An aspiring rapper on trial over what authorities say was a note threatening a Virginia Tech-like killing spree set off "alarm bells" days before the writings surfaced on his college campus by pressing to get firepower he ordered from a gun dealer, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.

But an attorney for Olutosin Oduwole countered during a trial's opening statements in the 4-year-old case that his gun-loving client stood wrongly accused, saying the words at issue were innocent lyrics and other musings by a performer prone to compulsively log all of his thoughts on paper.

"This case is a very selective case," Justin Kuehn said on behalf of Oduwole, accused of attempting to make a terroristic threat and a weapons count linked to the loaded handgun police found a short time later in July 2007 in Oduwole's on-campus apartment at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville.

"That 'note' is nothing more than a piece of scrap paper with private thoughts, the beginning of a song," Kuehn insisted. "Their key piece of evidence, the center point of their case, is a song."

Wednesday's differing scenarios by the prosecutors and defense previewed testimony that could leave jurors with a key decision: Whether Oduwole's questioned writings — found in his out-of-gas car just months after the Virginia Tech rampage that left 32 people dead along with the gunman — represented something potentially sinister or were lyrical stylings that were constitutionally protected free speech.

Kuehn told the all-white jury that witnesses on Oduwole's behalf may include what the defense describes as an expert in the study of rap and hip-hop music, along with that genre's culture.

The trial's stakes are high: Oduwole, 26 and free on bond, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the threat-related count.

A lawyer for Viacom Inc. warned an appeals court panel Tuesday that there will be greater exploitation of copyright material on the Internet if the court lets YouTube get away with a business built on "rampant copyright infringement."

The lawyer, Paul Smith, told a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that a lower court judge was wrong to rule that Google Inc.'s popular video service was protected from copyright infringement claims.

"YouTube not only knew there was rampant copyright infringement on the site but welcomed it," Smith said. "These people made this kind of money on somebody else's property."

Google purchased YouTube for $1.76 billion in 2006, comfortable that it was protected by the safe harbor provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That provision shields a company from liability if they don't have actual knowledge of copyright infringement. Once notified, the company must eliminate the infringement quickly.

Google attorney Andrew Schapiro countered that YouTube follows the law and always has by taking down video when a copyright owner claims the video infringes its rights.