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Viacom Demands YouTube Remove Videos
AlHunt writes "According to the folks at PCWorld Viacom has publicly scolded YouTube for continuing to host throngs of Viacom videos without permission. They are demanding that over 100,000 of its clips be removed from the site. This includes content from Comedy Central (no more Daily Show), MTV, Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures, and VH1. YouTube has acknowledged receiving a DMCA request from Viacom, and the article notes what a dire precedent this could be if Google can't reach an agreement with Viacom and its fellow IP holders."
Honestly, the reason I watch the Colbert Report is Youtube. If I hadn't seen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, I might not watch the show. I mean, they should complain about full episodes, but if there's 3 minutes of Colbert or Stewart on there, it's just advertising to watch those shows.
...part of me wants to say "fuck 'em"
because someone will re-upload those clips whether Viacom likes it or not.
OTOH, I understand why GooTube doesn't want to piss off the big players in the media industry & will eventually compromise in one way or another.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Viacom is just saying, "It's our content, give us what we want or you can't host it...pay to play suckers!!!". Fault them if you wish but they are well within their rights. Viacom is operating from a position of having the law behind them. Because of that, they get to dictate terms. If they don't like the offer they can tell YouTube to fuck off and die. Maybe the folks uploading the content are ultimately at fault for the copyright violations but YouTube has the responsibility for removing that material at Viacom's demand. Would you want your content out there for free if you could otherwise get paid for it?
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Our business model is to host content made by others and become fabulously wealthy. If you don't allow us to freely show the material you've paid for our bottom line will be negatively impacted. Please reconsider, for at least as long as it takes to sell our Google stock.
Sincerely,
YouTube
With about 10 lines of perl you can rip down all of The Daily Show clips from the akamai servers
At least they didn't go Disney on YouTube and demand X dollars per every ten seconds of clip on the site.
Actually you don't. The DMCA says that the user that upload the videos are the ones who may be breaching copyright. Online Service Providers such as YouTube have safe harbour from copyright liability provided that they remove content if and when they receive a take down notice from the copyright holder. What YouTube are doing is perfectly legal as it is.
Reaching agreement with the big media companies might make reduce YouTube's workload and reduce news stories such as this one. But it's absolutely not necessary.
Short clips of their programs are just free advertising and add to the popularity of the shows. I can understand wanting to eliminate whole episodes, however.
FAQs are evil.
Why don't you try watching some original content instead of what big media is already pushing at you on TV? That's what the real strength of YouTube is - giving exposure to independent content creators. I hate it when great ideas like this get overrun with people that think they're doing something "useful" by uploading all the same shows that are already on network TV and DVD.
The sad thing about YouTube is that there are a lot of cool videos that people make themselves for YouTube, but they're bloody impossible to find and YouTube doesn't seem to care as their business model absolutely seems to be making money from illegal uploads. They won't remove illegal uploads with anything short of a DMCA notice. I know because I submitted 50 such videos as a "terms of service" violation only to check two weeks later and find that only 12 had been removed, half with an 'this specific copyright holder forced us to delete this video' message whose only purpose can be to shame a copyright holder for enforcing their rights.
I've seen some wonderful original videos on YouTube but it's also taken weeks of searching to find them and I've only found about ten. The search engine is only good when you know the title of what you are looking for, and that's only true with illegal uploads. The most viewed ranking is useless because people watch videos because they think they might be good much more often than they watch them because they know they are good. The video ratings are useless unless your preferences are exactly the same as an average person. So the result is, even if you want to use YouTube for what it was intended for, it's still a hundred times easier to use it illegally.
Viacom owns the material and they can do what they want with it. Youtube didn't pay to produce it so they have no right to benefit financially from it. They may not charge to watch the videos but they use them to create value for the company. Viacom may actually want to leave the clips on Youtube but I'm guessing their lawyers advised that it sets a dangerous president. If they allow the clips they may loose control of the shows themselves. In some ways this is up to the court system and where they draw the line. Viacom can provide them with clips but it gets dicey when some one other than Viacom posts the clips without Viacom's permission. Whoever puts the money into producing the material should control it. If you make something it belongs to you unless you give or sell the rights to some one else. That isn't copyright that's been true for roughly twelve thousands years or more.
Viacom's action could establish a precedent and have serious consequences for YouTube ...
There may be consequences for youtube but perhaps the proverbial cat is out of the figurative bag. The real problem here is that the Internet is such an effective and efficient distribution system. I find myself watching more and more news content on youtube simply because it's there when I want it. I don't have to read a program guide or program a TV. I don't even have to own a TV.
If what happened after Napster (as a file-sharing service) was shut-down is any indication, the forces of supply and demand combined with the ubiquity and amorphous characteristics of the Internet are unstoppable, even if youtube were shut down tomorrow, you could expect to see the Daily Show popping up more prevalently on P2P, BitTorrent, or some obscure Russian site.
And if the failure of all those DMCA P2P lawsuits to stop file-sharing from reaching an all-time high is any indication of the world in which we live, people are going to get the content one way or another, no matter what the copyright holders or the law says. All moral judgments aside, that just a fact based in reality.
You know, that simply doesn't reflect how the economy works. If I put up a cinema, there's no reason, moral, legal or otherwise, why you shouldn't open up a restaurant next door and make a profit from the customers I draw. True, you have no positive right to do so, but there's no restriction on such activity either. Do you want to live in a world in which companies and individuals can control all positive externalities of their actions? As Lemley explains, monopolies are the best way to achieve that kind of control. The pernicious idea that copyright confers an exclusive right to profits (both direct and indirect) is at variance with almost all other market activity.
Where on earth does this come from? Market economies and the labor theory of value are a modern phenomena. Most societies in history have been organized quite differently, with vastly different conceptions of property and ownership. (Your claim preceeds the earliest writing by thousands of years!)
If you ask me, Viacom's action is a negotiating tactic. They know they benefit from the distribution of their programing. But they also know there's money to be made here, so they want as big a cut as possible. Both sides are in a contest to determine how to divide up the pie - which really comes down to a question of relative strength and weakness, not right and wrong.
You do realize that this is, what is effectively known as monopoly practice and what most of Slashdot would expect from companies like Microsoft, bot not Google. In any case, abusing power in one field to gain momentum (make a point) in another is monopoloy practice. So no, Google will not do that if they have anything in their heads.