Han Lee says he discovered Michael Jordan.

He says it almost sheepishly, realizing such a statement sounds delusional, if not flat-out crazy.

But once he launches into an explanation of his grandiose claim, it becomes clear where he is coming from.

Lee, 34, is a self-described lifelong basketball fanatic who grew up (and remains) a New York Knicks fan. One day in 1982, however, Lee saw a college game on television featuring the North Carolina Tarheels and a young Jordan.

“I just remember noticing there was something different about him,” Lee said.  “I just kept my eye on him and every single time he was on TV I made sure to record it.”

And record he did. Lee now boasts a collection that he estimates contains between 400 and 600 Jordan games, including every 50-point performance except his first one (several of Lee’s tapes were tragically recorded over by his mother while Lee was at college).

For a long time, the viewing audience for Lee’s collection remained constrained to himself and a group of basketball aficionado friends. But about a year ago Lee, a film major in college, found a path to a wider audience for his lifelong labor. Under the appropriate name “hoopsencyclopedia,” Lee began editing together highlight reels of Jordan games and posting them on YouTube.

To date, Lee has posted 47 of these videos, with the collection totaling well over 1 million views. A real estate professional in New York City, Lee says the process of putting together a video takes him four to six hours and has become almost like a second job.

Lee is hardly alone. A few pointed searches on YouTube can direct a sports fan to a cornucopia of video and photo montages on virtually any sport or athlete out there. Such content is enormously popular, with each individual clip receiving anywhere from a few thousand to a few million individual views.

And therein lies the problem. As YouTube and its parent company Google benefit from the rising popularity of fan-generated sports content, the leagues who own the copyrights to that content are faced with a choice: Cut a deal and try to find a mutually beneficial partnership, or dig in for some lengthy and expensive litigation.

The battle lines are already being drawn. The NBA and NHL have entered strategic partnerships with YouTube which afford the leagues their own channel through which they can disseminate content to YouTube’s massive audience.

But at least one major sports entity has chosen to fight. English soccer’s Premier League, along with New York-based music label Bourne, filed a class action suit against YouTube early this month for copyright infringement. The suit alleges that YouTube “knowingly misappropriated and exploited this valuable property for their own gain without payment or license to the owners of the intellectual property."

The outcome of the lawsuit, along with the much-publicized suit from media giant Viacom filed in March, could go a long way toward determining the future of copyrighted material on YouTube and the extent to which fans like Lee can continue their pursuits.

For its part, YouTube and Google have branded the lawsuits as little more than negotiating tactics as the plaintiffs behind them attempt to strike a better deal for a partnership. Certainly in the case of Viacom it appears negotiating is part of the overall picture. The companies were in talks about a partnership but were unable to come to an agreement.  Viacom filed its suit shortly after the negotiations broke off.

But in the case of the Premier League suit, the plaintiffs have indicated they are in it for the long haul. Louis Solomon, one of the attorney’s representing the Premier League in the case, said his clients intend to be compensated for the violations of their intellectual property.

“There is going to be structural relief,” he said. “The Premier League in particular is quite adamant … It’s impossible to say that there is never going to be a settlement, but there’s not going to be a settlement without the structural relief we’re asking for.”

If the suit does make it all the way to court, a critical component to how things play out will be the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which Congress first passed in 1998. Under the act, as long as an Internet service provider such as Google or Amazon.com complies with the procedures for taking down copyrighted content posted by its users, the company does not have to suffer any monetary penalty for the infringement.

In the case of YouTube, this means the copyright holder bears the responsibility of informing YouTube that a copyright violation is occurring. So long as YouTube provides a channel for filing such complaints and subsequently removes the content, they are off the hook.

There is a clause that gives the provider responsibility to deal with repeat violaters, although the language is vague.

It’s easy to see where companies with interest in a wide range of copyrighted material could find this solution troublesome. The sheer volume of content posted to YouTube, which is constantly being increased by users all over the world, makes the process of searching for potential copyright violations a cumbersome task.

“Everybody and their brother is posting copyrighted material on to the site,” said Bill Frankel, an intellectual property attorney based in Chicago. “There is just such an incredible amount of infringing content on the YouTube site that it has caused people to question whether YouTube is really doing everything it can to stop the infringement and to suspend repeat infringers.”

