youtube lawsuit

YouTube is again being sued for copyright infringement, this time by Football Association Premier League Limited and Bourne Co. The first is a top division of English soccer and the latter is an independent publisher of music. This lawsuit comes after Viacom's "indictment" of YouTube as a for-profit organization that makes money by building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, which is against copyright laws, and not doing anything to protect people's intellectual property. Google counters and accuses Viacom of threatening the Internet by not allowing people to use the Internet to legitimately share information and ideas as it was created to by holding carriers and hosting providers accountable for Internet liability. The actions of Football Association Premier League Limited and Bourne Co. could then be seen as the same thing that Google was accusing Viacom of doing.

I think that Google should be doing more to protect intellectual property on YouTube. It should not be held responsible for what its users do; however, I also think if it does nothing to prevent the users who are misusing the site from posting illegal material, it should be held partially liable. If Google shut down the accounts of those who post illegal materials as well as remove the illegal content, then there would be much less of a problem with copyright infringement. The main reason it would not take these actions is because it would lose money if it did. Therefore, if Google will not do anything to prevent illegal activity on its site because they are profiting, they too should be punished along with those who are posting the material.