Judge Rejects Lawsuit Against YouTube As 'Frankenstein Monster Posing As A Class Action'

from the good-ruling dept

You may recall that soon after Viacom sued YouTube, the Premier League football association (which is notorious for aggressively seeking to enforce its copyrights) sued as well, and sought to turn its case into a class action lawsuit for basically anyone who might have had their copyright-covered works uploaded to YouTube. The court has now eloquently smacked that attempt down, pointing out that the issues for different individuals and organizations would be totally different, making it inappropriate to lump them all together.
Forty five years ago Judge Lumbard of the United States Court of Appeals for this circuit called a case a "Frankenstein monster posing as a class action." ... The description fits the class aspects of this case.

The putative class consists every person and entity in the world who own infringed copyrighted works, who have or will register them with U.S. Copyright Office as required, whose works fall into either two categories: they were subject of infringement which was blocked by YouTube after notice, but suffered additional infringement through subsequent uploads (the "repeat infringement class"), or are musical compositions which defendants tracked, monetized or identified and allowed to be used without proper authorization (the "music publisher class"). Plaintiffs assert that there are "at least thousands of class members" the Repeat Infringement Class, and "hundreds" in the Music Publisher Class...
It then goes on to point out that YouTube is just the platform, and just because infringing content is uploaded to YouTube, it doesn't automatically make YouTube liable. It notes that "YouTube does not generate infringing material." And, given that, the situations of various potential class members is quite different. Then there's a strong point related to all of this: because there are all sorts of different issues related to copyright, "copyright claims are poor candidates for class-action treatment." Specifically, there would need to be specific evidence relating to each individual infringement, and that makes it silly to do this as a class action.
Here to make resolutions which advance the litigation will require the court to determine, for each copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, whether a copyright holder gave notices containing sufficient information to permit the service provider to identify and locate the infringing material so that it could be taken down. That requires individualized evidence. Further, the analysis required to determine "fair use," and other defenses, is necessarily specific to the individual case.
The court points out that the benefit of a class action is that there's "an issue that is central to the validity of each of the claims in one stroke" but that's clearly not true with mass copyright claims. Given all that, the class certification (for both classes) was denied.
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Filed Under: class action, copyright, infringement, videos
Companies: google, premier league, youtube


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  • icon
    DannyB (profile), 16 May 2013 @ 2:40pm

    Why not sue each individual infringer?

    Why is that such a problem to sue each individual infringer?

    You file a complaint. Begin discovery to discover the identity of the plaintiff. You then prove your case of infringement. They did this against Jammie Thomas-Rasset and won.

    If they then try to threaten the defendant into a settlement, it is obvious that their true intent is that of copyright trolling. Using the court as a tool in a blackmail extortion shakedown racket.

    Oh, and the person who uploaded a video doesn't have any money. Google does have money. And money, not justice, not artists rights, not compensation for actual (probably nonexistant) damages, not education of the public about copyright infringement, is what this is all about. Money. Nothing else.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Alana (profile), 16 May 2013 @ 2:45pm

      Re: Why not sue each individual infringer?

      The answer is simple.

      Because they don't have any money.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 16 May 2013 @ 3:14pm

      Re: Why not sue each individual infringer?

      No real money in it?...just sayin'

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Ninja (profile), 17 May 2013 @ 7:32am

      Re: Why not sue each individual infringer?

      Youtube even complies quite promptly (even in an automated way) with DMCA takedown notices. I wonder what ethereal reason the courts are taking so long to dismiss those lawsuits and tell Viacom and the likes to go after the individual infringers if they want. Google should invite Viacom and the judges to screen 48h+ of content that's upload every minute while pointing exactly what is infringing and what is not, considering even Viacom can't sort this out.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 May 2013 @ 3:57pm

    Are judges starting to see the craziness of copyright?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Coyote (profile), 16 May 2013 @ 7:24pm

    I'll say this; 'Frankenstein posing as class action.' is a great quote, and one I feel applies to this case and many other 'patchwork' lawsuits like it.

    Adequately describes the MAFIAA Ceos. After all, where is Frankenstein's brain? Certainly not in his skull.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Anonymous Howard (profile), 17 May 2013 @ 5:11am

      Re:

      Just for the record, Frankenstein was the doctor who created the patchwork monster, not the actual monster.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        DannyB (profile), 17 May 2013 @ 6:17am

        Re: Re:

        Frankenstein should sue for defamation, libel, slander or publicity rights when people misuse his good name to refer to the product of his creative genius.

        link to this | view in chronology ]


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