Premier League drags YouTube to court

Football fans have a great source of footage when it comes to matches, goals and penalties. YouTube, owned by Google, allows users to upload and view video and audio clips. That way, it no longer matters if you fall asleep during a game or take a bathroom break - you can always watch the goals and other highlights on YouTube.

But just as football fans started to like this convenient sharing feature on YouTube, the Premier League decided to team up with the Bourne Co, an American music publisher, and sue them for copyright infringement.

Premier League matches and highlights are broadcasted in 204 countries and viewed by an estimated 2.59 billion people. With that number of viewers, licenses and broadcasting deals across the world generate huge profits. Profits that the Premier League will not give up without a fight. Therefore they have filed a class action lawsuit against YouTube in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

In their complaint to the court, the two plaintiffs claim that, “(the) Defendants are pursuing a deliberate strategy of engaging in, permitting, encouraging, and facilitating massive copyright infringement on the YouTube website.” Furthermore, they state that the "Defendants, have deliberately refrained from implementing readily available technical measures to prevent infringement[…] such measures would undermine the very essence of their business model – to maximize the amount of infringing content available to users of YouTube."

Google, who bought YouTube in November 2006, argued that the case could create a precedent for how the internet is run and said that Premier League’s lawsuit was an attack on “artistic expression” on the internet:

"These suits simply misunderstand the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which balances the rights of copyright holders against the need to protect internet communications and content,” Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, said and continued “they threaten the way people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression."

The possible outcome
If the class action is certified, there are two very plausible outcomes based on previous similar situations.

The first is, put simply, that YouTube are convicted of violating the copyright law and must pay some kind of penalty for doing so. That is if the plaintiffs continue with the lawsuit. This seems to be the case with Viacom’s billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube. Viacom has identified more than 150,000 cases of copyright infringement on YouTube’s website and sued the company. Both companies believe they can win the case, and Google's managing counsel for litigation, Michael Kwun, has said that there has been no settlement talks between the two companies.  

The other option is to make a deal. YouTube has made recent deals with American sport organisations such as the NHL and latest the NBA. These deals are based on revenue-sharing and the option for the sports organisations to clamp down on copyrighted content. It will help the NBA and NHL in many areas. First of all, they can choose whether they want copyrighted material removed, or whether they want to have a share in the ad revenue; secondly, the promotional value is an important factor. According to the New York Post, the NBA believes it will strengthen the fan base, boost interest and boost ratings for televised games.

The Premier League doesn’t seem to want to come to such an agreement. They practically compare YouTube’s strategy to mafia like actions where companies can pay YouTube to protect their material. In the class action complaint letter, Premier League states that “Defendants have agreed to provide “protection” against their own infringing conduct through a series of “partnership” agreements with various copyright owners.”

The Premier League and the Bourne Co are suing for an injunction against YouTube and unspecified damages.

Read all about the Class action here