Media companies are banding together to fight YouTube for illegally publishing their material online, placing more pressure on the company to better monitor the video clips on its site.
The Football Association Premier League Ltd. and Bourne Co. filed a class action lawsuit Friday against YouTube and Google, which acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion last year. The Premier League, which owns the rights to British soccer games, and Bourne, an independent music publisher and the rights owner of such songs as "Let's Fall in Love," are seeking additional copyright holders to join their suit.
The class-action lawsuit is the latest strike against YouTube in the copyright-infringement battle. Viacom, owner of such shows as "Laguna Beach" and "Dora the Explorer," opened the door a few months ago when it filed a complaint seeking $1 billion.
The dispute has intensified as YouTube increases in popularity and starts to draw advertising dollars. While the site has tapped into the phenomenon of sharing personal videos, it has also become a place for pirated, professional clips. YouTube has secured revenue-sharing agreements with some copyright holders, including CBS, to publish their shows but not others, including Viacom and many smaller entities.
In response, both lawsuits claim that YouTube and Google are taking advantage of the unauthorized content and are not doing enough -- such as deploying filtering technology -- to stop its users from posting the videos.
"This is about redress for their copyright," said Bill Hart, a partner at Proskauer Rose in New York and one of the attorneys in the class-action suit.
In a statement, Google said, "Most content owners understand that we respect copyrights, we work every day to help them manage their content and we are developing state-of-the-art tools to let them do that even better."
On Monday, Google also submitted a formal response to Viacom's lawsuit, arguing that the complaint "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression."
Google says it is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The law shields sites such as YouTube from responsibility but requires them to remove the copyrighted content once they're notified about it. Google said it has done that.
The media companies, however, are frustrated that they are forced to send notice after notice because the clips often reappear after they've been removed. They are seeking to challenge how that law is applied.
"Like most pieces of legislation, there are holes that need to be filled down the line, and we're seeing one of those holes," said Paul Ragusa, a partner at the law firm Baker Bots in New York.
It isn't clear how many copyright holders will join the lawsuit or just how much money they will demand.
"I think it was inevitable," said Brian Banner, counsel at Rothwell Figg Ernst & Manbeck. "A lot of people were looking for ways to stop YouTube from what it is doing, but just couldn't afford to do it yet." Now, with the class-action lawsuit, they can, Banner added.
E-mail Ellen Lee at elee@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Ellen Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, May 5, 2007
