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YouTube Begins Defense, Seeks Depositions

Posted by Zonk on from the calling-in-the-big-guns dept.

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."

7 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. It's a Tactic by vjmurphy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You ask to depose a number of people, hoping that the inconvenience of the process will force the other side to back down. That's why Comedy Central has the Google founders on their deposition list. It's lawyering.

    --
    Vincent J. Murphy
    Spandex Justice
    1. Re:It's a Tactic by megamerican · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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
    2. Re:It's a Tactic by ajs · · Score: 5, Informative

      You ask to depose a number of people, hoping that the inconvenience of the process will force the other side to back down. That's why Comedy Central has the Google founders on their deposition list. It's lawyering. Probably not. The goal, here, is to discover exactly what's going to come out in court. Obviously the folks involved with The Daily Show will have information about the impact that You Tube has had on the show, how ratings have been doing, and so on.

      Google needs to make the case that brief exposure to copyright violation (while Viacom staff hunts down the content and issues formal complaints to You Tube) has not had a negative impact on the programs that have been infringed. They also need to show that they've been prompt in responding to concerns about copyright violations on their site.

      If they can make those two points, they'll have a start to a workable case. The real question is how much effort Google can realistically be asked to put in to make sure that their users don't upload copyrighted material. The answer to that question will have far-reaching impacts on every site (mine included) that allow users to contribute their own content whether text, audio, video or something else.
    3. Re:It's a Tactic by HUADPE · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They can use it to allege unclean hands. If Viacom is taking Google IP, and Google is taking Viacom IP, neither might be able to successfully sue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unclean_hands

      --
      This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
  2. From the (Wrong) Horse's Mouth by Stanislav_J · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  3. Great idea by Bombula · · Score: 5, Funny
    [From the executive offices of Viacom and Comedy Central]

    "OK guys, I've got a great idea! There's this company out there on the interwebs called youtube, and they're owned by Google, and they get tens of millions of visitors every day. Now they're willing to host our videos - get this - for free!

    So here's my idea: let's put our videos on our own website instead! That way, we can pay for all our own web design, site maintenance and bandwidth, we can make sure that the interests of the advertisers who finance us go unserved thanks to our site getting just a tiny fraction of the traffic youtube gets, AND we can piss the whole world off in the process! How can we lose!?

    --
    A-Bomb
  4. Re:Why don't........ by kebes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.