It is rare, to say the least, to find an octogenarian jurist the focus of hundreds of menacing video postings on the Internet.

But in July, Southern District Judge Louis L. Stanton came under a scathing pixel attack for his handling of Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube and its owner, Google. The videos contained everything from accusations of senility, bribery, and bestiality to at least one that could be construed as a death threat.

At issue is Viacom’s claim that YouTube has made unauthorized use of 150,000 clips on the video sharing site.

That case is still in the early stages of discovery, but the suit sank into a swamp of vitriol in July after the judge ruled that Viacom could request all of YouTube’s customer records — potentially exposing the IP addresses of millions of users to Viacom’s attorneys.

Almost immediately, angry YouTube patrons began directing a stream of furious videos at Viacom and Judge Stanton for his perceived attack on privacy rights.

And they continued even after lawyers for the two corporations had negotiated a way to access the records without revealing the personal information of YouTube users.

Both Judge Stanton and his office declined comment for this article.

Informed of the video threats by Judicial Reports in late July, the U.S. Marshals Service has undertaken an investigation, according to spokesperson Steve Blando: “The U.S. Marshals Service treats all inappropriate communication directed at our protectees the same. Each instance is given highest priority and investigated until a determination is made to the credibility of the communication in question.”

While demurring on exact figures, Blando added that the Internet had increased the number of judicial threats. “With the growth of blogs, discussion boards, video sharing sites and such on the Internet, we have seen a corresponding increase in the number of inappropriate communications directed at those in our protection,” he said. “We do take these seriously and investigate each instance.”

Blando declined further comment.

In addition to verbal threats and obscene commentaries, a number of YouTube patrons published Judge Stanton’s work address, phone number, and fax number. They also told viewers how to contact Stanton’s Law Clerk on social networking sites.

In all, at least 34 unique videos have addressed Judge Stanton since his decision. All these videos were found through a search for the keywords “judge” and “stanton” in YouTube. (While it is difficult to count the total of anti-Viacom videos on the video-sharing site, one YouTube user claimed that more than 200 videos were made against the company.)

A YouTube regular who goes by the nickname Cap'n Awesome delivered an expletive-laden rant calling on people to expose the Judge’s personal information. “This guy has it f***ing coming to him,” he said. Click here to see that explicit video.

As of early August, Cap’n Awesome’s video had been viewed 164,000 times on YouTube.

Another YouTube user, InsaneClownPerv, posted a misspelled missive that appears to be a video death threat — his bitter message scrolled across the screen in blood red letters while hip-hop music played in the background. The strong of heart can click here to see that video.

Beyond the nastiness, the Viacom v. YouTube lawsuit will likely result in some crucial copyright case law.

Like the Napster ruling at the turn of the century, this case promises to set new parameters for how the law treats digital technologies that make it very easy to distribute and share artwork. It also marks the first time Google’s digital empire — built, in part, by archiving and providing access to these copyrighted works — will be so severely tested in court.

At stake are two fundamental questions. Should certain content providers be protected from ordinary copyright infringement suits? And who should police giant websites for copyrighted material?

According to Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney at the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation, this case will test the 10-year-old “safe harbors” provision written into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

“If [as a service provider] you don’t actually know of copyright infringement that’s on your site and as long as you take it down if notified, then you are okay,” she explained.

YouTube is littered with thousands of dead links — copyrighted material uploaded by users that the company removed once notified by a copyright holder. However, if Viacom wins its $1 billion challenge, YouTube could be punished for hosting the material, despite having complied with the law.

Click here to see the provision.

The crux of the suit lies in this passage from the Viacom complaint: “Even though Defendants are well aware of the rampant infringement on the YouTube website, and YouTube has the right and ability to control it, YouTube’s intentional strategy has been to take no steps to curtail the infringement from which it profits unless notified of specific infringing videos by copyright owners, thereby shifting the entire burden — and high cost — of monitoring YouTube’s infringement onto the victims of that infringement.”

Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, said that the suit challenges the notion that YouTube was ever protected by the DMCA. “YouTube says [safe harbor protection] applies, Viacom says it doesn’t,” she explained in an interview.

