I love Youtube. As most can tell from my past three post subjects, but here is an interesting twist on the Youtube/Viacom showdown. Now activist organizations are suing Viacom for requesting the removal of a parody of The Colbert Show. While it contained clips from Colbert, they groups claim that they were protected under "fair use" doctrine and that Viacom erred in requesting its take-down.
Got to love it when trying to protect your copyrighted material comes back to bite you in the ass. For me this just illustrates another flaw in the "take-down" request logic embodied in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Inevitably someone (one of these Youtube scanning employees at these big time corporations) is going to screw up and request that something be taken down that probably has a right to be there. With the volume of take-down requests that go out every single day, it is unlikely that there is much oversight. One employee steps on the wrong persons toes, and the company gets tied up in a free speech lawsuit potentially costing it big bucks. Damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of a scenario.
Ultimately, I think this just adds fuel to Viacom's larger complaint/suit against Google and Youtube. Now, take down requests come with teetch if they are not executed carefully. THis limits the ability of the copyright holder to effectively manage the massive volume of postings each day on Youtube. Inevitably copyright privileges will be violated, and there is not much the company can do about it under current law.
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