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YouTube Begins Defense, Seeks Depositions
eldavojohn writes "YouTube has begun their defense against Viacom by first calling on 30 depositions from people like Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert. While the article mentions that YouTube has not revealed what they hope to gain in these depositions, I think Jon Stewart's opinions will weigh in favor of YouTube. Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom, objects to YouTube's hosting of their content. Comedy Central hosts many Daily Show & Colbert Report clips on its own site, bringing in its own ad revenue."
I'm pretty sure both Stewart and Colbert have previously stated that they were pleased to see clips of their shows on YouTube, as it could only generate publicity and drive more viewers to the show. Unfortunately, neither gentleman holds the copyright to the shows, so their opinions might not carry much weight in this case. They may be the stars in front of the camera, but they are still basically employees.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
It's not worth it. Slow, laggy performance and you have to wade through pages of premercials before you get to the crappy player. I've tried it a few times and it's such a lousy experience I don't bother anymore.
They should simply strike a deal with YouTube, take a percentage of ad revenue from pages with Comedy Central clips on them - and let the pros handle the video.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
But it should be (and maybe is?) an illegal tactic. Calling a defendant to the stand and everyone that defendant knows or had contact with just to troll for evidence and harass/intimidate the defendant could land a lawyer in contempt i would bet. I gather the blurry line is in deciding as to how much constitutes harassment.
meep
People could just edit the ads out, so there's no guarantee they would stick.
My lawyer has suggested - quiet brilliantly - that I subpoena Roger. Roger is the guy who works the register at the location where I've been hamburgling. He sometimes sweeps the floor. His IQ is around 75 and he has worked there for over ten years. He really knows the restaurant business because of all of that experience.
Roger agrees with me that the hamburgers cost too much and are of too low quality to pay for. He also thinks that having me come into the store in my hamburglar outfit excites the customers by giving them a little drama in their supersizeme lifestyles - so they are more likely to return and eat more. A testament to my success is that since I have been working that golden arches, on-site cardiac arrests and ambulence visits from all the McD customers have triped. Toilets overflowing incident reports have quadroupled.
We think we can get Roger to testify on my behalf that my hamburgling is actually helpful to McDonalds and that I'm not stealing anything of much value anyway.
Robble Robble.
In this particular case you may not be entirely correct. Stephen Colbert held a contest called Stephen Colbert's green screen challenge, which had viewers take stock footage of colbert messing around with a lightsaber and edit it in any way. The submissions were supposed to be made on youtube, not on any hardware Viacom provided. Submissions of the contest were regularily shown on the Report for over a month.
Both the Daily Show and the Report have used youtube in many ways to poke fun at it and use it for their show. Since Stewart and Colbert both have much to do with their shows content creation, it fits that they might be deposed.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
That's the thing that gets me. The amount of effort they put into lawyering could easily be fixed otherwise by making a page that works. And why don't they include whole episodes? It's not rocket science. It's a really simple formula to follow. First take content, then put it on the fucking page, ordered chronologically. Oh, and yeah, please make a decent player.
The thing is, people are lazy. People will watch advertisements. Youtube doesn't usually have entire episodes, the episodes vary in quality, and it can sometimes take a good amount of time to actually find. If they just put the content where people want it (remember that whole economics thing, with supply and demand?), then why not provide it? You can even make money on it. Really.
Not to mention of course, Youtube helps gain popularity for the show. Something called advertisements. Something most companies have to spend a lot of money on.
Maybe YouTube is trying to prove that its not causing harm to other businesses. Jon Steward and Stephen Colbert can talk about how they've spoken highly of YouTube and yet they haven't seen any drop in ratings that can be attributed to YouTube. I mean, if they can prove they're not causing damages, Viacom may have a difficult time pursuing $1 billion dollars in damages.
Hopefully though, they'll still try to use safe harbor laws in their defense. I think they have a much stronger case there.
"I think Jon Stewart's opinions will weigh in favor of YouTube."
I wouldn't count on that. I bet Mr. Stewart will be thoroughly "briefed" by Viacom Corporate Counsel prior to the deposition about what's an appropriate response in behalf of Mr. Stewart's employer.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
What you say seems to imply they're being deposed to provide backup for a claim by the defendant that no breach of copyright has taken place. That would be an interesting position for Youtube to take, but I don't see it being one they could defend. Allowing a clearly described subset of material to be spread freely does not mean the copyright holder grants permission for all their content to be spread, and I doubt any such claim will be made. The best argument that could be drawn from the way the copyright holders have used Youtube in their shows is that they granted usage rights to some material, and that having their material on Youtube was good for their business. Maybe, just maybe, Youtube could even claim unauthorized use of material distributed on their service, although that would be pretty facetious. A copyright owner is, in any case, entitled to make bad business choices if they wish to do so. I don't see this angle being much more than diversionary tactics, and I'd suspect the real question is to what degree Youtube as a company is responsible for material posted by their users.
Exactly. The sooner the content industry gives up on this obsession with complete control, the sooner a viable business model will emerge (and by "viable" I mean "fits with the internet").
Yes, some users will edit-out the commercials. Others will skip past them. It doesn't matter. A very large number of users won't bother skipping the commercials (if they are sufficiently short and not too frequent). And, if you make the shows very easy to find and download, users won't bother looking on P2P sites for the equivalent commercial-free version.
The key here is to make the experience for the consumer sufficiently convenient that they no longer feel the need to overcome "the system." When commercials are annoying, people learn to circumvent them (e.g. adblock on webpages, record and fast-forward for video). When commercials are "good" (sufficiently short, infrequent, and maybe even entertaining), people will watch them.