild and woolly.
“I was happy to utilize YouTube when it was still not clearly established. It felt a bit utopian, even though the days for that were clearly numbered,” Moukarbel said.
Cynthia Brumfield at 7:01 PM|Comments(0)
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