What’s The Future Of YouTube?

YouTube, the popular internet video sharing site, may have a few bumps in the road for it. In the past two months, two lawsuits have been filed against YouTube and it’s parent company, Google, claiming copyright infringement.

The three companies currently involved in the lawsuits are The Football Association Premier League (said to be the top soccer league in England), Bourne Co (an independent music publisher), and Viacom (owner of MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 and other networks).

While it’s undeniable that there is plenty of copyright infringing material on YouTube, I do not see that the plaintiffs have a good case, for several reasons.

First of all, YouTube does remove copyright infringing material when they are properly notified of it. In fact, I have seen videos be removed within minutes of being posted because they violated a copyright.

Secondly, U.S. Courts have already ruled that file sharing networks were not responsible for copyright infringement that occurred through them.

But even if the plaintiffs win, this case should not impact marketers who use YouTube very much. Lawsuit or no, I believe that YouTube will continue to be a very popular site with opportunities for smart, responsible marketers.