Copyright tips for posting online videos from YouTube

Sure we have an RSS, thanks for asking. Here is the link: http://www.newmediarights.org/nmr_rss

Hi Lou,

Here's some general observations about Youtube, embedding, and copyright law.

In general, linking is quite protected in the law. As to Youtube specifically, Youtube actually makes you agree when you host your videos on their service that they AND their users have the right to embed your video.  So, Youtube, gets the rights for its users to embed videos when someone hosting videos uploads a video.

That said, if that video has copyright infriging content in it, there might be a bit more to the analysis.

In copyright, for instance, to directly infringe you have to exercise one of the rights of the original copyright holder has such as reproducing, distributing, creating a derivative, or publicly performing or displaying the work.

It is difficult to see how a link itself would be direct infringement.  However, if you absolutely know you are linking to something that is copyright infringing, you must be wary of contributory infringement.

Importantly, there is a particular section of Digital Millenium Copyright Act that provides a safe harbor for "service providers" (a relatively broad term that includes many different kinds of websites, blogs, etc) for linking to infringing material.

In many respects, and particularly technically, embedding a video is basically the same as a link.  The embed code is a link that then serves up content from a third parties' website or blog, not yours. 

To take advantage of the DMCA, however, you need to run a gauntlet to protect your service from liability.  You can learn about the DMCA in our guide here

http://www.newmediarights.org/guide/legal/copyright/dmca/Protecting_webs...