infringement, except this time the lawsuit is originating from Europe.
Italian broadcaster Mediaset SpA announced
today that it was going after Google for at least €500 million in
damages, which translates to just over $750 million at today's exchange
rates. Combine this with the $1 billion sought by Viacom, and YouTube
is looking at the possibility of some serious legal liability.
Mediaset said that it found some 4,600 of its own videos and clips on
the popular video sharing site, which the company equates to 315,672
(viewer) days of broadcasting, or more than 325 solid hours of
transmission. The €500 million is just the beginning, too—Mediaset said
that further damages could be tacked on if the company determines that
it lost advertising revenue thanks to the videos being put on YouTube.
On cue, YouTube reiterated that it's not all about copyright
infringement and that it respected the rights of content owners.
"YouTube respects copyright holders and takes copyright issues very
seriously," Google said in an e-mailed statement to Dow Jones and a number of other media outlets. "There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs."
Mediaset's lawsuit comes just over a year after Viacom sued YouTube
for "brazen" copyright infringement, demanding $1 billion in damages.
According to the complaint, Viacom identified 150,000 of its clips on
the service that had been viewed an "astounding" 1.5 billion times. The
company accused YouTube and Google of profiting from the posting of
copyrighted works and even deliberately withholding filtering
technology that could prevent such infringement.
The Viacom suit laid largely dormant up until earlier this month, when a judge ruled that Google would have to turn over 12TB of YouTube data
to Viacom as part of the discovery process for the lawsuit. As a
result, Viacom will soon find out exactly how many video clips have
been removed from YouTube and access data about how many users watched
which videos, although the two companies have agreed to let Google anonymize the user data before handing it over out of privacy concerns.
Google has long maintained that it is protected by the DMCA's Safe
Harbor clause, which limits the liability of service providers when
users post copyrighted content. What's unclear is whether YouTube
counts as a service provider, or whether Congress only meant to protect
ISPs. If YouTube is a service provider, many believe that a success for
Viacom it could have widespread implications across how content is
handled across the entire Internet. Both Google and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
have made this argument, saying that if Safe Harbor is limited to ISPs,
many Internet-based companies (including Ars Technica and any site that
has a forum) could suffer or go out of business.
Of course, Mediaset's lawsuit was filed in Rome, where the DMCA doesn't
reach. While it won't have implications for US Safe Harbor rules, it
still carries with it implications for how strictly video upload sites
operating in Europe need to police their users' submissions for
infringing material.
