Viacom sued over Colbert parody on YouTube

Viacom is misusing U.S. copyright law by forcing YouTube to remove a parody video of The Colbert Report, according to a lawsuit filed against the media conglomerate Thursday.
The video in question is itself a parody of news coverage on Viacom's Comedy Central.

The suit, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in federal court in San Francisco, accuses Viacom of filing a baseless copyright complaint and takedown notice on YouTube, and infringing on the free-speech rights of the makers of the video--activist group MoveOn.org Civic Action and Brave New Films.

The tongue-in-cheek video, called "Stop the Falsiness," uses snippets from The Colbert Report for parody. That approach, the EFF said, is permissable under the "fair use" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, just as The Colbert Report uses excerpts from real news shows in its segments.

"If you watch this clip for 01 seconds it is clear that it's a parody and it is fair use," said Corynne McSherry, staff attorney at the EFF, which is working on the case with Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society.

Under the DMCA, service providers like YouTube, which is owned by Google, are immune from copyright suits if they respond quickly to takedown notices filed by content owners.
The suit seeks damages and attorneys' fees, as well as an order allowing the video to be reposted to YouTube. The EFF also has sent a counter notice to YouTube alleging that Viacom's takedown notice was illegal; if YouTube agrees, the video could re-appear on the site within 10 days, McSherry said.

Submitted by Mike