- Streaming giant YouTube has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit by Ripple and his CEO, Brad Garlinghouse.
- YouTube is sheltering behind California’s law to disassociate itself from the activities of the scams that occur on its platform.
Ripple Labs and its CEO Brad Garlinghouse have filed a lawsuit against YouTube in April for alleged negligence and complicity in fraud involving the company, XRP and Brad Garlinghouse’s public image. Ripple is claiming damage to its reputation and resulting financial and material losses because the fraudsters were able to conduct fake giveaway scams on YouTube without the platform intervening. Consequently, Ripple’s complaint seeks compensation for the damage to its reputation and the resulting financial losses.
YouTube’s response to Ripple accusations
YouTube responded to the complaint on 21 July by filing an application with the court of the Northern District of California to dismiss the case. The streaming platform claims to be neither a party nor a supporter of the scams Ripple mentioned. Furthermore, YouTube denies any allegations of negligence and claims not to be responsible.
The streaming giant invokes the Communications Defency Act in its defense. This states that Internet service providers are independent of the content published on their platform. Therefore, they cannot be held responsible or accused of complicity for the content published on their platform.
In the motion to dismiss, YouTube’s legal counsel also cites a California law to argue that Ripple’s lawsuit should be filed against the fraudsters. YouTube claims, based on Ripple’s arguments, that they are also victims of the scammers who target the security of the platform and commit the scams. In this sense, YouTube asserts that it is immune from the effects of offensive or counterfeit content uploaded to its platform.
At the same time, the motion rejects the accusation of the CEO of Ripple and states that it is impossible to prove that the company uses his name or identity to promote illegal activities. YouTube adds that under community guidelines, fraud and other deceptive practices are expressly prohibited. Furthermore, YouTube states:
(…) Plaintiffs do not allege that YouTube had knowledge of any specific instances of trademark infringement that it failed to remove, and as a matter of law YouTube had no affirmative obligation to preemptively seek out and remove potentially infringing content. For these reasons, all of Plaintiffs’ claims should be dismissed.
In the document, YouTube also disassociates itself from the scammers’ scheme of operation. The fraudsters require a user to send a certain amount of a cryptocurrency to an address in order to proceed with the theft of the funds. Therefore, YouTube claims that Ripple has not been able to prove that it has any involvement in this scheme. YouTube also reiterated that it has “consistently removed that material” used by the fraudsters to commit the crime.
However, the platform has been singled out several times by the crypto community for allowing the referred scams to continue for several hours before being removed. Ripple has also said that it has reported scams that occur live, without receiving a response from YouTube. The streaming platform has also been accused of allowing scammers to promote malicious content through YouTube ads.
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