...distributed illegally. "We don't want to let anything slip through the cracks," said Julie Summersgill, a spokeswoman for NBC Universal. YouTube, she said, promptly responded.
But NBC is also trying to embrace the Net. The network created its own Web site where videos can be streamed for free, Summersgill said. By comparison, as much as the music industry complained about the peer-to-peer sites, it was several years before there was a significant legal alternative.
"We recognise that there is this demand from the audience to get this content and share it in new ways with people," Summersgill said. "But we must also balance that with protecting our copyrighted material."
Playing by the rules
The better-known video-sharing sites seem to have learned the hard lessons of their music predecessors. Julie Supan, senior director of marketing at YouTube, chafes at any comparison between her company and early versions of Napster.
"They were renegades, amateurs, kids straight out of college," Supan said. "They were in conflict with the music industry. We believe what we're doing is complementary."
YouTube executives argue that their site can act as a promotional tool for movie studios, TV shows and record companies. It appears some advertisers have been quietly seeding the site with ads, promotional content for TV shows and music videos. A video that re-creates the introduction to "The Simpsons" with live actors was posted on YouTube as part of a marketing campaign by BSkyB. YouTube says the video has been viewed by 1.3 million people since 3 March.
To ease doubts about the company's intentions, YouTube streams content to prevent someone from easily downloading a clip, producing a hundred copies and selling them, Supan said. The company maintains control of all video-clip links, which allows executives to remove any unlawful posts. The company has also given copyright holders tools to help them spot violations, Supan said.
YouTube has a fairly thorough "terms of use" agreement to protect itself. It says, in short, please don't post anything on this site that's copyright-protected. And if you do, you're on your own. "In our privacy policy statement we state that we will cooperate with US state and federal law," Supan said.
In its landmark June 2005 decision in the Grokster lawsuit, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a company can be held legally responsible if it engages in "intentional facilitation" of copyright infringement.
Grokster and StreamCast, creator of the Morpheus file-swapping network, did just that because they profited by advertising and failed to take any steps "to diminish the infringing activity using their software", the justices decided.
In other words, as long as YouTube and similar video-sharing sites respond promptly to complaints of copyright violations — and don't encourage illicit activities — they may have relatively few legal worries.
Of course, language in user agreements that instructs people not to submit material that is copyright-protected only protects the hosting company if it takes down the material as soon as it is asked, said Richard Lehv, a copyright and trademark lawyer.
"The language doesn't protect them," Lehv said, "unless they put some teeth into it."
CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.