Even after their lawsuit, a search for “English Premier League” still turned up 147 different clips, many of them containing copyrighted game footage from soccer matches. Of course, one search does not necessarily catch all, or even a majority, of the copyrighted content. For example, a search for popular Premier League teams, such as Chelsea or Manchester United, turns up a different set of clips.

To provide an idea of how much content gets taken down compared to how much gets posted, Lee has only had one of his 47 Michael Jordan videos taken down since he began posting them. Lee said he suspects the video, a montage of highlights from a game in which Jordan scored 51 points at Madison Square Garden, caught someone’s attention when it became widely circulated through the popular linking Web site digg.com.

Still, he said he was surprised nothing happened to any of the other videos he posted.

In the face of this rampant appropriation of copyrighted material, some professional leagues and other companies are taking an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach. One of the most prominent among them is the NBA, where the frequency of spectacular dunks, blocks and other highlights translate particularly well into the YouTube medium, which focuses on short, easily digestible clips.

Through the terms of the partnership, which began this February, the NBA has its own “channel” on YouTube where users can go to find highlights and other content posted by the league. There is also a section for users to post their own content – although this does not include the type of self-made NBA highlight reels that Lee and others post. Most of the user-generated content on the NBA channel is of the more personal variety, with players posting their own highlights from high school and pickup games.

Perhaps sensing the appeal of fans pasting together their own highlight packages from NBA footage, the NBA has added a “highlight mixer” to its Web site where fans can use NBA content to generate their own highlight reels.

But you won’t find the hundreds of hours of Michael Jordan footage that Lee has at his disposal. Formally, the NBA is still monitoring YouTube for use of copyrighted footage that does not come under the guidance of the NBA channel. A league representative said the NBA remains in regular contact with YouTube about taking down copyrighted content, although given the amount of NBA video still on the site one could speculate that the NBA may be turning a blind eye to some of the violations.

As for the legitimate NBA channel, it has received more than 17 million unique views to date, the most of any channel on the site featuring sports content. A league representative sad both sides were pleased with the partnership thus far, although the representative declined to discuss the exact financial terms of the arrangement.

But not everyone has elected to cut a deal. Some view YouTube and Google as companies that have become cash cows and Wall Street darlings largely on the back of copyrighted material that does not belong to them. The English Premier League and others are seeking repayment for the violations.

When they filed the suit, the plaintiffs also launched a Web site of their own, www.youtubeclassaction.com. The site encourages other copyright holders to join the suit.

According to Solomon, they have received a “fairly large” number of inquiries, both domestic and foreign, about joining the class action suit. While he said he could not discuss specifics, he did say that a number of these represented athletic organizations in a variety of sports. He added that some of these entities have joined the lawsuit but were not yet prepared to publicly disclose their participation.

Solomon said much of his argument is based on the failure of YouTube to implement available copyright protection mechanisms that could greatly reduce the number of violations on the site. He argues that YouTube and Google have knowingly built and profited from a business based on copyright violation, and therefore should not receive DMCA protection.

“Their fundamental business model is dependant on the use and exploitation of copyrighted material,” he said.  “This is not the paradigm that congress had in mind [when it wrote the DMCA].”

YouTube and Google have stated that these lawsuits simply “misunderstand” the DMCA.

So as various groups take sides in this copyright fight, individuals like Lee go about their business. Just last week, Lee posted a 10-minute Jordan tribute (the maximum length YouTube allows). Ironically, as corporations prepare for a tug-of-war over vast sums of money, it is individuals like Lee with no economic interest whatsoever in the content committing the violations and causing all the trouble.

Lee said the sports community would be wise to find a way to embrace the work he and other fans do out of nothing more than a love for the games.

“Ultimately I’m helping the NBA,” he said. “I think sports are a weird area of copyright law. It’s not like TV or movie content that’s written by writers. That’s basically art. Sports are something someone did. They’re historical.”

Still, Lee said he understands the leagues are only trying to protect what belongs to them. He has even approached the NBA about forging a partnership where they could distribute his work.

He received an automated response and has yet to hear back.

Despite the huge influence individuals like Lee have played in creating the YouTube phenomenon, they will likely be relegated to the sidelines as this high stakes game plays out.

Always a spectator without a hand in the ultimate outcome – such is the life of a sports fan.