US artists denounce YouTube’s immunity from copyright claims

More than 100 American artists have petitioned the Copyright Office to amend a law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This protects parties like YouTube from liability for copyright claims.

Among the artists are well-known names such as Rod Stewart, Billy Joel and Katy Perry, Bloomberg reports. They are fed up with an article from the DMCA ensuring that hosting parties, among others, are not liable if they make copyrighted material available. This is because those companies only offer a service and play a passive role towards the content that users upload. The artists argue that this is unfair, because those parties earn a lot of money with it. In addition, revenues from streaming music have only increased in recent years.

However, the hosting parties point out that they do offer ways to remove copyright-infringing content, such as a notice and takedown procedure or through automated systems such as YouTube’s Content ID. The artists counter that the procedures whereby a request for removal first has to be submitted is too great a burden, and that therefore the law must change or the hosting parties must adjust their policy. The Copyright Office does not have the power to amend the law, but can make a recommendation to a committee that has been working on US copyright reform since 2013.

A similar regulation has been included in European law, which distinguishes between hosting and access providers. The latter is only liable for content if he plays an active role and, for example, starts making changes to the content. Hosting providers are liable if they are informed of illegal content, for example through an NTD procedure, but they subsequently do not take any action.