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Viacom Sues Google Over YouTube for $1 Billion
Snowgen writes "Viacom has filed a $1,000,000,000.00 lawsuit for 'massive intentional copyright infringement' against Google over YouTube video clips. '"YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site," Viacom said in a statement. "Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.'"
Good thing they pulled all those Viacom clips from Youtube last few months, otherwise they might have been sued for, like, a billion dollars!
Oh, wait.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Why ask for one BILLION dollars, when you can ask for ONE MILLION DOLLARS?!?! MUHAHAHAHAhahahaha...ha..aha..*ahem*.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
They should go for a zillion-gabillion dollars!
Lawsuits should always be based on nice round numbers, not actual proven damages.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Once again, life imitates parody. I did not know they were worth a billion dollars.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Google may be rich, but they are nowhere near big enough to bankrupt Viacom. Viacom has a revenue of over $9.6 Billion USD, whilst Google has $10.6 Billion (according to Wikipedia), but this isn't the case of a smaller firm trying to sue a giant. If anything, Viacom, as a conglomerate, will probably have greater cash reserve and certainly has more assets which can be sold off in the event of it needing more cash.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
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.
US District Court Filing
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Yeah, it seems like many other people shared this view when the news of Google buying Youtube came out.
Youtube was popular but not really making any money.
Google buys them, and Google has money.
Now it's Youtube, but with money to sue them for. Google buying them just upped the risk factor considerably. Google has quite a few brainy folks on their side, I'm sure they saw the lawsuits coming. So I'm wondering, what's the plan they have in store for this contingency, because there's no way they would've gone into this without a plan...right?
Please?
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.)
Google has been spoiling for a fight over the DMCA safe-harbor provisions for some time now. Their book search and regular search business depends heavily on that part of the DMCA's enforceability. Without it, the Prodigy and Napster decisions could be used to annihilate Google and every other modern search engine.
Its far better for Google to explore the ramifications via a subsidiary company that can be cut loose to die if need be.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
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!).
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 entertainment industry's lawsuits are way more interesting than their TV shows, movies, and records? Maybe they should formally change their business model and go primarily into lawsuits as a creative medium.
I really appreciate you coming down from your clearly enlightened high horse long enough to type that up...
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.
I'm not saying that Google is some paragon of virtue, but they have money and lawyers.
Now all they need is guns. It would be much more fun and would earn the Warren Zevon seal of approval.
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?
A cloaked sith lord sits in an ominous rotating chair aboard the google-star, as he reads the law suit: "Excellent, everything is going precisely as planned. Ready my ship commander."
!#&*