As we get ready to see more details about the filings from both Viacom and Google in the YouTube fight, Eric Goldman notes that Viacom has dropped another 187 videos from its complaint. This isn’t the first time either. Late last year, Viacom dropped a bunch of videos from the lawsuit after realizing that many had been uploaded by Viacom employees. As Goldman notes, the fact that it’s taken Viacom three years to even realize that some of these videos don’t belong in the lawsuit is incredibly telling. If it takes Viacom three years to realize that such videos may or may not infringe, how is it reasonable to expect Google/YouTube to be able to make snap judgments and automatically know what infringes on all the videos uploaded to its site? Viacom, of course, is just claiming that it’s removing these 187 videos to “streamline” the issues. However, considering that there are 63,000 videos involved in the lawsuit, it’s not like this makes any difference at all. Basically, Viacom knows that it has highly questionable claims on those videos it’s trying to drop from the case — which proves the point. Even Viacom has no idea what is and is not infringing, despite having three years to figure it out. Yet it thinks that the law should require a third party to know immediately?
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