Copyright and Human Rights
WHEN VIACOM SUED Google over not doing enough to keep Viacom’s copyrighted works off of YouTube, it made a claim that shocked even seasoned copyright watchers. Viacom argued that YouTube was complicit in acts of infringement because, among other reasons, it allowed its users to mark videos as “private,” so that only the uploader’s friends and family could see them. Private videos couldn’t be checked by Viacom’s copyright-enforcement bots; Viacom argued that the courts should hand over access to that material to them.