New balls please
The failure of the Premier League's action against YouTube raises more questions about the intellectual property rights on the Internet.
The English Football Premier League filed an action against YouTube and its parent company Google in 2007. It claims that YouTube is profiting from clips of football matches, the copyright of which belongs to the Premier League. Google claims the "safe harbour" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, intended to protect Internet Service Providers from the actions of their customers. YouTube claims this protection saying it has no control over what users upload.
In a case which might have tested this defence from Google, the US court ruled against the Premier Leagues claim because it had not formally registered copyright claims to these clips in the USA. According to the court, a section of the US Copyright Act means that non-US companies must register all works with the US Copyright Office within three months of first publication if they ever wish to claim statutory damages for any subsequent infringement.
The Premier League said that this interpretation would violate the Berne Convention. The convention is an international treaty observed by most countries in the world, including the USA. The Berne Convention says that the enjoyment and exercise of copyright "shall not be subject to any formality". Judge Stanton disagreed, saying that US lawmakers had already deemed US law compatible with Berne.
The Premier League is not the only organisation concerned about this case. Various tennis associations find themselves in a similar position, as do many music publishers, and film and TV production companies such as the BBC, all of whom continually see their materials used in flagrant disregard for their copyright, and who feel that if YouTube's business model revolves around its use of video clips then YouTube should make more effort to make sure those clips are legal. Google's objection that it would be too expensive for them to do this is not, in my opinion, a valid one.
22nd July 2009
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.