Slashdot Mirror
Viacom Sues Google Over YouTube for $1 Billion
Snowgen writes "Viacom has filed a $1,000,000,000.00 lawsuit for 'massive intentional copyright infringement' against Google over YouTube video clips. '"YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site," Viacom said in a statement. "Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.'"
I mean, honestly. What was Google EXPECTING to happen when they bought Youtube?
Either:
They'll settle, and millions of companies will line up to sue Google.
or....
Google will do an IBM/SCO on their ass and bankrupt them.
Place your bets!
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
It's truly amazing how the fact that YouTube is now owned by a company with billions of dollars suddenly means that all the content is pirated. Apparently, before Google bought them, not a single clip was even slightly shady, but ever since they started to represent billions of dollars, every clip that's ever been shown is worthy of at least one lawsuit!
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
I like free video as much as the next guy, but people *own* this stuff. And Google does not.
The billion dollar lawsuit looks good on them.
Google, please drop all Viacom sites from google.com. After all, they hate all the free publicity and promotion you give them.
Not wanting to defent Viacom, but I'm sure they'll be fairly keen to point out that they actually pay their staff...
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
This copyright violation is going on with YouTube since before google acquired them. Why didn't Viacom act at that point in time and close the website. Since google has the money and I think this will be setteled out of court by google giving them some money to get away. In the future we can see some big payday for Viacom
GOOG: Mkt Cap: 139.97B
VIA: Mkt Cap: 27.71B
IBM: Mkt Cap: 141.50B
SCOX: Mkt Cap: 21.23M
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Don't Viacom know that their precious DMCA protects Google?
-- lol pwned
I didn't know YouTube was a lucrative business!
MeTheGeek
(IANAL) I look at this and wonder is google will use the common carrier clause. By not monitoring and policing the content of the users they could well fall under the common carrier clause. This would mean that as a common carrier, they are not responsible for the content that is on there network. The end users would be responsible.
.02c worth
I have worked at and run many ISP's, The lawyers ALWAYS insistent that any news feed be uncensored because the act of censoring or deleting any of the content could be used in court to show that we agreed with the content that remained. Thus we could be sewed for any illegal content that we missed.
Just my
old media fails it
when linking to content, hosting content, etc., you generate buzz, hits, pr, etc.
in other words, the more content you get out there, the cheaper you get it out there (hint: free), the more money you make: more traffic, more ad revenue, more awareness
this is the future, and old media doesn't get it. by putting traffic stops at the doors to their content, by micromanaging who seems what and when, you don't preserve your revenue streams, you kill them by making getting to them too obscure and/ or difficult
the guys who grew up on radio and television as their model just. don't. get. it.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you read the complaint ... Viacom claims that Viacom represents "one of the most important sectors of the US economy." Fuck Viacom; they're a bunch of folks who are getting rich creating the misery of others.
I can understand Viacom's position here, and I don't think it's totally unjustified. That's not the same as "I totally agree with it", mind you, but I see where they're coming from. Google is using their copyrighted works to make money, and doing so without permission. Did said works get uploaded by others? Yes - but does this somehow absolve Google of wrong-doing?
I think that last question is what's going to need to be answered legislatively and judicially over the next decade. It seems wrong that Google is profiting off Viacom's work without permission or license, yet more restrictions will hinder the development of some technologies (ala some of the proposed remedies to mass copyright infringement via P2P). This, of course, assumes there is not some sort of drastic change in how copyright is handled - which I'm sure is the solution many Slashdotters would prefer, but doesn't strike me as terribly likely in the current legislative climate.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Wow you're the guru of predictions. You were only 2 weeks behind the often linked rant.
Actually, did anyone not predict this?
1. Website blatantly infringes copyright of big media companies, but company has no capital or profits
2. Said company is bought by huge internet company.
3. Website blatantly infringes copyright of big media companies, owner has huge amounts of capital stuffed under the couch
4. ??? No one could predict what goes here ???
It's like software patents, it's so patently (haha) obvious that most other people don't think it's worth mentioning.
Except that Napstar wasn't run by Google.
I'm not saying that Google is some paragon of virtue, but they have money and lawyers. Good lawyers, ones who can put up a fight. Chances are Viacom is hoping that Google will decide it's better to settle than to fight in court, because any such fight would likely be long and drawn out.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
its all about availability of content.
Viacom is doing NOTHING to make this content as available as it has become in youtube.
Maybe if they did, and put in their own advertising, they'd be making the ad dollars off this content instead of loosing it to youtube.
Look, im sorry- I really don't mean to flamebait here. In fact, I really ought to post this as AC just to avoid the karma dock. But Im not going to. Are you really patting yourself on the back for predicting that someone would sue google 6 months ago? Did you miss the hundreds of other analysts, newspapers, and critics that said the same thing? Did you miss how the one of the biggest aspects of the merger being talked about by wall street was the escrow account for copyright issues?
