The National Legal and Policy Center has launched a list of the “Top 50” full-length movies, cable programs and music concerts hosted on Google Video, which they say, are likely without the copyright owner’s knowledge or permission.
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The Top 50 list includes the name of the movie or program, the production company, the number of days it has been hosted on Google Video and the number of viewers. The NLPC says all the content in the Top 50 list was still available on Monday, July 9th.
“We realize that this is probably a ‘drop in the bucket’ in ferreting out copyrighted content among the millions of videos posted on Google Video, YouTube and other popular video sites, but we hope that our efforts both raise awareness of the issue of video and music piracy and hopefully serve as a resource for copyright owners to check if their content is on the sites without their knowledge or approval,” said National Legal and Policy Center’s Chairman Ken Boehm.
The NLPC says that movies like Warner Brothers Blood Diamond, Columbia’s Spiderman III and Disney films like Meet the Robinson’s as well as Cars are available on Google Video. The NLPC will update the Top 50 list periodically to expose potentially infringing content.
“It’s difficult to know for sure whether all of the content included in the Top 50 list is being hosted in violation of copyright laws – NLPC makes no assertions — but it’s a reasonable assumption that much of the content has been uploaded without the copyright owner’s knowledge or approval,” added Boehm.
Google has been embroiled in a slew of copyright infringement suits over the past year, including Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit. Google has maintained they are protected under the DMCA and that they comply when asked to remove infringing content.
