Copyright claims against YouTube ‘unfair’, says co-founder 

The co-founder of YouTube, Chad Hurley, has said legal cases launched against the video-sharing website have been “unfair” and blamed traditional television broadcasters who are scared of losing their influence in the distribution of content.
Multiple copyright cases have been launched against YouTube in recent years, but none have been successful.

Chad Hurley told in an interview with Arabian Business that the site was targeted because its phenomenal popularity had made it a threat to traditional video content owners and distributors.

“Of course I think it’s been unfair; when you’re in the spotlight you’re kind of blamed for all the problems,” Hurley said.

About 100 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute – a rate that means more content is uploaded in a month than the three main US TV networks created in their first 60 years, the website claims.

Hurley said YouTube, which was sold to Google in 2007, had fortunately put in place policies early enough that had prevented any legal action against it from being successful.
“It’s all about developing the right tools and policies, which I feel we were able to do from day one at YouTube and it’s proved itself in any case that’s been brought against us,” he said.

“Even though we were the largest [online content distributor], I think we were the ones doing the most. There were a lot of competitors that weren’t nearly as pro-active as YouTube, [but] because we’re the most visible … people associate [copyright issues] with us.”

“Every country is going to have their own set of laws and every culture is going to have their own set of norms. It’s a hard thing to figure out – we’re talking about global platforms,” he said.

“We were lucky enough to be part of Google that had to some extent figured some of that stuff out or had the resources for us to do that appropriately, but it’s always a give and take and you have to have the appropriate people in place to respond to things as necessary”.

Source: arabianbusiness- Copyright claims against YouTube ‘unfair’, says co-founder

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