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Viacom Looks For Google Staff Uploads in YouTube Logs
Barence writes "Viacom wants to know which YouTube videos have been uploaded by members of Google's staff, in what could be a potentially explosive aspect of its copyright infringement claim against the search giant."
What Viacom is doing is absolutely pointless. Want to make money? Have free downloads of *all* your shows on your website. And upload a bunch on YouTube too, why? Because YouTube is an easy way to watch videos, and I believe that Google will pay you to have ads in your videos.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The term "moneygrabbing cunts" comes to mind.
Because brief clips of movies on the internet aren't pretty much free advertising for your movies... what're those called again? trailers? And music videos aren't free advertising for songs either... Viacom is shooting their own foot.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
While I dislike the action, it gives Google (and ever other major corporation) a reason to care about my privacy rights. Hate the means; love the ends.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Common sense aside, uploading copyrighted videos is clearly against any corporate internet use policy. Why should Google be held liable for the illegal actions of its employees? It's not like Google encouraged its employees to upload the Daily Show. If that doesn't hold up in court, you just got yourself a convenient way to screw your employer (convenient if, for example, you were planning on leaving the country).
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
If it was uploaded by Google's staff as part of their paid job, then yes, Google is intentionally infringing their copyright.
But why would Google be blamed for an employee acting on his own to upload something?
whatever you think of this, it is very clever on the part of Viacom.
Hmm, just RTFA. With a company the size of google I don't see how just demonstrating that an employee is uploading copyrighted content is good enough. Just because the janitor / cafeteria lady / lead developer for Blogger is doing it doesn't mean that the people in the YouTube group knew they were. (I'm saying this knowing full well that Viacom is just trying to legally prove what everyone else already knows - of course the YouTube guys know people are putting copyrighted stuff on there.)
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Would staff be posting Viacom material from their work place? More likely if any video was posted to Youtube, they would do it from their homes, which are NOT under googles (or any other employers) control. Viacom could therefore go jump at making tenuous connections between being employed by company x, and company x endorsing some behaviour.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Surely there must be a few viacom employees (or employees of its partners) who have either watched or uploaded or both (and I am talking about copyrighted crap) videos to Youtube. How about looking for them?
Hell how about looking for MS employees? or Boeing? Might as well look for everything..Good luck Viacom /spit.
I'll bet Google is thinking that maybe keeping identifiable logs isn't such a good idea now...
Towards the Singularity.
what the internet has done to intellectual property is pit the little guys against entrenched dying large corporate machines. usually all the little guy can do is run and hide. but when its corporate machine versus corporate machine cast in the role usually occupied by the little guy, this is good because google can throw clout into a fight where the little guy can only hope to be popped like a zit. so precedents can fly out of this that can protect the little guy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Google should comply but in return ask for all Viacom IPs and VPN IPs.
Why?
Because google needs to correlate searches Viacom staff have queried in regards to child pornography, warez, illegal MP3 downloads, terrorism, and other questionable activities.
Sure, maybe there aren't any. But Google needs this info in order to prosecute criminals at Viacom.
All this seems to be is a fishing expedition, to get names for potential lawsuits later on, like the RIAA pogrom.
Imagine what happens if google looks at how many viacom employees uploaded copyrighted works (on their own time?)...
Then what?
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
If someone's employee goes above and beyond the call of duty to help you, that reflects on them as a company.
If the employee screws you over, that reflects on them as a company. Say a middle manager denies you your refund on a defective product. Now, to listen to several people above, "What problem is it of the store's that the manager ignored consumer protection laws?" - should the manager be sued or personally liable? Of course you'd go after the company.
If you get screwed by an employee out of their mandate (say, copying your credit card number down, something clearly not in their job description), you still don't go after the person. You'd be suing their employer for the actions of their employee on the job. Vicarious liability. (Of course, the employee would also be guilty of criminal charges.) Any loss inflicted on the company would either be picked up by civil suit between employer and employee or professional insurance, etc.
Why would this be any different?
Um, yeah. Because Viacom says so. No, I do not think so. So long as YouTube has complied with each DMCA request it has received (it has), then, nope, Viacom, you have no case. So, in summary, Viacom, you have no case.
Teach your cartel to buy laws from the Congress (the DMCA), since you can't always get what you want (although it has helped to stifle the internet significantly, setting back the rapid progess seen in the late nineties enough that 1-2 years then is about equal to 5-7 years now). Good show, and good job! Hey, Viacom, you should get a job at Comcast! Heh heh heh.
Didn't VH1 used to have a weekly top 20 videos of the web? I'm sure they didn't have rights to all of those videos. If I had a video that made it on VH1 or any other Viacom channel, I would go after them in a heartbeat.
...that they really don't care about their copyrights, they just want the cash. After all, why else would you go after the people with more money rather than the people with the most infringements.
Why is TFA from a UK site (which the submitter has as his link) when both companies are based in the US? Couldn't we use a more mainstream site like CNet or ZDNet? I mean, come on...
...they're individuals. Doesn't this go against Viacom's original claim that they weren't trying to identify particular individuals?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Its the only thing that would make sense for their lawsuit.
Via says youtube profits from their content in a proactive manner. So this is a good way to prove it.
NO SIG
When you are bleeding money like this, you have to do something. That's also why the NAB (which is just a lobbyist front for big media to maintain their monopoly) is trying so desperately to block the XM / Sirius merger.
Hulu already did it.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
They could not care less about the laggy, buggy, extremely-low quality you-tube ripoffs of their shows & movies.
Viacom is in financial trouble, and Google is big and have a lot of money. Viacom are already pretty known for being "big bad money bulleys", just google for those viacom satellite customers by the thousands that are forced to keep flawed subscriptions even though they don't use it - and Viacom has been up in the news several times for their "bullying" tactics of the common public.
