July 4, 2007
Is It Copyright Infringement To Embed An Infringing YouTube Video On Your Blog?
Mike Masnick on Techdirt asks a good questions. Is it copyright infringement to embed an infringing YouTube
"Particularly when one of the great features of YouTube was that each video provided a line of HTML that would allow you to embed the video directly into your site.
The actual video is still hosted by YouTube though. The person who uploaded it is someone entirely different. All you've done is put a single line of HTML on your page -- but it's not hard to see how some might see that as infringing.
Ronald Lewis let us know about a typical cease-and-desist letter he received from a lawyer because he had some blog posts that embedded YouTube videos of musician Michael McDonald. Lewis didn't upload the videos. He's not hosting the videos. He simply put a single line of HTML (provided by YouTube for this specific purpose) on his website, and it would then display the video."
Masnick believes "it won't be long before we start seeing a lot more threats and lawsuits over embedded videos from bloggers who have no idea they're putting themselves at risk simply for putting a line of code into a blog post.
And last week, The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. filed lawsuits against two websties YouTVpc.com and Peekvid.com for simply linking to infringing video content.
[via Techmeme]
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