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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.'"
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.
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.)
"Free" publicity?
More accurately, people go to Google to search for stuff like Viacom shows. If Google were ever dumb enough (they aren't) to start self-censoring to penalize foes in other areas of their business, people wouldn't use Google. Google would be shooting themselves in the face to spite a pimple.
And it isn't like this is unexpected. When YouTube was being woo'd, Mark Cuban was widely quoted for saying "Only a moron would buy YouTube" (because of the huge potential lawsuit liability). Maybe a better statement would be "only a non-moron that has the cash to pay off the inevitable lawsuits", of which there are only a few companies, Google being one of them.
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.
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?
The dollar amount means NOTHING. They could have said $50,000,000 or $500,000,000,000 - the end result will be exactly the same, which will probably be that Google and Viacom will come to an agreement that google will do more to keep individuals from posting Viacom's crap, and Viacom gets to upload their crap to YouTube and stick advertising in it or offer it for sale (ala iTMS).
Tit for tat retribution really only works on the playground. And maybe in international spy rings.
Not to mention the Iterated Prisoners' Dilema.