• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, June 19, 2007

YouTube's well-publicized copyright woes aren't keeping the company from trying to expand. Today, YouTube bowed new sites for users in nine countries - - Brazil, Britain, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.

While most YouTube visitors already come from outside the United States, the company now will court non-U.S. traffic by forging deals with local content providers in other countries.

If YouTube faced legal hassles before, expanding internationally certainly won't help. Copyright laws abroad, for instance, don't always incorporate U.S. notions of "fair use," for instance.

Of course, even without the expansion, YouTube already faces at least one copyright suit based on British law: "Psychic" Uri Geller currently is asking a U.S. court to apply English law to rule that 8 seconds of copyrighted material in an almost 15-minute clip violates his rights. Still, such cases appear rare for now; that situation might change if the company sets up shop in other countries.

Also, few other nations have the same freedom of speech protections as the United States. YouTube already tangled with Turkey in March when a court there blocked access to the site due to a clip that allegedly insulted Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the Turkish Republic in 1923. YouTube ended up taking down the clip.

Even though YouTube might have to deal with threats or legal action by foreign countries anyway, actively attempting to do business abroad appears to subject the company to additional pressure to censor material and/or reveal names of users -- as Google and Yahoo have both seen. Consider, earlier this year, a human rights group sued Yahoo for revealing information that resulted in the arrest of dissidents in China. Hopefully, YouTube has a plan in place to protect users in similar situations.