14 DAY TRIAL // Numerous French sports groups filed a complaint against the search giant Google, accusing the company for copyright infringement after several clips were published on the online video sharing service YouTube. The French national tennis organization and Ligue 1, the soccer league, claims that YouTube posted clips on the official page without their approval. Nothing new, you'll say, YouTube is quite used with the lawsuits filed for company infringement, so what's the point? Well, it seems like several organizations are interested to join the class action against Google, the most famous being Cherry Lane Music Publishing, the company that owns the rights for all the Elvis clips.
According to afterdawn.com, the New-York based company is owning approximately 65,000 copyrights, that means almost the same amount of clips affected by the Viacom removal. As you might know, the MTV owner required the search giant Google to delete almost 100,000 clips from the page because they were uploaded without their authorization.
"We formed a firm conclusion that on Google and YouTube there is rampant copyright infringement," Louis Solomon, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the suit, said according to the same source. "We think it's wrong and are eager for a judge to decide the issue."
As always, YouTube is protected by the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that sustains the online video sharing service can't be accused of copyright infringement as most of the clips are uploaded by ordinary Internet users. Because it's extremely difficult to charge and demand damages from an ordinary Internet user, most of the victims are filing lawsuits against the parent company Google.