It probably had to happen, and now it has: Media behemoth Viacom has filed a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube, accusing it of "massive intentional copyright infringement." It's not the first copyright suit against YouTube, but it's the first biggie--and if it comes to trial, it may be the one that determines whether Google's video-sharing site can survive in its current form.
If you had to bet on one of the big media companies being the first to take on YouTube, Viacom was a good bet. Early last month, it demanded that YouTube take down 100,000 clips of such popular, Viacom-controlled content as The Daily Show. A couple of weeks later, it signed a deal to provide material for Joost, the upcoming YouTube-like video service being launched by the creators of Kaaza and Skype. In short, we already knew that there was no love lost between Viacom and YouTube/Google.
All this raises lotsa interesting questions. Such as these....
Is this the start of a legal deluge? Will Viacom's archrivals now pile on? Will scads of smaller companies whose content is on YouTube join in?
...Or will it spur YouTube to go legit? The company's already been trying to strike deals with content providers. Avoiding being sued would seem to be a strong incentive.
Will YouTube take a more proactive role in deleting copyrighted items? Right now, it'll do so if the copyright owner requests it. Should it or would it purge infringing material without being asked? Is that even practical given the gazillions of items that users upload?
Can a YouTube without tons of questionable content succeed? It's certainly true that much of what's on YouTube is there with the permission of its creator. But it's debatable whether YouTube would ever have become YouTube without copyrighted material being posted by folks who didn't own it?
Is YouTube actually in legal jeopardy? I'm no lawyer, so I won't even guess. But the defense is presumably that they're a common carrier, like the phone company, and therefore not responsible for what customers do with their service. (If someone plots a crime via phone, AT&T doesn't get in trouble.)
Will Viacom and YouTube settle? Seems like there's some chance that what's beginning with a lawsuit could end with a deal of some sort.
Google, by the way, has responded to the Viacom suit with this statement:
We have not received the lawsuit but are confident that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders and believe the courts will agree," YouTube said in a statement. "YouTube is great for users and offers real opportunities to rights holders: the opportunity to interact with users; to promote their content to a young and growing audience; and to tap into the online-advertising market. We will certainly not let this suit become a distraction to the continuing growth and strong performance of YouTube and its ability to attract more users (and) more traffic, and build a stronger community.
There's much that's true in there, of course, but there's also much that has absolutely nothing to do with the key question here. Which is: Is YouTube legal?
Stay tuned....
This will not fade away -- this is a huge lawsuit. Viacom is taking the first major step for a lot of content owners. I wouldn't surprised if this ballooned into one of the largest class-action suits in history.
Imagine if all the other content owners joined up? A trillion dollar suit? And if they didn't back down? This could be serious trouble for Google.
I'm impressed with Viacom's recent moves -- from the Joost deal, to the MTV Online overhaul, to today's Google lawsuit.
Sumner Redstone is mad as hell, and he's not gonna take it anymore. There's some good Analysis of the MTV changes on Media 3.0:
http://advancedmediacommittee.typepad.com/emmyadvancedmedia/2007/03/mtvs_new_web_st.html
I don't really care for MTV, but it's good to see a traditional media company really make a solid attempt at a web presence.
- Allie
This will not fade away -- this is a huge lawsuit. Viacom is taking the first major step for a lot of content owners. I wouldn't surprised if this ballooned into one of the largest class-action suits in history.
Imagine if all the other content owners joined up? A trillion dollar suit? And if they didn't back down? This could be serious trouble for Google.
I'm impressed with Viacom's recent moves -- from the Joost deal, to the MTV Online overhaul, to today's Google lawsuit.
Sumner Redstone is mad as hell, and he's not gonna take it anymore. There's some good analysis of the MTV changes on Media 3.0.
I don't really care for MTV, but it's good to see a traditional media company really make a solid attempt at a web presence.
- Allie
There are several questions which come to mind.
Is this green mail? Based on Viacom's revenues, it is saying that all of the thousands of hours of programming it produces is worth only 10 times the value of these snippets. If true, whose business model is broke?
Does the DCMA protect Google, if they are an ISP and follow the DCMA process (remove after notification), are they actually liable? As a follow on, it seems that being proactive is actually exposes them to lawsuits rather than protects them.
And finally, what if Google wins.
Personally, I hope they fight this. I don't think they have any choice. Their whole ad sense business model is based on fair use. This is simply the camels nose under the tent, if they don't stop it, the whole camel will follow. And everyone one will want their piece of the pie.
This YouTube business of using a lame copyright detection
system (Audible Magic) that works to their advantage by letting most copyrighted videos come though
reminds me of the Old Story about the guy who is on a tour of a condom factory:
On the production line after they do the final test there is an arm with a needle that comes down and punches a hole in every 10th condom.
When asked what that was for, the guide responded
"that keeps our our production line that makes baby bottle nipples in business"
VideoDNA can put an end to the copyrighted video problem on the internet .
The Viacom lawsuit will hopefully force its use.
For more info on VideoDNA:
www.vobileinc.com
www.vobile.cn
Viacom lawyers are on some serious mind altering drugs. I not only hope Google wins, but I hope the whole retarded DRM garbage blows up in viacoms face.
Do not support any thing Viacom produces, that way they can see the content on utube actually brought them revenue by advertising for free viacoms paying content.
Quite often I will see something on utube and then go buy the high quality DVD version. Gee! Viacom, that made you money. I will have to make sure that never happens again.
The real sad thing is that the viacom retards actually think the content on utube is watchable.... Oh! yeah I'm going to download it and play it on my HD TV, what a bunch of complete moronic losers.....
Boycott the losers that inflict mtv on the world.
MTV is to Rock & Roll as fish is to bicycle
cs