Free for a Fee

Most of us uploading YouTube videos aren’t deeply invested in their continued availability. If YouTube removed our videos or relocated them to a different URL, we might be puzzled why but otherwise would probably shrug our shoulders. However, YouTube is the birthing ground for the next generation of music stars, and there’s a lot of money to be made from a successful viral YouTube video. When YouTube removes or relocates a video that an emerging star is investing in some marketing muscle to promote, it can disrupt the musician’s economic expectations–and, in theory, their hopes and dreams. Can YouTube make these remove/relocate decisions capriciously, or could it face legal liability for the decisions?

Several pending lawsuits against YouTube allege that it made remove-and-relocate without sufficient justification or that YouTube’s public characterization of the remove-and-relocate was misleading. YouTube won the most recent court ruling, but not as decisively as it would have liked–and with a few choice words from the judge as well.

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Case Citation: Darnaa LLC v. Google, Inc., 2015 WL 7753406 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 2, 2015). The initial complaint.

The content in this post was found at http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2015/12/can-youtube-remove-and-relocate-user-videos-capriciously-darnaa-v-google-forbes-cross-post.htm and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.