Another Youtube lawsuit

May 5th, 2007

You would think Youtube would be hanging on to its money instead of dishing it out to contributors. Especially as they are now being sued by the English Premier League for hosting videos of soccer games. The lawsuit says

Defendants, which own and operate the Web site YouTube.com, have knowingly misappropriated and exploited this valuable property for their own gain without payment or license to the owners of the intellectual property

All pretty standard rhetoric but how long can Google handle these lawsuits against Youtube, they seem to be almost a weekly occurrence. The standard Youtube response is that they are not responsible for what is uploaded by the site’s users, but more of these lawsuits seem to be focusing on Youtube encouraging users to post copyrighted material.

Youtube do have a copyright notice slapped on their video upload page, but you do wonder if Google’s legal department’s patience is wearing a bit thin.

Anyway we checked out Youtube and searched for ‘English premier league’ and much to my disappointment we couldn’t find downloads of this weekend’s footy games, just highlights of recent games. Nothing even worth posting here.

Are the English Premier League on a fruitless crusade, or should Youtube be shut down forever, let us know your thoughts.

Source: BBC