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YouTube Fires Back At Viacom
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "As we say in the legal profession, 'issue has been joined' in Viacom v. YouTube. In its answer to Viacom's complaint (PDF), filed Friday, YouTube says Viacom's lawsuit is intended to 'challenge... the protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") that Congress enacted a decade ago to encourage the development of services like YouTube.' It goes on to say that the suit 'threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression.'"
Even if Viacom were to win this, they would still be losing out.
Where is the first place I go to find clips of a show? Youtube. After that I head off to google in hopes of finding it somewhere else.
Would I go over to Comedy Centrals website? SpikeTV? MTV? No, because these sites are cluttered with garbage and intrusive AD supported video players. I usually get lost at these sites anyway.
Also, I'm 22, the perfect demographic for these opportunities and you've seem to have alienated us over the years with your garbage websites.
The only other point Viacom has is that YouTube transfers all video into their own 'proprietary' format and then 'copies' it (by which, I assume, they mean "show it on multiple instances of XYZ web browser"--or maybe backups). This is akin to saying that WordPress has its own proprietary format for blogs, by which it copies and distributes information. What a joke!
And things get funny toward the end of the response, too. YouTube denies point #24, which reads: If you can't even get that right, you may as well just give up!
My prediction (and hope) is that Viacom loses this one quickly and effectively.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The difference here is in the fact that Google has way, way, way better lawyers than the defendant in that case.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Basically like this: CoS are paying YT a nice lump of cash to advertise on their site. So YT in return for this cash reinstate the CoS account. Money talks, no business has morals when it comes to cash.
So, they are basically saying they don't have enough control of the internet, and that such situation should be declared as unfair by the congress, so that everyone making a site with thumbnails has to totally screen out every thing submitted by any user for copyright infringement.
So, copyright is not enough to them, they also want the world to police their own copyright for them.
They will probably win that argument, because it's clearly true.
Besides of how "true" it "clearly" is, the fact remains that the entertainment industry is spoiled and cannot stand a channel of distribution they cannot control, so they are wrong in my book. Also, what the heck? How is youtube or any web site supposed to know something is copyrighted? It should seriously be the author's responsibility to protect his own imaginary property.Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
First the lawsuits will start. I suspect those will fail. The next thing that happens after that is that someone will try to create a competing web site that completely misses the point and puts restrictions on users uploading content and tries to add DRM and advertising to any videos that do get uploaded. Then some gigantic media conglomerate will try to buy and bury Youtube. If all that doesn't work, they'll likely just give up and live with it. Not many companies make it past all that harassment though.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
When a judge is expected to hear a case dealing with a highly technical subject and the judge knows that he will most likely not be able to understand the technological side of the arguments - what is he likely to do? Sometimes I read the various trial documents posted here and I am amazed that there seems to be a great number of judges so well versed in the latest computer technologies to take on such complicated cases. Do they really understand the abracadabra coming from various expert witnesses, or do they just pretend to understand as a face-saving measure? I understand that many judges are well-educated, but a Renaissance Man is hardly a substitute for a network engineer.
It is a sad state that most businesses have obligations to shareholders, but to suggest that all businesses only care about cash must, by extension, mean that this is true of all people.
I'll grant you "most", but the way you (and others like you) are wording this makes it an excuse. It's not, especially for a company which claims "Don't Be Evil." Shame on Google, shame on YouTube, and shame on you for giving them an excuse.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
IF censorship was all that China did, I wouldn't care so much... censorship doesn't work. It's the official brutality, murder and the treating people as beasts of burden that bothers me.
Scientology is a complete fraud... no argument there.
They are associating with the PRC, so maybe guilt by association, but it's not as though the PRC would stop just because Google refused to censor. They'd just block Google, and everyone there would use Baidu instead.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
(a) an individual can choose, in any given moment, between self interest and trying to help someone else, but
(b) a corporate board of directors and corporate officers are pretty much required to choose the corporation's self interest. So a corporation -- if not closely regulated -- is essentially a sociopath with perpetual life.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful