Could Copyright Fight Strip YouTube of Future Content?

YouTube.com is our favorite new cultural phenomenon. It has become the country's chosen place to watch funny, embarrassing and shocking videos. It is also the Internet's latest garage-to-gagillionaire story.

But as the Web site morphs from an ad hoc collection of bizarre and goofy media moments to a billion-dollar business that Google just gobbled up, it could become a target for copyright lawsuits.

Last week, YouTube reportedly started taking down clips from popular Comedy Central shows such as "South Park," "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" after the site was apparently notified the clips represented copyright infringement. The previous week, YouTube purged nearly 30,000 clips after it was informed of copyright violations by the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors Composers and Publishers. These incidents raise the question: Are the floodgates about to open? One day will the only clips posted on YouTube be those made by amateurs?

Copyright has always been an albatross for YouTube, which was recently bought by Google for the hefty sum of $1.65 billion. Nearly 60,000 new videos are loaded on YouTube every day by people from all over the world. YouTube has no direct control over what goes up before it goes up. But the site does list guidelines for people to follow (youtube.com/t/howto_copyright).

Rules of the Road

For instance, the site says, "If you taped [the clip] off of cable, videotaped your TV screen, or downloaded it from some other Web site, it is still copyrighted and requires the copyright owner's permission to distribute." And "It doesn't matter whether or not you give credit to the owner/author/songwriter -- it is still copyrighted. ... It doesn't matter that you are not selling the video for money -- it is still copyrighted. ... It doesn't matter whether or not the video contains a copyright notice -- it is still copyrighted. ... It doesn't matter whether other similar videos appear on our site --