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Google Buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion
Over 30 readers wrote about Google's purchase of YouTube today for $1.65 Billion, as rumored last week. The all-stock transaction is the single largest purchase in the company's 8-year history. The move follows on the heels of Google's convincing Sony and Warner Music to put music videos online for free. Reportedly, YouTube will retain its brand and all its 67 employees, including co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.
If I understood the situation correctly, Google bought YouTube - among other things - to prevent others from buying it and gaining (more) advantage in the field.
Furthermore, it is not the first product they've bought either.
Ignore this signature. By order.
CNN says it will.
The VC's and founders take a larger percent of the total than the rest of the employees. So the $25MM you mention is way off base.
IANAL, but I'm taking Computers and the Law, a course at my university about these matters.
The length of a clip is not the only thing that matters in claiming fair use: also important is the importance of the clip in regard to the entire work, whether the original work is more factual or more creative, and what effect the use of the clip will have on the saleability of the work as a whole. It actually cannot be known whether using a copyrighted material falls under fair use until one is sued over that material and goes to court for it, as fair use is up to a court to decide.
Also, even if the clips' being posted on YouTube violates copyright law, YouTube likely isn't liable for first-party violation, as they did not make the copies themselves, and they might not be liable for 2nd or 3rd party copyright violation if they can prove that they did not market YouTube as a place for copyrighted works to be posted by those who do not hold the copyright, and if they can show that they took appropriate measures to remove materials in violation of copyright.
However, it is best to assume that any material you see on YouTube that was not posted by the author IS in violation of copyright, as there have been no rulings in this regard, and unless an author specifically gives up his copyright or publishes the works under an open license (which still lets him retain copyright, but lets others use and distribute the work as well), then he has the right to sue for infringement, and YouTube will at very least be required to take the work down if they cannot prove fair use or de minimus (least possible to make a point) use of the materials, or that the work was in the public domain.
So, how are you so sure that the content does not violate the authors' copyrights?
That's funny, I had a quick discussion with my co-workers too, and they were of the mind TEN MINUTES AGO that Google needs the following:
c id=16357565c id=16357445
a. the users and more importantly
b. the usage pattern of these users
While google has been picking up little things here and there, essentially this is google's first real "social networking" site that they have purchased. I say it in quotes because youtube isn't really a social networking site, but there are certainly aspects of it that cannot be denied.
I say youtube lucked out and google really made a stupid purchase, it appears to me like it was an attrition attempt against the competition in internet space (yahoo? microsoft? myspace? - whoever they think their competition is atm, because I can't tell). I don't know.. I'm curious to see where this goes. Google definately wants to go into the multimedia distribution area, that's for sure. How they go about doing it, we'll have to see..
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Are you a script? If so you should be changed to reply coherently to replies in your thread, that would be more entertaining. Simply copying posts is a bit dull don't you think?
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=199747&
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=199747&
A webcast of the conference call can be found at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html in real player and windows media player format. The good part is a few minutes in when they start taking questions.
Most of it is about how each (youtube and google) will contribute to each other. They also talk a bit about financials; why google used stocks instead of cash, what youtube's revenue is, etc. Long webcast, but informative.
"Google video will not go away, ever." - direct quote from the webcast. The only integration the talk about it about google search in youtube but do say they plan to integrate more.
Even if you consider all I just posted to be weak defense, the kicker begins on page 11: Limitation for Information Residing on Systems or Networks at the Direction of Users. Google meets all three requirements:
- Google must not have "requisite level knowledge of the infringing activity. Examining what this means (page 12), we see that, because there are so many files on Youtube, they cannot have this type of knowledge (unless, of course, during discovery, a corporate memo was found which cited a specific infringing video that, after the fact, was never removed), which must be knowledge of a specific infringing file, not that infringement is occurring in general.
- If Google has the right and ability to control the infringing activity then (halt this boolean, we do not need to know the antecedent since it already evaluates to False: Google cannot monitor the millions of files placed on what was Youtube)
- "Upon receiving proper notification of claimed infringement, [Google] must expeditiously take down or block access to the material" - Youtube did this, as evidenced by the many times Lazy Sunday was taken off Youtube at NBC's request (note that Youtube was never sued for this activity)
Google also has an agent filed with the Copyright Office to receive infringement claims: here (PDF). As a sidenote, it's refreshing to see that a corporation has filed handwritten documents with the Copyright Office; kind of gives them character (or an air of sloppiness?).