Premier League sues YouTube

Posted on 8 May 2007 at 09:33

The Premier League has sued YouTube for copyright infringement, the second such legal challenge to the popular video site in two months.

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges that YouTube deliberately encourages massive copyright infringement on its website to generate public attention and boost traffic. This has resulted in the loss of valuable content, the complaint said. The class action has also been brought by US music publisher Bourne.

'Defendants, which own and operate the website 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 lawsuit said. 'Defendants are pursuing a deliberate strategy of engaging in, permitting, encouraging, and facilitating massive copyright infringement.'

Google declined to comment. YouTube officials said they were working on a comment.

The complaint echoes accusations made in March by media conglomerate Viacom, which filed a similar suit against YouTube and Google for over $1 billion in damages.

Google has denied those claims and said the Viacom suit threatens the way people legitimately exchange information and entertainment on the Web.

Lawyers for the Premier League said YouTube provided access to a tool against copyright infringement, but charged that it was 'fraught' with problems and that YouTube should do more.

'Its account has on some occasions been blocked or closed,' the lawsuit said. 'In the meantime, the Premier League has been forced to send time-consuming and ineffectual notices of infringement to YouTube.'

James McQuivey, a media analyst at Forrester, said the latest complaint was interesting because the plaintiffs had tried to use the tool provided to prevent copyright infringement.

But the lawsuit does not likely signal a wider move in the media community against YouTube, McQuivey said.

More worrying for Google and YouTube would have been a lawsuit from a second major entertainment company or a big cable television network, he added.

'This is a small complaint in this process,' McQuivey said. 'It means woes for Google's legal team, but provides satisfaction it is not another major player.'

The latest lawsuit seeks a court-ordered injunction to prohibit the defendants from continuing to violate various copyright protection laws and unspecified monetary damages.

It accuses YouTube of deliberately facilitating copyright infringement to build traffic to the site and lists a number of sports matches between Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham and others.

The complaint, which seeks class-action status, also says that Google was aware of this pattern of infringement when it paid $1.65 billion to buy YouTube and subsequently saw an increase of around $4 billion in Google's market value.

A copy of the complaint can be viewed at youtubeclassaction.com.

Author: Reuters and Simon Aughton