The English Premier League, the most prominent and powerful league in world soccer, headed a list of plaintiffs that filed suit against Google’s YouTube last Friday for copyright infringement. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the EPL and music publisher Bourne Co. jointly sued the online video provider, charging YouTube with deliberately making money from its copyrights by encouraging massive infringement on its Web site to generate traffic.
“Defendants, which own and operate the Web site YouTube.com, have knowingly misappropriated and exploited this valuable property for their own gain without payment or license to the owners of the intellectual property,” the EPL lawsuit said. Google, which is also being sued for copyright infringement by global media giant Viacom, is using the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 as the cornerstone of its defense. The legislation protects Web sites from being held liable for the content consumers upload-as long as copyrighted content is taken down at the request of the holder. Google says YouTube complies with that law.
In response to Google’s statement, EPL lawyers said YouTube’s tool for removing copyrighted materials was inadequate, especially for a company of Google’s vast technological resources. “The Premier League has been forced to send time-consuming and ineffectual notices of infringement to YouTube,” the EPL suit said.