Though I am a law school student, I have to say that YouTube is really a cute technology and has brought a lot of fun to all of us. Despite the related provisions in DMCA and those precedents, I personally hope the courts can recognize the legality of YouTube technologies. However, after reading ViaCom’s complaint and comparing their counts with Section 512 of DMCA, I think it is hard for YouTube to successfully defend the suit, unless the Congress amends the law further. The well-known fact that there are too many infringing clips residing in YouTube is one of the main reasons. Some of the users upload copyrighted works so frequently that it is hard to say YouTube has no actual knowledge to or is not aware of the existence of infringing activities, especially when red-flags are filled with the site.
From Sony’s equipment and Nasper/Grokster’s music sharing protocol to YouTube’s Video sharing platform, none of them is not extensively welcomed by the users. If it is not of the obstacle of copyright law, we can hardly imagine how far the progress of technologies has been made. Therefore, I wonder why the Congress can’t establish a standing committee to evaluate the possibility of accepting new technologies and, in the mean time, mandatorily distributing the profits resulting from the new technologies, just as the provisions in AHRA, 1992. Imagine an environment where there is no obstacle of property rights to hold back the development of cute technologies while there is a mechanism of fairly distributing related profits. . . .
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