Here’s general counsel Michael Fricklas defending Viacom’s decision to sue YouTube for giving their company tons of free publicity potential copyright violations under the DMCA:.

Is it fair to burden YouTube with finding content on its site that infringes others’ copyright? Putting the burden on the owners of creative works would require every copyright owner, big and small, to patrol the Web continually on an ever-burgeoning number of sites. That’s hardly a workable or equitable solution.

Come again? That seems like the only equitable solution to this problem. Otherwise YouTube’s entire operation would be centered around weeding out offending content, policing its users from committing a “crime” the company itself was not complicit in.

The magic of web 2.0 is entirely dependent on the concept of user generated content. That’s how these dominant post-bubble dotcom giants can run the most popular sites in the world with only a handful of employees. But I’m not convinced that simply by harnessing the power of the masses YouTube is now somehow responsible for everything they do; just because the technology YouTube developed can be used to violate DCMA rights protections doesn’t mean it’s YouTube’s fault when such violations occur.

It’s up to the owners of intellectual property to seek out violations of their ownership, not the companies who run the technology by which carefree users can commit (harmless) crimes.