I suppose Viacom finally realized how much they were losing in copyrighted material that’s floating on Youtube. If you don’t know, Viacom is the parent company to MTV, Comedy Central, and Cartoon Network to name a few.

“If the case goes to trial it is likely to test the limits the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DCMA) of 1998. Google claims ’safe harbor’ status for YouTube, which is a DMCA protection designed for search engines, web hosts and ISPs to shield them against liability for third party copyright infringements. Similar protections exist in European laws.

The safe harbor was designed to protect such companies from having to monitor the activity of every internet user, something which was recognised as impractical. These companies do not have to prevent illegal use of their services pro-actively, but when properly notified that they host infringing material they must “expeditiously” remove or disable access to that material. There is presently no clear judicial authority on the speed of reaction that qualifies as expeditious under the DMCA.”

The above was reported by The Register.

I’ve only uploaded one video to Youtube, which was promptly taken down because Oprah didn’t like it. It was a clip of a doctor that was on her show that had a freudian slip where he said ‘orgasm’ instead of ‘organs’. Oprah didn’t catch it and neither did the audience, which is very eerie.