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Google says safe harbours are brilliant
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 23 February 2017
There were you thinking that the safe harbours in US copyright law weren’t fit for purpose and were in serious need of some reform. But you’re wrong. Those safe harbours are fucking fantastic.
Don’t just take my word for it, check out what Google has just told the US Copyright Office. “These safe harbours are fucking fantastic”, said Bob Google, the boss of Google. Well, I’m paraphrasing. But only slightly.
“In short, the [safe harbour providing] Digital Millennium Copyright Act has proven successful at fostering ongoing collaboration between rightsholders and online service providers, a collaboration that continues to pay dividends both in the US and in international contexts”, says the web giant in its submission to the Copyright Office’s previously reported (second) review of the safe harbours, which has been published by law professor Michael Geist.
The safe harbours say that web firms like Google can’t be held liable for copyright infringement when they inadvertently host or link to copyright infringing material – as a result of their user’s uploads or automated activities – providing they have a system in place for removing infringing stuff when made aware of it.
Google bigs up its systems for allowing rights owners to do just that in its submission, both YouTube’s Content ID system and the platform that content firms can use to have links removed from its search engine. Actually, most of the URLs rights owners request to be removed from its search engine aren’t even in its database to start with, says Google, but that’s fine, because Google loves everything to do with safe harbours because, as I think I may have mentioned, they’re fucking fantastic.
FYI – the music industry does not agree.
