England's Football Association Premier League Ltd. and independent music publisher Bourne Co., are hitting Google and YouTube with a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging massive copyright infringement and encouraging other content owners whose videos have appeared on YouTube to join the suit.

"Defendants are pursuing a deliberate strategy of engaging in, permitting, encouraging and facilitating massive copyright infringement on the YouTube Web site," the lawsuit states.

The complaint, filed Friday in New York federal court, alleges that YouTube has purposely refused to remove copyrighted works from its site or employ "readily available technology" to prevent the infringement. Google, which bought the site in November for $1.65 billion, encourages YouTube to continue allowing copyrighted works to be posted by users, the lawsuit claims.

A spokesman for Google could not be immediately reached for comment.

The plaintiffs allege that YouTube and Google are able to identify copyrighted material and remove it as well as employ a filter system to prevent posting of infringing material but have failed to do so.
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"From what I understand, YouTube will provide filtering to parties who are willing to license their content to YouTube on terms that are acceptable to YouTube," said the plaintiffs' lead attorney, William Hart of Proskauer Rose in New York. "YouTube is not offering filtering to content across the board. Although they say it's coming to larger copyright owners, they already acknowledge they have this technology for a preferred group, but they're not doing that, and should, for other copyright owners."

The Premier League is the most popular division of English soccer and is viewed in 204 countries. According to the complaint, several infringing clips have been posted almost immediately after games, including April matches between Manchester United and Everton and Middlesbrough and Tottenham.

Bourne claims its musical works are frequently posted on the site, including Jimmy Durante singing "Inka Dinka Doo" and Diana Krall singing "Let's Fall in Love." Many of Bourne's compositions allegedly were still posted at the time of the lawsuit's filing.

Hart said YouTube has taken more than seven days to take down infringing material even though the Digital Millennium Copyright Act requires an expeditious removal.

"If they're told this particular work is infringing, they take it down," he said. "Then, if someone reposts it, we're starting all over again. Once someone tries to post it again, it should be filtered out rather than going over the whole exercise again."

In the case of the Premier League, Hart said it has become a full-time job for someone at the organization to send notices to YouTube on a daily basis.

The proposed class action, he said, includes "any copyright owner who has not given any authorization for their content to appear" on YouTube. A Web site has been established, www.youtubeclassaction.com, to recruit potential members of the suit.

Hart believes that the case most likely will be consolidated with the recent lawsuit filed against YouTube and Google by Viacom. A separate infringement case against YouTube brought by photojournalist Robert Tur is pending in California.

In the Viacom case, filed in March in New York federal court, the media conglomerate is seeking more than $1 billion in damages and has identified more than 100,000 copyrighted clips posted without permission.

In an answer filed Monday, Google cites the safe harbor provisions in the DMCA as a defense.

"By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for Internet communications, Viacom's complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression," the defendants said in the response. "Google and YouTube respect the importance of intellectual property rights and not only comply with their safe harbor obligations under the DMCA but go well above and beyond what the law requires."

Google is making a similar argument in the Tur case.

In a statement released after Google's answer was filed, Viacom said: "This response ignores the most important fact of the suit, which is that YouTube does not qualify for safe harbor protection under the DMCA. It is obvious that YouTube has knowledge of infringing material on their site, and they are profiting from it."

Superior Court Judge James Mulvihill immediately revoked the defendant's bail and ordered him held pending sentencing in New Brunswick on June 29.

Cibelli looked back at his father, Paul Cibelli Sr., before being led away in handcuffs.

Outside court, Silva's parents, Moises and Elvira Silva, said they were pleased with the verdict and thanked the jury, the judge and Middlesex County First Assistant Prosecutor William Lamb, who presented the case against the defendant.

At one point, the victim's mother broke into tears. ''We were sure all the time that he was the murderer,'' the victim's father said. ''In my heart, I knew this.''

During a three-week trial, Lamb said Cibelli was angry that Silva was planning to leave him and plotted her murder.

The defendant beat the woman with a roofer's staple gun and then strangled her, on a second-floor deck at the Robert Place house they shared with Cibelli's father in South Plainfield.
Cibelli subsequently wrapped the victim in trash bags and dumped her body somewhere in Pennsylvania, Lamb said.

Police began an investigation after the woman's remains were discovered at a recycling center in Philadelphia, Lamb said.

He credited Sgt. Ivan Scott of the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office and Detective Gene Bataille and Sgt. James Foran, both South Plainfield police officers, with solving the crime.

Cibelli's attorney, Alan Zegas, said his client had no role in the slaying. Cibelli did not testify during the trial.

He faces 30 years to life in prison when he is sentenced at the Middlesex County Courthouse.

Marshall, 33, was found dead at his home by police responding to a call. Marshall had been stabbed more than 30 times.

A breakthrough in the case came in September 2006 when the FBI Laboratory's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) matched Jackson to DNA recovered on the linoleum floor of Marshall's residence. Jackson was in prison on an unrelated charge.

Assistant Grayson County District Attorney Mike Mitchell said Secret Service officials found a number of pictures of what appeared to be a young child in sexual activity with adults.

Brooks’ guilty plea means he will have to register as a sex offender for life. The nature of the crime means Brooks will have to serve half of whatever sentence he might get before being eligible for parole. 

Among the deals announced, McDermott represented Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated in March with respect to its equity commitment in connection with the proposed $45 billion leveraged buy out acquisition of TXU Corp., the Texas energy company.  The transaction represents the largest leveraged buyout in history, and put McDermott among the top 10 legal advisors for global utility deals and private equity deals for the first quarter as well.
These rankings reflect the continued momentum of McDermott's M&A practice which for all 2006 was among the top 20 most active practices in the U.S. according to both Bloomberg and Mergermarket.

McDermott Will & Emery's Mergers & Acquisitions Practice Group is a globally integrated team of corporate lawyers providing high-end M&A services to a broad range of clients around the world.  We represent clients in both friendly and contested public company acquisitions, proxy contests, stock and asset acquisitions and divestitures and joint ventures. We have extensive experience in complex cross-border transactions and work closely with members of our tax, antitrust and other key practice groups.

A federal court in Chicago, Ill., has permanently barred Bertha Steverson of Chicago from preparing federal income tax returns for others, the Justice Department announced today. The court found that Steverson, the owner of Bertha’s Tax Service, prepared tax returns for customers that contained deductions for fictitious expenses. The court found that Steverson has prepared an estimated 1,224 returns since 2004 that have caused an estimated loss to the U.S. Treasury of more than $3 million.

The court’s order requires Steverson to give the Justice Department a list of her customers’ names, addresses, e-mail addresses and Social Security numbers. More information and a copy of the complaint are available at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/txdv07118.htm.

Since 2001 the Justice Department has obtained more than 235 injunctions to stop the promotion of tax fraud schemes and the preparation of fraudulent returns. More information about these cases is available on the Justice Department Web site at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/taxpress2007.htm. More information about the Justice Department’s Tax Division can be found at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/index.html.