MTV owner asks YouTube to remove 100,000 clips

By SETH SUTEL

Feb. 2, 2007

NEW YORK — Media company Viacom Inc., which owns the cable networks MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and the Paramount Pictures movie studio, asked YouTube today to remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips from its hugely popular video-sharing site.

Viacom said in a statement that after several months of talks with YouTube and its corporate parent, the online search leader Google Inc., "it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users."

Viacom said that YouTube and Google had failed to deliver on several "filtering tools" to control unauthorized video from appearing on the hugely popular site.

The company was now asking YouTube to take the clips down, but stopped short of filing a lawsuit.

Under federal copyright law, online services such as YouTube are generally immune from liability as long as it responds to takedown requests such as these, which YouTube often does. Less clear legally is what happens when another user posts the same video, something commonly done on the free video-sharing site.

YouTube said in a statement that it would comply with the request from Viacom and said it cooperates "with all copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content as soon as we are officially notified."

The company also said it was "unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from YouTube's passionate audience which has helped to promote many of Viacom's shows."

In November, YouTube agreed to delete nearly 30,000 files after the Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers complained of copyright infringement.

Some media companies such as CBS Corp. and General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal have made deals to allow YouTube to use video clips from their programming, but others have yet to agree with the site over ways to get compensated for the use of their copyrighted material.

Universal Music Group, a division of French telecommunications giant Vivendi SA, had threatened to sue YouTube for copyright infringement, saying it was a hub for pirated music videos, but later reached a licensing deal with them last year.

Despite Viacom's problems with YouTube, the company's MTV Networks division reached a licensing deal last year with Google that allows the search company's video service to use clips from MTV and its sibling networks under a revenue-sharing agreement.

Filed on the basis of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the subpoena includes testimony of Fox Entertainment Group vp Jane Sunderland suggesting Fox has been unable to determine the users' identities on its own. The uploaded material could cause Fox "irreparable harm," Sunderland said, but it was not immediately clear if the episodes in question still were posted on the site or had been removed.

However, the subpoena identifies the YouTube subscriber by the username "ECOtotal." A search under that username on the YouTube site unearths a user by that name with a banner across the top of the subscriber's page that reads, "This user account has been suspended."

Still, identifying "ECOtotal" won't necessarily explain how unaired episodes of "24" made it onto the Internet. Before Jan. 8, there were reports that the same episodes had popped up on illegal file-sharing sites, which might have transmitted them even before they appeared on YouTube.

This is not an unprecedented request for YouTube. In May, before its $1.65 billion acquisition by Google, the site complied with a Paramount Pictures request to identify a user who shot his own unauthorized short film adapted from the screenplay of the Oliver Stone film "World Trade Center."

But Google has a history of fighting subpoenas seeking the names of those using its services.

YouTube and most other similar sites typically tell content providers they will delete copyright video when alerted by owners of the material.

Among the content companies, much of the more aggressive policing of peer-to-peer and community-based Web sites has been by Universal Music Group. UMG has sued MySpace and others over what it calls illegal postings of its artists' music videos, and it came close to legal action against YouTube before striking a licensing agreement with that site last year.

Terence Clark, a copyright attorney with the Los Angeles law firm Greenberg, Traurig, said Fox, appears to be proceeding along proscribed legal lines in the matter.

"It's the process available under the Digital Copyright Act," Clark said. "There are certain procedures you can follow to get some information (but) this also impinges on the question of the privacy issues of the users of the sites."

Some sites might need to defend strongly against actions like Fox is taking, but ultimately the studio is likely to prevail, said Tom Ferber, a copyright attorney with the Pryor Cashman law firm in New York.

"It's always a policy decision of the entity involved," Ferber said. "So if you're the hard-news press, for instance, usually money is no object if it's seen as infringing on (your) rights. And (these sites) may have business issues of concern as well. But I think ultimately the studio is going to get the names that they want."

As for the 12 "Simpsons" episodes identified by the subpoena, most of them are from Season 7 of the long-running animated Fox series. One, however, is as recent as Jan. 7, while still another dates back to 1990.