Ripple Slams YouTube! Ripple slams YouTube over scams on the platform – they state that YouTube is not doing enough to prevent scammers from operating on the Google-owned video-sharing platform. Ripple, a San Francisco firm, is suing the massive media company.
Ripple filed its complaint with the San Francisco courts arguing that YouTube is passively allowing scammers to defraud consumers and their inaction is causing irreparable harm to companies affected.
Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO, and Ripple itself has accused YouTube of willfully damaging the reputations of brands associated with the company. The lawsuit seeks to prohibit YouTube from being able to profit from the scams and wants the platform to actively cease the ability for such scams to be published. The suit also asks for an unspecified amount of money as compensation in damages caused by YouTube’s lack of prevention of scammers’ published videos.
The suit also alleges that YouTube was remiss in its security protocols which allowed legitimate channels to be hacked and overrun. Illegitimate content, it alleges, was able to be uploaded to perpetrate Ripple scams.
Ripple has had to independently contract an entity to monitor social media and report any fraud or scams. Ripple’s lawsuit asserts that they have brought a number of fraudulent channels to YouTube’s attention, but the company has either never reacted or reacted too slowly.
While some would assume that this lawsuit has no footing due to Ripple’s pointing out of content, Section 230, as it is often called, does not protect companies from copyright and trademark violation claims. Cleverly, Ripple is therefore using the trademark violations as the basis for its suit – this suit does have some legs to stand upon.
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