In Depth: Copyright Issues Facing YouTube/Google

The Wall Street Journal has published a fairly length conversation between legal expert John Palfrey and economist Stan Liebowitz about the potential copyright issues facing YouTube. (It's available free - you don't have to be a subscriber.)

A section of Palfrey's comments:

...Whether or not Google makes money on the [YouTube video] content is not, and should not be, the issue at stake here. The issue is whether or not Google takes its job seriously in responding to genuine demands to take down copyrighted materials from the YouTube service. To date, YouTube has been a model citizen in this regard: they've gone out of their way to license content from big content owners, they've been working on fingerprinting solutions to help content owners track their copyrighted materials, and they've sought to make it easy, expedited process for submitting a complaint about copyright violations. They've even made room for Diddy to have a channel, to which the artist has uploaded BadBoyRecords material to YouTube. Google needs to be accountable to copyright holders. If they are, they should be in the clear for the YouTube service. It's about creating an accountable Internet.