Tag: Class Action

@SchneiderMaria Comes for YouTube With Class Action

We are thrilled to report that composer and big band leader Maria Schneider has sued YouTube in the prelude to a class action.  It’s worth pointing out that this is the first time since the Viacom case that the creative community has taken on the Leviathan of Mountain View.  It’s also worth pointing out that Google won’t be able to buy their way out of this one the way they have the others, they can’t give a job to somebody’s child, it’s just not going to go the usual way that Google thrives on corruption.  The complaint is really well-written (as we would expect) and tells the all-too-familiar compelling story of the struggle of artists to deal with YouTube’s “whack-a-mole” business model (or what Chris sometimes calls the “ennui of learned helplessness”:

This case is about copyright piracy. YouTube, the largest video-sharing website in the world, is replete with videos infringing on the rights of copyright holders. YouTube has facilitated and induced this hotbed of copyright infringement through its development and implementation of a copyright enforcement system that protects only the most powerful copyright owners such as major studios and record labels.

Plaintiffs and the Class are the ordinary creators of copyrighted works. They are denied any meaningful opportunity to prevent YouTube’s public display of works that infringe their copyrights—no matter how many times their works have previously been pirated on the platform. They are thus left behind by YouTube’s copyright enforcement system and instead are provided no meaningful ability to police the extensive infringement of their copyrighted work. These limitations are deliberate and designed to maximize YouTube’s (and its parents Google’s and Alphabet’s) focused but reckless drive for user volume and advertising revenue.

Moreover, the Plaintiffs and the Class are not only prevented from using any meaningful enforcement tool, but the system in place actually exacerbates the harms caused to them including in a manner that bars Defendants from the protections of any safe harbors under applicable copyright laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”).

Read the complaint here.

@Barnini: China plays victim card as lawsuits over its handling of coronavirus grow

China on Monday played the victim card, calling on the United States to stop blaming the country for the global COVID-19 crisis, as pressure increased over Beijing’s mismanagement of the novel coronavirus that has infected more than 2.4 million people worldwide….at least seven class action lawsuits [have been] filed in U.S. federal court against China related to coronavirus. Five of the lawsuits do not seek a specific amount of money or damages. One, however, wants China to fork over $20 trillion, while another wants $8 trillion.

Read the post on Fox News

ARW Replay: Beyond EU Antitrust: Sign Up for Class Action Against Google in Europe

[Editor Charlie sez: Chris wrote this post in 2015 and it is worth reconsidering in light of the European Commission’s ruling that Google is an out of control monopoly.]

Anyone in the music business has felt Google’s boot on their throat in a host of ways.  Set aside the millions of take down notices and the absurd YouTube ContentID system.  Set aside how Google hides advertising revenue from its YouTube cash cow that should rightly go to the artists and songwriters.  The Europeans are focused on a much simpler issue.

Google favors YouTube in video search results.  We all know they do it and they’ve been doing it for years.  Now there may be a chance to actually do something about it, at least in Europe.

As MTP readers will recall, the European Commission has pursued antitrust complaints against Google in Europe on behalf of price comparison sites and others that Google steals content from.  Anyone in the music business is very familiar with Google stealing content in their various business lines–they do it to us all the time when they’re not driving traffic to pirate sites.

According to the New York Times:

[Google] may be the target of a series of new civil lawsuits that claim Google abused its market dominance to favor its own services over those of its rivals.

On Tuesday, Hausfeld, an international law firm [and US-based class action specialist] with connections to companies affected by Google’s activities in Europe, and Avisa, a European public affairs company that has represented complainants in the antitrust case, will announce that they have created an online platform [the Google Redress & Integrity Platform (GRIP)], to help companies sue Google for financial damages in European courts….

“So far, the focus has been on public enforcement,” said Laurent Geelhand, managing partner at Hausfeld, in Brussels, who declined to comment on the size of any potential civil damages. “But what’s still missing is how this has financially affected the victims.”

That’s us.

According to Reuters:

[T]he [GRIP] platform would build on the European Commission’s April charge sheet, which accuses Google of unfairly promoting its own shopping service to the disadvantage of rivals.

“GRIP offers corporations, consumers and other entities harmed by Google’s anti-competitive business practices in Europe a mechanism to evaluate their potential claims,” Michael Hausfeld, chairman of Hausfeld, said in a statement.

Re/code quotes Avisa Partners:

“It has been five years between the first complaint against Google and the EC’s statement of objections, which is about three times longer than the groundbreaking Microsoft case,” Jacques Lafitte, founder of Avisa Partners, said in a statement. “Google’s president, lawyers and publicists have worked well to create this delay. But Google has not been able to stop the inevitable: It finally faces justice.”

Yeah.  What he said.

IMPALA have brought their own complaint with the European Commission which, as far as I know, is still in the hopper and has not been acted on as yet, although I’m sure it will be.  Even so, artists and labels may wish to consider investigating the Hausfeld online platform to see if it would make sense for them to participate in any civil action against Google.

While Google’s potential exposure to a ruling against the company would start with a staggering $6 billion fine, that fine does not preclude civil lawsuits against Google by those it has harmed.  While nobody takes paying a $6 billion fine lightly, does it really seem like it would be a lot of money to Google?  And when you consider that Google have managed to drag out the adjudication for years already, it really seems rather like chump change.  No pun intended.

We appear to have a law firm interested in at least helping potential plaintiffs bring these cases.  Why not at least check it out?

U.S. music folk should be thinking that this may be their last chance to get justice from Google.  The U.S. government has so far been unwilling to take action against Google, so this may be our only choice.