Being in the business of Florida video production, we at Digital Video Arts are watching with great interest (and amusement/ire) the $1 billion court fight between media giant Viacom and Google-owned YouTube. The profanity-soaked battle playing out in a federal courtroom in New York could be one of epic proportions when it comes to changes in the way that digital video sharing happens on the Internet. And that doesn’t apply only to high-dollar productions coming out of Hollywood. Your Florida video production will be affected too.

In March 2007, Viacom filed suit against Google and YouTube for copyright infringement, seeking more than $1 billion in damages. Viacom claimed YouTube was committing “massive intentional copyright infringement” for allowing some 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom-owned programming. Google and YouTube argued, in short, that the onus was on individual YouTube posters – not YouTube itself – to know whether a video upload violated someone else’s copyright, and that because a copyright infringement that happened on their service was never intentional, YouTube was protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The judge in the case ruled that under the DMCA, which does limit the liability of online service providers for copyright infringement by users, Viacom could not seek punitive damages against YouTube. But massive statutory damages remain on the table, and the outcome of this case could greatly affect how your Florida video production’s copyright is protected.

At the heart of the case is the question of whose job it is to police the Internet for copyright violations – the website operators or individual content owners. A Google/YouTube win means that for Viacom and other content creators such as filmmakers, digital video producers, songwriters and authors, copyright as it exists today would be rendered unenforceable. Constantly patrolling the Web for pirated material and sending take-down notices would require time and financial resources that most content producers can ill afford. A Viacom win would mean that website operators would have to review every user’s every post before allowing it to be published. Again, this would place a paralyzing financial and human resources strain on website operators, including those operating sites like eBay Craigslist.

In response to the original case, Google and YouTube in 2008 installed Video ID, a copyright identification system that tracks unauthorized videos and enables copyright owners to choose whether to block the clip, allow it to remain online without compensation, or enable YouTube to sell advertisements that play prior to each clip. Upwards of 90% of copyright owners are choosing the latter option.

To protect your Florida video production’s copyright, it’s advisable that you register your project with the U.S. Copyright Office within three months of its first publication. This will qualify you for collection of attorney’s fees should you ever file and win a copyright infringement claim against an authorized user of your material under the federal Copyright Act. Note that you must have already registered your copyright before filing a claim against a suspected infringer – you cannot register a copyright and sue an infringer simultaneously. If you do find that someone is posting your Florida video production, either in full or via clips, you or your attorney must send the website operator a take-down notice under the DMCA. If the operator refuses, you may be entitled to actual (punitive) or statutory damages under the federal Copyright Act. If the infringement threatens immediate harm for which money damages awarded would not adequately compensate, you may also be able to land a temporary restraining order against the infringer.