Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> On 1/20/2012 13:24, Warp wrote:
> >    There have been actual cases, though, where YouTube *has* seemingly
> > taken the role of a judge and determined *not* to restore some videos

> I believe there have been cases where youtube (and others) have restored the 
> videos promptly even without a counter-claim being filed, because it was 
> obviously not infringing. And there have been cases where youtube has kept 
> the video down in spite of a counter-claim because it was clearly infringing 
> and the counter-claim was clearly perjury. I'm not sure it's completely as 
> cut-and-dry as it seems in the law, and of course Google has enough money to 
> lawyer up to the gills if someone tries to abuse them legally for doing the 
> right thing.

  What I meant is that there have been cases where the situation has been
far from clear, and almost certainly a case of completely fair use (more
concretely: a critique on someone else's videos, with short segments of
said videos), where the DMCA claim has been clearly made for spurious
reasons (just to shut down the critique), and where YouTube seemingly
decided not to restore the video because of political, rather than legal,
reasons.

  IIRC when YouTube was sued by big corporations for distributing copyrighted
material, courts decided that YouTube had so-called "safe harbor" status
(in the exact same way as search engines do): They are not guilty of
distributing copyrighted material, their users are, and YouTube itself
is not to blame, as long as they retain a neutral stance and obey copyright
claims and takedown requests.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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