YouTube to face claims over controversial tool
YouTube filed “unavailing arguments” for dismissal | Copyright owners allege lack of access to rights management tool.
A Californian court has denied YouTube’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit which claims that the streaming platform only provides “powerful copyright owners” with access to a rights-management tool.
In an order issued Monday, August 1, the US District Court for the Northern District of California held that YouTube’s “multiple arguments for dismissal are unavailing” and refused to dismiss the suit, brought by a group of content creators.
The lawsuit was filed in July 2020 by Maria Schneider, a Grammy award-winning composer and musician, on behalf of a proposed class of copyright owners.
The suit argued that while large copyright owners such as major studios and recording companies have access to Content ID—YouTube’s copyright management tool that allows owners to block uploads of infringing works, monetise infringement, and track viewership statistics of infringing works—ordinary owners are denied access.
“YouTube has facilitated and induced this hotbed of copyright infringement through its development and implementation of a copyright enforcement system that protects only the most powerful copyright owners such as major studios and record labels,” alleged the suit.
According to Schneider, as ordinary users don’t have access to Content ID, they are “relegated to vastly inferior and time-consuming manual means of trying to police and manage their copyrights”.
This, according to the complaint, means that ordinary users are “provided no meaningful ability to police the extensive infringement of their copyrighted work”.
The suit added: “Defendants permit and facilitate this infringement because it furthers their growth and revenue strategies and because they have determined that plaintiffs and the class—unlike YouTube’s preferred Content ID partners—lack the resources and leverage necessary to combat copyright infringement on the scale at which it is perpetuated on YouTube.”
YouTube raised several arguments in an attempt to dismiss the suit, including that the class of users didn’t show they owned some of the copyrights at issue and that some rights had not been registered before suing YouTube.
However, District Judge James Donato concluded the arguments were “unavailing” and refused to dismiss the suit.
Did you enjoy reading this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories sent like this straight to your inbox.
Today’s top stories
