In a bid to encourage more companies to post content onto YouTube, the company must show that they are willing to play nice and protect the interest of said companies against unauthorized repostings or use of their copyrighted content. This makes sense. However YouTube also needs to remember that its users, the average Joe, are what made the platform big to begin with, and that’s what they’re doing in their latest announcement.
The video streaming platform has announced that they are planning to help cover the legal costs and defend its users in court over particularly nasty cases of DMCA takedowns. This issue stems from fair use in which sometimes some videos which might have a TV show, movie, or music playing in the background (unintentionally) are subject to a DMCA takedown request.
According to YouTube, “We’re doing this because we recognize that creators can be intimidated by the DMCA’s counter notification process, and the potential for litigation that comes with it.” For example imagine you’re at home recording a video of your toddler running around the house, but so happens that there is a song by an artist played on radio.
Obviously it wasn’t your intention to record that video as subterfuge to pirate the song or use it unlawfully, but sometimes the legal department of movie studios and recording labels can be pretty heavy-handed and might institute a DMCA takedown request. This is the kind of situation that YouTube wants to avoid.
However according to YouTube, “While we can’t offer legal protection to every video creator—or even every video that has a strong fair use defense—we’ll continue to resist legally unsupported DMCA takedowns as part of our normal processes.” Either way we guess kudos to them for their efforts all the same.