YouTube Hosts While Napster Points

by mtippett | October 27, 2006 at 10:15 am

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I've always felt that Youtube was more like Napster than Flickr in terms of a media sharing site. More like Napster in the sense that a lot of the content on the site is owned by someone other than the uploader. It seems though, that the fact that YouTube actually hosts this material rather than helping others find it makes it less vulnerable to the legal challenges that help sink the early Napster.

Why isn't YouTube in trouble in the same way Napster and Grokster were? The first difference, as indicated, is that Napster simply wasn't covered by the 512 safe-harbor law, and YouTube is. Napster wasn't "hosting" information at the direction of its users, but rather providing a tool for users to find and download predominantly infringing content. It may sound odd that Napster gets in more trouble for helping you find illegal stuff than YouTube does for actually hosting it. But that's the law and why YouTube should really, really thank its friends at Bell.