Mystery Lawsuit Against Google

Google disclosed in its quarterly SEC filing that it's the subject of a video copyright lawsuit. There are no other details, and as TechDirt points out, the lawsuit could very well be the one filed this summer by Robert Tur against YouTube (more at EFF) over his footage of trucker Reginald Denny getting domed with a brick during the Rodney King riots of 1992 appearing on the site. The conspiracy theorist in me can't help but implicate Universal and Google's $500 million legal slush fund in the announcement, but there is no mention of who is suing Google or whether it even involves YouTube.

By the way, this video is why YouTube is great. Reginald Denny can be found at 2:00. It makes me think that the Rodney King video, which ultimately led to the riots, was possibly the most powerful amateur content ever in terms of its total social impact outside of perhaps the Zapruder film. Good thing we have copyright law to prevent people from seeing these primary sources themselves.