Youtube an ISP?

The case of Viacom and Google could set the playing field for the relationship between content owners and interactive platforms on the internet.

§ 512 of the DMCA provides a safe harbor provision for internet service providers (ISPs) and gives copyright owners the obligation of sending take down notices to ISPs that host material that violates copyrights. The cost of checking for infringement is thereby shifted towards the copyright owners. The copyright owners have to watch and see their absolute right to copy and distribute decrease to a right that has to be claimed in every instance in order to be protected. This shift makes running sites like youtube.com easier and may have a certain social benefit, but it makes it harder for owners of only a few copyrights to actually protect their rights. Monitoring for possible violations is expensive and time consuming. Only owners of many copyrighted works can afford that.

Several questions could be answered in this case. One would be if youtube.com is actually an ISP. The DMCA what arguably drafted with companies like AOL in mind. Companies that provide a physical network of computers and only access to the Internet. Recently this safe harbor provision has been applied to more and more players on the Internet.

A narrow interpretation of the DMCA could solve this question, but courts could shy away from this issue and leave this problem to Congress.