In fact, media rivals NBC Universal, News Corp., and
Viacom have all banded together to explore the legal implications of their copyrighted material appearing on YouTube. Conspicuous by its absence, Time Warner and its CEO Dick Parsons hinted that the
AOL owner might go it alone in its negotiations with Google--resorting to legal action if it can't negotiate a reasonable deal. Of the four, News Corp. has the most negotiating muscle, given the
symbiotic video relationship its MySpace unit shares with YouTube.
Even so, sticking together is key: "If one media company starts writing checks to YouTube, other media companies that
sue risk wasting time in the courtroom. Therefore, it does seem that the big media companies are stronger as a cartel because they don't have much leverage from a legal standpoint." How do they have
no legal leverage?
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects Internet companies from copyright infringement, provided they aren't found to be willfully infringing on a content owner's rights. YouTube's users are the ones uploading the video, and the site always complies with requests to remove copyrighted content, which many see as a safe harbor for YouTube.