Information Law Possum (discontinued)

This is–to take up the title of a post by Professor John Palfrey–day 4 of the Viacom-Youtube saga. Viacom has retracted its copyright claim regarding Jim Moore’s home video. Three things will remain:

1. Jim Moore’s video on YouTube.
2. 10,000+ articles/posts on the story that will eventually go the way of everything on the web–to the Internet Archive.
3. A loss of reputation on the part of Viacom (allbeit certainly limited both in terms of time and audience).

I’m not quite sure whether Viacom was aware of this reputation risk when it decided to send cease-and-desist letters to Youtube. But the big echo this case has caused hopefully will change that and thus lead to a more targeted use of cease-and-desist letters under the DMCA. And the risk isn’t likely to decrease in the future, as the community is organizing around takedowns.

By the way, it would be interesting to know which risk a corporate compliance risk manager would quantify as higher: the risk of having to pay compensation under DMCA § 512(f) (see latter part of this post by J.P.) or the reputation risk associated with sending unjustified cease-and-desist letters.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 6:46 pm and is filed under copyright, e-compliance, litigation, media.