As per a group of content creators, the video-streaming giant, YouTube, protects the interest of larger copyright owners only, which includes studios and music labels. However, a San Francisco federal court has recently rejected YouTube LLC’s request to dismiss a contentious lawsuit that this group brought.
US District Court James Donato says that YouTube failed to show that he should throw out the lawsuit filed by a group of ‘ordinary; copyright owners that was led by Maria Schneider, a Grammy-winning composer.
YouTube’s parent company Google and its attorneys didn’t respond to a request for comment immediately on Tuesday, i.e., August 2. Not even the attorneys for the plaintiffs respond to a request for comment.
History of the case
Back in 2020, Schneider sued YouTube on the behalf of the small copyright owners who said that the platform protects the larger copyright owners only. They also said that renowned companies get access to YouTube’s advanced Content ID software to sac and block violating content. However, the small creators do not get access to this software.
The platform even raised several arguments to dismiss the case last year and said that the group hasn’t identified all the copyrights they were suing over. Also, it said that the group didn’t even show that it owned some copyrights at issue and it even failed to register others before it sued YouTube.
US District Court James Donato said that the video streaming platform’s arguments were “unavailing.” Along with this, Donato even rejected YouTube’s arguments which said that the group of content creators failed to showcase copyright registration and ownership.
