YouTube Leaves Google Vulnerable?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday October 10, 2006 @01:58AM from the googtube-is-fun-to-say dept.

PreacherTom writes "Yesterday's big news was Google's $1.65 billion deal to acquire popular video hosting service YouTube. But will it be a good deal? The market thinks so, as Google's stock rose about $10 per share after the purchase. On the other hand, YouTube increases Google's risk of copyright infringement, opening the door for significant liability...if Google cannot solve this issue. Will their planned video 'fingerprinting' be enough, or just a billion dollar mistake?" From the article: "YouTube's policy is to remove copyrighted clips once alerted to their existence. Content providers say the company needs to be even more proactive ... Todd Dagres, general partner at Boston's Spark Capital, says that Google's large market cap of $130 billion makes it much more vulnerable to lawsuits than a private company such as YouTube. 'Once Google starts to apply its monetization machine, there is going to be more money at stake and people are going to go after it,' says Dagres. 'You cannot monetize other people's content without their approval.'"

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Re:They wish by bazorg · 2006-10-10 04:43 · Score: 4, Informative

In the end anyone who puts up TV shows on one of these services is going well beyond fair use
I don't know about that... Over here in Portugal we all pay a tax to support the public TV/Radio network. As the tax is charged along with the electricity bill, it's kind of hard not to pay it.
Using this network that is paid by the public, there are a few TV stations that broadcast 24h/7 with open signal, so it's obvious that the TV shows are not secret, or meant not to be distributed. So, why exactly would it be unfair if I would use the computer (or VCR) to record and show to my friends something that was already made public?