Maria Schneider files class action suit against YouTube for copyright infringement

By Emmanuel Legrand

US composer and performer Maria Schneider has filed a class-action lawsuit against YouTube and parent companies Google and Alphabet in the US District Court in the Northern District of California, San Jose Division, seeking damages and injunctive relief for copyright infringement under the Copyright Act.

  At the heart of the lawsuit is how independent rights holders that do not have access to YouTube's Content ID system can monitor and police infringing content. YouTube, according to the lawsuit is "replete with videos infringing on the rights of copyright holders" and has "facilitated and induced this hotbed of copyright infringement through its development and implementation of a copyright enforcement system that protects only the most powerful copyright owners such as major studios and record labels."

  Plaintiffs and the Class are described as "the ordinary creators of copyrighted works" and "are denied any meaningful opportunity to prevent YouTube’s public display of works that infringe their copyrights—no matter how many times their works have previously been pirated on the platform. They are thus left behind by YouTube’s copyright enforcement system and instead are provided no meaningful ability to police the extensive infringement of their copyrighted work."

Deliberate limitations

  It added: "These limitations are deliberate and designed to maximise YouTube’s (and its parents Google’s and Alphabet’s) focused but reckless drive for user volume and advertising revenue."

  Plaintiffs argued that "Defendants permit and facilitate this infringement because it furthers their growth and revenue strategies and because they have determined that Plaintiffs and the Class —  unlike YouTube’s preferred Content ID partners — lack the resources and leverage necessary to combat copyright infringement on the scale at which it is perpetuated on YouTube."

  Plaintiffs filed for five actions the Defendants are allegedly responsible for: direct copyright infringement, inducement of copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement and removal of copyright management information and distribution of altered or missing copyright management information.

Offer Content ID to all persons

  Plaintiffs are seeking that the action "may be maintained as a class action." They also asking for a jury trial and for the court to grant Plaintiffs and the Class injunctive and other equitable relief enjoining Defendants from a) directly or indirectly reproducing, publicly performing, publicly displaying, or distributing the copyrighted works to which Plaintiffs and the Class have exclusive rights, b) causing, contributing to, inducing, enabling, facilitating, or participating in the infringement of any of the works cited in the lawsuit, and c) to "affirmatively adopt, implement, and offer to all persons the technological measures available now, including Content ID, and those that shall become available in the future to identify and protect copyrighted content uploaded without consent and prevent it from being posted or otherwise made available through the facilities owned, operated, or controlled by Defendants."

  Plaintiffs are also seeking damages and Defendants’ profits derived from the infringing acts, and/or statutory damages.