YouTube is my network

A recent court ruling that found YouTube not liable for copyright infringement drew praise in a Times editorial, then was denounced in a Blowback by Rich Bengloff of the American Assn. of Independent Music. Here’s my two cents.

I make a living doing something that would have been unimaginable 10 years ago: I make videos for the Internet.

It all began as a creative release when I was a pre-med in college. Fast forward five years to today — I’ve just finished directing my first national commercial for McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, and have been featured in the New Directors’ Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival.

The question I get asked the most is how I turned a crazy hobby into a viable income stream. I tell people this is something I would be doing anyway. When YouTube approached me with an invitation to its partner program, I was sure it was a practical joke a friend was playing on me. Getting paid to do something I love? Please. And thank you.

It takes time to do this — a lot of time. I spend around 80 hours a week working on concepts, production, marketing, etc. But if you stick with it, it will pay off. Not buying it? Just look at all the artists monetizing their creativity on YouTube.

YouTube is a place where artists make a living, build a fan base and get inspired. That’s why so many of us celebrated the recent ruling that validated YouTube as a responsible and legitimate outlet for creativity. Viacom, a major media company, sued YouTube for $1 billion, claiming that the site should be responsible for people who posted copyright infringing content to YouTube. The court recently granted summary judgment for Google, which owns YouTube, stating it was protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act against claims of infringement.

I’m not saying that copyright infringement doesn’t happen on the Internet, but to suggest that YouTube is all about pirated content is just plain ludicrous. In fact, anyone who has ever spent some time on YouTube knows that they have technology that identifies and flags copyrighted material. What many people might not know is that when a copyrighted work is found, YouTube gives the copyright owner the option to take it down or run ads against their content to make money.

It’s an elegant solution. For example, a band can run a contest telling people to use their song freely to create amateur music videos, and every single hit on those fan videos would be monetizable.

People like me upload a total of 24 hours of content every minute to the site. If YouTube were held legally responsible for all that content, it would have to manually screen every single video, figure out which ones used third-party content, deduce who these third parties were, then contact each of them to get their approval. The end result would likely be fewer YouTube videos for the world to enjoy and long delays between uploading a video and actually having it go live on the site.

This would go for all user-generated content sites, including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and even Wikipedia. Can you imagine having to get your photo albums pre-screened for copyright infringement? Having someone read your tweets before they’re public? Having telephone companies pre-screen calls before they’re made?

That’s not only crazy but technically implausible, not to mention a borderline infringement on free speech.

Luckily, the law is more sensible than that. It recognizes that platforms like YouTube need to be protected from liability in order to exist. Imposing reasonable rules when it comes to copyright compliance means that artists, content creators and the platforms that give them a voice can continue to thrive online.

Also known as “MysteryGuitarMan,” Joe Penna is a Los Angeles musician and filmmaker.