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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.'"
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
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
(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
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.
Missing option. ;>
This is a negotiation tactic being used to drive licensing talks that are going on behind the scene. My money's on that one.
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
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.
Viacom, like other media companies, is mostly worried about two things: (1) losing control of the distribution of their product, and (2) losing control of distribution, period. The first concern is legitimate, but can easily be remedied by Google simply by not allowing Viacom's property to be posted to the site. The second concern has more to do with the fear of the rise of competitive distribution channels, and that exists even if these channels don't deal in copyrighted material. There is a finite pie of ear- and eyeball-hours out there, and if 30% of them are ever drawn to Creative Commons type stuff, that's 30% that isn't paying Viacom.
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.
You're right, of course, but sites like YouTube are a huge threat to the Big Media cartel regardless of whether they traffic in copyrighted material. A major barrier to entry in that industry is access to distribution channels: theaters, television and radio airtime, etc. It's like supermarket shelf space. That's why indy musicians and film producers have had such a hard time winning eyeballs regardless of the quality of their stuff. YouTube and sites like it bypass the gatekeepers and short-circuit the whole system; now just about anyone can reach the mass public if their creations catch a wave. Just as in the music industry, that scares the bejesus out of companies like Viacom because it strikes at the core of their business model.
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Viacom indirectly had people posting copyrighted material to YouTube as fast as Google can take it down. They need to attack the channel regardless, and to do that successfully they need a copyright case.
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.
When I send mix CD's full of copyrighted material via USPS to my friends, USPS is using those copyrighted works to make money and doing so without permission. Does that absolve the USPS of wrong-doing?
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Why would they do it? Because this case will dictate and set precedent for the future of this business model. Google was already going in the direction of online video, but YouTube had a better userbase. Google couldn't afford to let YouTube to get sued into oblivion by some huge multinational media giant. It was in Google's best interest to buy the company and fight this fight with their resources instead of letting an underfunded (relatively) startup set the precedent.
Now, can they pull it off?