Well, the Google/YouTube vs media fight has escalated. The issue is whether YouTube is infringing Viacom copyrights. The world is now flooded with reports on this - so no need to rehash the basic facts. Its time to think more about the simularities and differences between media assets (music - video) and software, specifically open source software. Both would seem to be governed by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (1998) which tried to update US copyright law for the digital age. One of the provisions is that hosting firms, network operators and similar companies could not be held accountable for what might appear to be copyright infringement if they took certain actions promptly. This is at the core of the YouTube/Viacom argument - ie that YouTube is just hosting, and by promptly taking down files when asked, they are not liable. The courts will have to settle that one - assuming there is no settlement between the companies before that happens.

It occurs to me however that in our world - open source software, the physics are not the same. By that I mean that most of the companies using open source software are not hosting services or similar businesses, so the safe harbor idea would not seem to apply (caution - I'm not attempting to offer legal advice here, just a personal opinion). Second, the remedy - removing the offending files, could have a much greater impact when the files are core software instead of a few user contributed video clips. So the fix is not so simple.

All of which leads me to conclude that the YouTube vs Media Industry copyright battle will rightly focus people on the value of copyright in the digital age - but that the impact on the open source world is in many ways more important and business critical.