“The safe harbor provision doesn’t apply if the host is aware of infringement. The legal question is: With how much specificity should YouTube have been aware of infringement?”

While a Viacom victory would not overturn the safe harbor protections, Seltzer speculated that it would greatly reduce the amount of service providers protected by the DMCA — while pounding Google with as much as $1 billion damages.

As McSherry explained: “Viacom wants YouTube to keep track of all potential infringement on its site. That would be a flip in the way that copyright is handled. It’s always been copyright owners who are responsible for pursing copyright infringement,” she concluded.

All these issues will be decided after discovery, a process that could stretch out for months as attorneys sort through millions of records and build their cases.

While these videos have thrust Judge Stanton into an uncomfortable spotlight, he is uniquely suited for this landmark case.

During his long career, the judge has handled a variety of copyright cases, including a groundbreaking decision about fair use and art, expensive settlements between musicians and distributors, and most recently, a copyright infringement case that pitted two toothpaste manufacturers against each other.

In 2005, Stanton handled a fair use case involving the artist Jeff Koons — a case that became a point of contention in the Viacom litigation. While creating a commissioned collage painting, Koons co-opted a photograph that Andrea Blanch took for a Gucci ad. Blanch sued for copyright infringement.

The case was familiar ground for the artist, who had lost a similar suit in the 1980s for creating sculptures based on the unauthorized use of popular images. In that case, Rogers v. Koons, the artist actually had to pay the plaintiff an award for his use.  

Ultimately, Stanton ruled that Koons’s “transformative” use of the advertisements was permissible under the doctrine of fair use, dismissing the suit after a series of conferences. His decision was later upheld on appeal.

Judge Stanton left a favorable impression on Koons’s attorney. “He’s a grand man, if you had to draw him — visually he would be what you would photograph as a judge,” said John B. Koegel, name partner at the Koegel Group.

In the Koons case, Koegel fought the plaintiff’s motion to amend punitive damages to the lawsuit. The Viacom lawyers made the exact same legal move in their lawsuit against YouTube, actually citing the Koons case as a federal precedent for amending punitive damages to copyright suits.

Even though he won the case, Stanton’s willingness to allow the plaintiff that amended claim still bothered the attorney.

“He’s got this philosophy let the plaintiff do whatever they want, then we’ll let them sort it out at the end,” explained Koegel, complaining that Blanch’s attorneys had no right to seek additional damages beyond the actual damages for copyright infringement.

“The plaintiff wanted to amend complaint for punitive damages, but the law is 1,000 percent clear that it isn’t allowed. It makes no sense, and it’s against federal law. And yet he said okay,” concluded Koegel. (Blanch’s lawyer did not return calls for comment.)

Koegel did note that the judge had reconsidered the Koons decision in a recent ruling in the Viacom suit. In March 2008, Stanton admitted he made a mistake in allowing the plaintiff to argue for punitive damages in the Koons case.

The judge actually agreed with Koegel’s reasoning in an opinion denying Viacom’s motion to amend punitive damages to their suit.

“Although recognizing that ‘Conventional authority holds that punitive damages are unavailable in copyright infringement actions,” wrote the judge,  “[I] granted Blanch ‘leave to amend the complaint so that plaintiff has a chance to prove malice and raise squarely the question whether punitive damages are available to her.’ If it ever was, that decision is no longer good law,” concluded the judge.

Judge Stanton was born in 1927 in New York City. He spent two years as a U.S. Merchant Marine Cadet Midshipman before earning his B.A. at Yale University, in 1950. Following the university, he spent two years as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves.

He graduated from University of Virginia School of Law in 1955.

After a long stint in private practice, Stanton was nominated to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, and was approved by the Senate in 1985.

On the bench, Stanton has had 33 civil appeals, with 12 reversals since 2000. According to an analysis by the Institute for Judicial Studies, which publishes Judicial Reports, that constitutes a civil reversal rate of 36 percent, compared to the Southern District average of just under 30 percent. (The number of appeals to Stanton's rulings on criminal matters are negligible.)

As for Stanton's docket management, from 2004-07 he averaged only one motion pending more than six months, whereas the average Southern District Court judge had 21 motions.