My view about this lawsuit is that finally someone gets the things stright. If we have no complaints about the current copyright law, which governs the world we live, then it is a right thing to do: file a lawsuit against priracy and people who help to make the evil. It is obvious and undeniable that lots of illegal stuff exist on YouTube; the lawsuit is a wake-up call for website hoster.
The responsibility of website owners/operators is keeping shift between strick liability and negligence. The conclusion nobody can deny is that there is some degree of liability of these website owner/operator owede to copyright owners. The question is how the line drawed?
On the other hand, "free-copy" is the super high way for a work to take off rapidly. Without free-copy (so called: fair use), a work will not easily get much attention or appreciation because of the cost issue.
So the meaning of this lawsuit to me seems become a battle of fair use definition. (DMCA may provide a safe harbor to ISP, but ultimately is not a workable solution because of the operation or manageable problem. If copyright owner (Viacom) sends out notice for every illegal copy, according to the complaint, YouTub/Google willl need to hire more service representitives than innovative engineers to handle the notification in order to substain the save harbor defense).
Although fair-use seems to have some objective standards, but most likely is subject to the Court discretion or choice to pick up one of the fair-use defense.
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