The online video copyright issue is set to get more intense as legal lines come closer into focus. The YouTube and Viacom case, in the unlikely event it sees a courtroom, would be large enough to solidify some ground rules. There are also international complications, which makes one wonder if the World Wide Web will one day necessitate a Virtual World Court.
a bit heavy-handed considering the relatively low occurrence of inadvertent copyright infringement on the site, it makes one seek clearer-cut, more intentional piracy. TechCrunch's Allsp.com, a British-owned site dedicated to the TV show "South Park," Viacom's Comedy Central money tree.
Allsp.com, registered a
But the show itself streams via a video viewer on the site itself. A request for comment was met with a simple email from a "Mr. Watson" (assumed because of email name) wordlessly directing to the
Google has prevailed so far with its fair use argument in the United States, claiming that indexing, linking to, and displaying snippets of content is acceptable practice. However, Google hasn't been so lucky
In the US system, websites can be held liable for linking to infringing content.
In another case, streaming video was deemed an infringing display of the video (Live Nation Motor Sports, Inc. v. Davis). And in some sense, the Napster case involved liability for linking to infringing content.
Finally, there's the Universal City v. Remeirdes case, which held that linking to DeCSS violated 17 USC 1201 because the link constituted "trafficking" in illegal technology.
3) While there are no clear rules about liability for linking to infringing content, many of the cases appear to turn on the good faith of the linking site--i.e., if the site clearly is designed to facilitate infringement, courts will be very unlikely to use legal formalities to protect the site.
4) On that front, site EULAs or disclaimers trying to claim ignorance about linking to infringing content have virtually no legal effect.
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