Michael Fricklas, Viacom's general counsel, tells a group of Yale Law
students that he's a huge fan of fair use, doesn't want to take down your
YouTube mashup, and has no plans to start suing P2P users in federal courts—but
he still loves DRM and "three strikes" laws.
By Nate Anderson | Last updated November 16, 2009 2:22 PM CTText Size Print
this article Leave a comment Michael Fricklas is Viacom's general counsel, and
it's his job to oversee the company's legal efforts, including its $1 billion
lawsuit against YouTube. When people talk about Big Content, they're talking
about people like Fricklas.
So it might be surprising to watch him tell a class of Yale law students this
month that suing end users for online copyright infringement is "expensive, and
it's painful, and it feels like bullying." While the recording industry was big
on this approach for a while, Fricklas certainly understands the way it came
across to the public when some college student went up against "very expensive
lawyers and unlimited resources and it felt like terrorism."
