Facebook, Human Rights Groups Side With YouTube Against Viacom

Facebook, Freedom House, Yahoo, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the National Alliance for Media Art and Culture and 44 law professors are siding with YouTube and Google against Viacom’s newest legal appeal.

The courts granted Google a summary judgment in Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube last year. The issue was whether YouTube was protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law that protects against claims of copyright infringement if the content was uploaded by users to an organization’s network. Although the lawsuit cost Google $100 million, it eventually prevailed.

It didn’t take long for Viacom to file an appeal. The media giant, which owns MTV, Paramount Pictures, and Comedy Central, called the court’s ruling “fundamentally flawed” in its appeal last year. Earlier this week,Google struck back with a 107-page response arguing for its humanitarian and social value, while criticizing what it calls Viacom’s use of selective quotes.

Now the tide is against Viacom once again. Today, no less than 13 different groups filed amicus briefs in support of Google in the YouTube/Viacom case. Here are the most interesting organizations throwing their weight behind Google.

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF argues that Viacom’s theories “contravene the language and purpose of the DMCA, threatening online innovation and expression.”
• 44 law professors. A group of academics specializing in intellectual property and Internet law argue that Viacom is attempting to “distort the balance that Congress successfully crafted” with the DMCA.
• Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and Access: This collection of human rights organizations argue that “social media platforms have become important tools for promotion of human rights” and that “these important global developments depend directly on preserving the effective safe harbor Congress enacted” with the DMCA.
• Facebook, eBay, IAC and Yahoo: Four of technology’s most powerful companies have come together to support Google. These companies argue that “safe harbor has succeeded in achieving its legislative purposes of promoting innovative services and of encouraging copyright holders and services providers to work together to combat copyright infringement.”
• National Venture Capital Association: the NVCA argues that “courts have consistently and correctly applied the DMCA’s safe harbor as Congress intended, rejecting efforts to create ad-hoc exceptions to it.”
• The National Alliance for Media Art and Culture and the Alliance for Community Media: These artist organizations argue that “Internet-based platforms dramatically lower barriers facing Independence artists and creators, enabling them to reach global audiences” and that Viacom’s “attempt to erode section 512′s protections or remove them entirely would harm artists.”

“We regret that Viacom continues to drag out this case,” A YouTube spokesperson told Mashable. “The court here, like every other court to have considered the issue, correctly ruled that the law protects online services like YouTube, which remove content when notified by the copyright holder that it is unauthorized. We will continue to strongly defend the court’s decision throughout this appeal process.”

Viacom first filed this lawsuit in 2007. Four years later, it’s still being battled out in court. And since the suit began, Viacom has embraced YouTube’s competitors, including Hulu.

Posted in: internet, social networking, youtube