Google Managing Counsel of Litigation, Michael Kwun, has a letter to the editor in today’s Washington Post responding to Viacom’s op-ed piece which appeared in the Post last Saturday. Resisting the urge to “litigate in public” (no doubt a sly slap at Viacom for putting so many of its legal arguments in its opinion piece), Kwun says Viacom is trying to rewrite copyright law with its “baseless lawsuit.
In particular, Kwun chides Viacom for attempting to turn the DMCA on its head, a law that Viacom itself worked to pass.
Viacom’s lawyers helped craft this law but apparently don’t like it, after all. They want to shirk the responsibility Congress gave them.
Google-owned YouTube, the defendant in the lawsuit, is abiding with the law, having already fulfilled its obligations under the statute to take-down infringing material, Kwun says. Moreover, Viacom isn’t even clear about what content constitutes infringement.
Viacom later withdrew some of those requests, apparently realizing that those videos were not infringing, after all. Though Viacom seems unable to determine what constitutes infringing content, its lawyers believe that we should have the responsibility and ability to do it for them. Fortunately, the law is clear, and on our side.
Cynthia Brumfield at 9:33 AM|Comments(0)
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