I Swear Your Honor, I Didn't Know That Video Was Copyrighted!

So the big news this morning is that a judge here in New York State has issued a ruling in which Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington notes, "That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason." Arrington goes on to call the judge a moron.

I am certainly no lawyer, but how was I supposed to know that a video I viewed on YouTube was copyrighted and that I should not have viewed it? Should I have kept a real-time pocket guide of which videos are ok and which aren't? Please note that I have never viewed a copyrighted video on YouTube.

Ryan Singel from Wired notes, "Viacom filed suit against Google in March 2007, seeking more than $1 billion in damages for allowing users to upload clips of Viacom's copyright material." Google did win on their request to not share their search source code and YouTube's copyright algorithm.

YouTube may have to answer for why they allowed copyrighted videos to be placed onto their video network and that's fine. But to expect consumers to be able to tell a copyrighted video from a non-copyrighted video is absurd.

Is it the responsibility of the host to know what's allowable or is it the viewer's responsibility?

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