So congratulations, you predicted that google would get sued over YouTube. With insight like that, maybe you could get a job forecasting the weather in LA (today: sunny. tomorrow: sunny...). Or maybe you just wanted to shamelessly link your blog.
Anyway, if anyone needs me, ill be over in the corner modded down to -infinity, flamebait. But at least I wont be claiming to be a genius for predicting that the sun will rise tomorrow morning (REALLY! ITS TRUE, WAIT AND SEE!).
This was actually discussed quite a bit here on Slashdot back when the Google buyout was announced. The general feeling was that because much of Google's business model and future plans depends so heavily on the eventually outcome of the inevitable lawsuits that sites like YouTube are going to generate, that Google needed to buy YouTube just so they could be a party to those lawsuits, and use their considerable legal and financial resources to try to ensure that they get a favorable ruling.
Not to imply that YouTube is in the right for having copyrighted materials or Viacom is in the wrong for wanting to rein in their material, but... ...Possibly the reason why copyrighted stuff gets put on YouTube is so others can have it because the owners aren't making it available. (This is also my excuse for certain people's P2P activites -- such and such isn't available through 'official' channels, you can't just run out and buy it, and some nice person with it has shared.) If Viacom doesn't want it on YouTube, they should ante up the goods so there isn't a p1r4t3 market for it.
Bless YouTube for giving the power (and 1980's "Time for Timer" PSAs) to the people.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
The other difference is that I don't think anyone seriously believes that Napster's "library" was mostly original work, authorized (and uploaded) by the copyright holders, with the majority of Napster's users going to it for access to that type of content. Oh sure, some of it was, but the vast majority...
YouTube, by comparison, seems to be mostly original work, created and posted by the copyright holders to those works, they publish. As a tool, it's clearly aimed at legitimate uses, and Viacom's one legitimate complaint might be (MIGHT be) that Google just didn't police it well enough.
YouTube has much more chance of landing a Betamax-type verdict than Napster did. I'm not saying it's cut and dried, but I'd be surprised if they can't at least deflect the bulk of the liability to their (copyright infringing) users, which is arguably as it should be. $1 billion dollars? IANAL, but I just don't see it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But when it's posted for free, as in beer, they sue.
There's something rotten in more than Denmark here.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If an ISP had a "per GB" pricing scheme, would you think that it would be justified for the entertainment industry to sue them from profiting from copyright infringement over P2P? If not, how is this different from YouTube? If so, does this mean you think ISPs should not have common carrier status?
You've never been to youtube, have you?
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I'm sure nobody at Google works for free either. But Viacom wants Google to do its dirty work for free: examining video clips, digging up the relevant copyright information, contacting the owner of the copyright to determine whether it should be posted to YouTube or not, and removing the offending clips.
Remember that while each media corporation is under the misguided assumption that they are the only folks who own the copyright on content, in truth, there are lots of clips on Google/YouTube that the copyright owner has posted legitimately, and many more clips where the copyright owner is unknown or cannot be located. Viacom wants to shift the burden of filling out DMCA takedown requests to Google, despite the fact that Congress (miraculously) realized that a hosting provider should not be responsible for vetting every piece of content that a user posts to their service.
Viacom is in a far better position to take care of everything that comes before the deletion of actual infringing content. They are aware of what material they own the copyright to, they already know who owns the copyright on that material, and they already know that they don't want it on YouTube. They also have a legal remedy - a DMCA takedown notice - for having such material removed.
If Google has to vet all of its content to make sure that Viacom doesn't hold the copyright, then they can't just stop with Viacom's content. They can't even stop with every ??AA member company's content. No, they have to establish the wishes of the copyright owner for every single piece of material on their site. And if Google loses, then every website that provides hosting space and shows advertising alongside it - Angelfire? Geocities? - has to do the same thing.
That's why the DMCA requires takedown notices, that's why it absolves hosting providers of responsibility for vetting material that their users post to their services, and that's why Google is in the clear and Viacom will be ponying up their legal fees in a few years' time.
I wouldn't call it "hostage" because Google has absolutely no obligation to Viacom to provide them with search engine service.
Personally, what *I* would be tempted to do would be to block anyone in Viacom's IP block from accessing Google at all. I'd say to do the same for YouTube, but they'd probably claim that was just to cover up the infringement, so it might be a bad idea.
I mean, exactly what does Google owe Viacom, anyhow? They aren't the ones putting up these clips--users are. And Google has what might be the one good part of the DMCA on its side--the Safe Harbor provisions. If anyone has a duty to police Viacom's "property" it should be Viacom.
I, for one, am sick of copyright holders trying to push responsibility onto everyone but themselves via technology and legislation. They want to, in effect, carpet the kingdom because they don't feel they should have to wear shoes.