Activist Groups Sue Parent Of Comedy Central For Getting Parody Blocked On YouTube

NEW YORK (AP) _ Activist groups sued the parent company of Comedy Central on Thursday, claiming the cable network improperly asked the video-sharing site YouTube to remove a parody of the network's

Thursday, March 22nd 2007, 11:25 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ Activist groups sued the parent company of Comedy Central on Thursday, claiming the cable network improperly asked the video-sharing site YouTube to remove a parody of the network's ``The Colbert Report.''

Although the video in question contained clips taken from the television show, MoveOn.org Civic Action and Brave New Films LLC argued that their use was protected under ``fair use'' provisions of copyright law.

They said Viacom Inc. should have known the use was legal and thus its complaint to YouTube to have the video blocked amounted to a ``misrepresentation'' that is subject to damages under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The challenge, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, came about a week after Viacom filed its own, $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube, claiming that the wildly popular Web site is rife with copyrighted video from Viacom shows, including ``The Colbert Report.''

Neither YouTube nor its parent, Google Inc., was named in the latest lawsuit, filed on the plaintiffs' behalf by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.

Viacom spokesman Jeremy Zweig had no immediate comment.

Under the DMCA, YouTube and other service providers are generally immune from copyright lawsuits as long as they promptly respond to copyright complaints, known as takedown notices. According to the lawsuit, a takedown notice was sent to YouTube last week, and the video was blocked almost immediately.

Service providers are not required to investigate claims under the DMCA and in fact could lose their immunity if they take too long to respond. The law does give users the right to sue the issuer of the takedown request when it contains misrepresentations that an item is infringing. Such lawsuits are rare, though.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified legal costs and damages on grounds the plaintiffs' free-speech rights were harmed.

The parody ``Stop the Falsiness,'' a play on host Stephen Colbert's use of the term ``truthiness,'' was jointly produced by MoveOn and Brave New Films, an activist production company that has made documentaries on the Iraq war, Wal-Mart and the Fox News Channel.