Viacom Also Mad about YouTube Download Tools

Viacom amended its complaint in its ongoing legal dispute with Google last month to suggest that YouTube “consciously tolerates or cooperates” with software tools that allow users to download its videos, as Cynthia Brumfield notes. These are the websites, Firefox extensions and desktop applications for saving hard copies of videos that we went through and reviewed earlier this month, which are expressly prohibited by YouTube itself (though to be fair, YouTube also prohibits things like unauthorized copyrighted uploads, and you know how that turned out).

Here’s the text of a new paragraph added to the complaint:

Users can also download copies of Plaintiff’s copyrighted works posted and maintained on YouTube’s website using various readily available software applications and devices. These software applications and devices are produced by third-party entities to facilitate the distribution of copies from the YouTube website to YouTube users. On information and belief, YouTube consciously tolerates or cooperates with such entities in order to permit YouTube users to play downloaded copies of infringing videos on their home computers, laptops, iPods or other devices; YouTube has the technical means to prevent the making or retention of such copies but has elected not to do so. On information and belief, YouTube also distributes infringing videos to third-party business partners that provide new “platforms” for viewing and/or copying the videos.

YouTube, however, expressly forbids any form of consumption other than streaming in its terms of use:

“Streaming” means a contemporaneous digital transmission of an audiovisual work via the Internet from the YouTube Service to a user’s device in such a manner that the data is intended for real-time viewing and not intended to be copied, stored, permanently downloaded, or redistributed by the user. Accessing User Videos for any purpose or in any manner other than Streaming is expressly prohibited. User Videos are made available “as is.”

It seems Viacom would have YouTube use stronger DRM than the industry standard Flash. And as anyone who’s tried to access YouTube from an iPhone knows, YouTube doesn’t supply video downloads to its partner platforms like the Apple TV and the iPhone; such video streaming is done over the air.

Last week, Google had protested in a filing that Viacom’s lawsuit threatens the very way hundreds of millions of people exchange information over the Internet.

In an earlier version of her post, Brumfield had also indicated that Viacom added a new charge that YouTube allegedly violated copyright law by enabling videos to be embedded, but this portion had been in the original complaint, as well.

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