Here’s a case that’ll likely leave you with an icky feeling. A lawyer for a large company in Idaho copyrighted a cease-and-desist letter, and when an anonymous blogger posted the letter on his blog, the company subpoenaed the blog hosting company for the blogger’s identity in order to pursue copyright infringement claims.

Wired’s Science blog talks about how Rational Response Squad, an anti-creationist group, had its YouTube videos taken down after DMCA requests by a counter group.

It appears Viacom hasn’t learned its lesson after its last abuse of the DMCA takedown notice. It’s now targeting a YouTube video that includes a clip of a VH1 show, which includes the unauthorized use of video created by the person who uploaded the YouTube clip.

Confused? This should help:

It didn’t take long for user-generated content to translate to user-generated profit. But as the giants have their weird litigious and incestuous thing going on both in the courtroom and in the boardroom, YouTube users aren’t just getting the shaft, they’re getting mud kicked in their faces.

When Google-owned Blogger sends you a Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down notice, at least they’re polite about it and liberally use the word "alleged." But they only ask once, as the person who posted Facebook’s source code on his Blogspot blog learned.

Internet Television company Veoh is suing Universal Music Group in federal court to reinforce its rights as a copyright complaint company under the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

If some copyright holders had their way, you couldn’t listen to a CD in your car with the windows down. Somebody might hear it without paying for it. The latest Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) lawsuit against Universal Music hopes to prevent similar abuses on the Internet.

Google and YouTube don’t usually comment on lawsuits; instead, we’re left to look over various court documents.  These are still helpful, however, and they’ve recently provided an update on the case between YouTube and the Football Association Premier League.  To sum up: YouTube pleaded innocent.

Neither side in the lesser-known and first YouTube lawsuit won a motion for summary judgment in court last week. Both sides presented their arguments for dismissing the other’s claims, and both were turned down by the judge, meaning Tur v. YouTube will move into the discovery phase.

YouTube is becoming the unwitting arbiter of copyright disputes, and in the process finds itself between a rock industry and a hard face…wow, that was really bad wasn’t?…Conservative blogger and columnist Michelle Malkin is crying foul after a music industry DMCA notice quieted her criticism of Hip Hop artist Akon.

Digg over the last couple of days has found itself the center of controversy by complying with a DMCA sponsored take down notice and the posting of the AACS hex format key string (which we won’t post here as no one really wants a takedown notice).

The legal battle between YouTube and Viacom comes down to one central issue. Does the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) apply to YouTube or are they guilty of copyright infringement as Viacom alleges?

The DMCA does protect Internet companies from copyright infringement if rights holders request that a company removes copyrighted material. This is something that YouTube has complied with in the past. YouTube believes that since they do comply with take down request that Viacom’s suit against them will not hold up in court.

In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, a lawyer for entertainment giant Viacom writes what amounts to a thumbnail summary of the company’s $1-billion lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement. In a nutshell, Michael Fricklas says that the case boils down to whether the video site — now part of the Google empire — is protected by the so-called “safe harbour” provisions of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.