It was inevitable. Yesterday YouTube announced it was serving 100 million videos per day. Who needs television? Another announcement followed. YouTube was being sued by the owner of news footage that had been appropriated by YouTube users without their consent. The Hollywood Reporter posts:

A Los Angeles video news service sued YouTube Inc. on Friday in federal court for allowing its users to upload copyrighted video footage onto the popular Web site, including the beating of trucker Reginald Denny during the 1992 riots.

Los Angeles News Service and its owner and operator, Robert Tur, assert in the lawsuit that in one week's time, one version of the Denny beating uploaded by a YouTube user was viewed and downloaded 1,000 times via the site.

Will Tur win the battle? Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes:

Fortunately, YouTube has an important legal shield that was not available to the old Napster: the so-called "online service provider safe harbors" created by Congress as part of the DMCA. One provision, Section 512(c), was designed to protect commercial Web-hosting services, which feared they might be held responsible for the posting habits of their customers.

Whenever a service like YouTube becomes immensely popular - think Napster here - the litigation soon follows. Lohmann believes YouTube will win but, in any case, there has to be a way for services like YouTube to compensate the original copyright holders.