A U.S. federal court has denied class-action status to
copyright owners suing Google Inc. over the usage of material posted on
YouTube. U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton, in the District Court for the
Southern District of New York, rejected a motion to approve a worldwide class of
copyright owners in a long-running lawsuit over videos and music uploaded on
the popular website. In denying class certification Judge Stanton said that that
copyright claims have only superficial similarities ruling
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| Can we all join in? Errrrrr NO! |
"The suggestion that a class action of these dimensions
can be managed with judicial resourcefulness is flattering, but unrealistic"
The proposed class action lawsuit was filed in 2007 and
included as named plaintiffs the English Premier League, the French Tennis
Federation, the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) and individual
music publishers. The NMPA settled with Google in 2011.
In April this year Judge Stanton had dismissed the 2007 copyright infringement complaint by Viacom
International and others against YouTube over the Google company's alleged
unauthorized hosting on YouTube of clips uploaded by users from "The Daily
Show with Jon Stewart", "SpongeBob
SquarePants" and ""South Park" stating that YouTube was protected under the safe
harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Judge Stanton
threw Viacom's case out on April 18th, a year after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals reinstated the copyright infringement case. after his initial ruling in favour of YouTube. Viacom has filed a notice of appeal from
Stanton's new ruling.
The current case would have allowed a proposed class which could
have included any copyright owner whose allegedly infringed videos were on the popular web service, and music
publishers whose compositions were allowed to be used on YouTube without proper
permission. Judge Stanton said that while the legal analyses he would have had
to apply in the case would have been similar for the various plaintiffs, each
copyright owner's case would need to be decided based on facts particular to
their individual claims commenting
"Generally speaking, copyright claims
are poor candidates for class-action treatment" and the case would turn into
a "mammoth proceeding", with potentially thousands of plaintiffs
worldwide, and that
"Each claim presents particular factual issues of
copyright ownership, infringement, fair use, and damages, among others” and
"Plaintiffs offer no explanation of how the worldwide
members of this proposed class are to be identified, how they are to prove
copyright ownership by themselves or by their authorized agent, or how they
will establish that defendants became aware of the specific video clips which
allegedly infringed each of the potentially tens of thousands of musical
compositions incorporated into specific videos”
Citing the Viacom case, the Judge said that YouTube does not
generate infringing material, had a take down system and unless an exception applies, the DMCA
requires that YouTube have legal knowledge or awareness of the specific
infringement to be liable for it.
Football Association Premier League Ltd et al v. YouTube Inc
et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 07-03582.
Image Glastonbury crowd (c) 2009 The Television Company (London) Ltd
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