Viacom becomes DMCA bully

Viacom's massive YouTube takedown notice last week sent chills through the spine of the online video world. It also caught hundreds, if not thousands of non-infringing videos in its wake. ZDNet's Steve O'Hear writes, "[Viacom] simply ran a crude keyword search against any Viacom trademarks or brands - which has resulted in, potentially, thousands of User-Generated videos being caught in the crossfire."

Cory Doctorow takes Viacom's legal team to task, "The idea that they have members of the bar -- officers of the court! -- signing affidavits swearing that they have a good-faith belief that these clips infringe their copyrights is disgraceful. Practicing law is a privilege, not a right. The law societies should be holding these attorneys to account for this kind of behaviour."

He's right, law societies should be holding attorneys to a higher standard than this example demonstrates but, what about us, the Viacom consuming public? We should be outraged and vocal about the fact that takedown notices such as this go too far, and even more vocal about our displeasure with the law which makes fiascoes like this possible, The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That one piece of legislation puts YouTube in jeporady if it fails to comply immediately. It's a standard which allows Viacom to indiscriminately terrorize the YouTube community, while forcing the users of YouTube to deal with the aftermath. Where the DMCA is concerned, you the user are guilty until proven innocent.

Tags: cory doctorow, CoryDoctorow, dmca, news