Black Friday Sales 2012

Copyright infringement is still a sore spot for Google’s recent acquisition YouTube. British companies Football Association Premier League and music publisher Bourne have filed suit against YouTube claiming their copyright was violated and asks more companies to speak out in an organization of a class-action lawsuit. A single lawyer represents the two complainants and claims the YouTube’s ultimate Kick in the Face is that Google has the power to stop copyright infringement. The lawsuit claims:

“Recent events have confirmed that defendants are able to identify copyrighted material on the YouTube website — and to remove such material if they wish — so long as victims of defendants’ infringing conduct agree to pay defendants to do so by authorizing the otherwise infringing exploitation of their works,”

Google will claim that although they have the power to stop copyright violations that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not require Google to act upon copyright issues until specifically requested. The law is not completely clear in the case of this lawsuit, except in one area. If Google has directly profited from the violation then they can be held liable.