News Corp: Google Needs to Protect Copyright

News Corp chief Peter Chernin seems to be losing patience with Google over copyright issues, telling the Financial Times the company needs to do better on its YouTube site.

Chernin said there was no reason why the company could not track down copyrighted content as well as News Corp's own MySpace has. While the social networking site has had its share of legal struggles with copyright holders, it has been the recipient of far less ire than YouTube.

Many entertainment companies have been quite vocal over their displeasure surrounding YouTube's work to protect copyright, and the case of Viacom, have even sued the site.

"It's pretty safe to say that they [Google] have the technology available...it's publicly available and I haven't yet heard a lot about Google being technologically constrained," Chernin told FT.com.

Google responded to Chernin by saying that its current efforts to identify copyrighted content should signal its willingness to work with content owners, and that it goes "over and above our legal responsibilities."

Such a position has been Google's defense in other cases against its YouTube video site. It believes that the onus of identifying copyrighted content falls on the content owner himself. It has even pointed to sections of copyright law which seem to back up that stance.