Pure corporate greed - nothing else!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Google should just buy Viacom
I've never ever seen a company quite so stupid. Viacom are really being idiots here. Publicity is good. Even bad publicity is good. What I would like to see is Google back-billing Viacom for providing services. 76000 people watched your stuff on our servers. Its your stuff. Viacom owes Google $25,758,536,000.00. Pay up immediately. As I have been watching my own viewing habits, and looking at shows Viacom carries, I don't watch any of their content. I don't know how many others do, but I don't. Now my second thought is this. If you are paying for (internet2/broadband), you are likely paying for TV too. So now why would you watch on the computer instead of watching TV instead? Certainly with TIVO, you can watch on demand to your hearts content, and even burn shows to disk that you would like to see again. Is this lawsuit really about "Our precious precious content", or is it really about "We would like the demographics of the 18-25 year olds at your site, but are cheap and don't want to pay for it". Based on the total amount of content at YouTube, VIACOM's content is massively small. Google should preen the information, making sure age information, income, gender and any information not directly related to VIACOM to be removed from the information given to VIACOM. After all, if its not directly related to VIACOM, then its not part of this.
if you don't get paid for it? I think Viacom has a point.
were viacom to win, the laws would be protecting a dead status quo that will be ignored technologically anyways. were google to win, the law would suddenly be relevant again
its not possible to lose, just possible for the little guy to breathe a little easier and not worry about getting unlucky and suffering the occasional smackdown by a dying dinosaur
the laws on intellectual property are simply invalid in the age of the internet
ip laws are easily technologically circumvented. ip laws today exist solely as a means for large media corporations to take their frustrations out for becoming increasingly irrelevant
by financially destroying housewives and college kids
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
is information you don't have to protect.
A Viacom press release masquerading as a news story?
I guess they don't want to look like SCO and are making a preemptive attack.
At least link to the chart so we can see what's going on. Viacom was going pretty steady until last May, then it suddenly started to nosedive. Anybody know what happened?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Default installation on new machines and network effects ("I can have the same programs/open the same files as everyone else I know, and I can use the same interface I've seen elsewhere") DO make it convenient. Not necessarily good, but convenient.
If another OS can get enough market share, and open standards take off, some of that will go away. But it does exist.
>> just google for those viacom satellite customers by the thousands that are forced to keep flawed subscriptions even though they don't use it
A cursory search doesn't turn this up. I'm not saying it isn't true, but you should probably provide your own evidence for a claim like this.
semantics are everything!
If I were Viacom, I'd certainly be upset about Google making money off of my property (which is what's happening in reality), but instead of getting into a legal battle with them, why not work with them? Lets face it, Viacom is part of a dying distribution model. I think part of the frustration stems from the fact that regardless of how you provide your content, it will ultimately be uploaded to YouTube. But if that's the case, why not provide ad-based content through YouTube? Ideally, a situation like this makes everyone happy, and I'm sure Google would be happy to work with you. Eh, just a thought, I'm not economist or anything.
Sure! You just need to be better at searching:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/08/12/BU163548.DTL&type=printable
Want more?
http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/09/technology/echostar_viacom/index.htm
Viacom are notorious for just adding to the subscribers bills without asking the customers what they want.
In Denmark there was a few years ago a big case where TV3 (satellite subscribers - subscribing to viacoms package) have been fooled into a money trap they could not get out of. There where examples of sellers treatening their subscribers with legal action and putting them into the "bad credit lists" etc.
This was a BIG thing and they've been up in the news several times.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Perhaps Viacom should have negotiated through other means than a lawsuit. People tend to look at lawsuits in a negative light, especially if the issue can be handled in a better way. Viacom will regret this decision soon. (Thanks to the Streisand effect most likely). Youtube users are lashing out more than anybody else because they are the ones that could potentially lose the most. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NjnsLQCl_w
Windows is not particularly convenient.
It's much more convenient to buy a PC with Windows compared to, say, Ubuntu. I can buy a PC with Windows and peripherals certified for Windows within walking distance of where I buy groceries. And if I buy a PC with Windows, a separate game console isn't as much of a necessity as it would be with Mac OS X or *Linux. Until I start seeing penguins next to four-panel flags and two-tone faces on packages in big-box electronics stores, Windows will be less inconvenient in notable ways than *Linux.
ObTopic: Video under a free content license isn't especially convenient to find either. Or has YouTube or one of its major competitors added a way to narrow a search query by license?
If they had a lot of free time to play around, maybe they'd figure out how to use alternatives. Until then, Windows is convenient.
Installing and maintaining a Windows machine takes much more time than installing and maintaining a Linux machine.
It's Windows users that apparently have "a lot of free time to play around".
Though I don't understand why it matters if I uploaded something on my own time or not. I was allowed to do all sorts of things on my own time. Sure, I probably couldn't start another search engine, but if I wanted to upload a couple short clips from Comedy Central or whatever, who cares? If it's 10pm at night and I'm at home using my own hardware, what the hell does it matter that I work for Google? I mean, sure, if it's not Fair Use, they could come after me personally, whatever. But I fail to see the connection to my workplace.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Why do people watch movies on TV when you can rent the DVD for a dollar
Because not everybody is a fan of feature films. Some people like to watch time-sensitive programs, such as sports, news, or easily spoiled TV series ("The Lone Gunmen Are Dead" anyone?). DVD doesn't cover these cases as well as broadcast does. And thanks to the cable companies' tying of channels into "tiers", if you subscribe to sports, you get the movies at no additional charge.
and see it ad-free
"Ad-free" might not be ad-free. Case in point: Would it be meaningful to make a copy of the film The Wizard without any commercials for Nintendo products?
uncut
I'm going to stroke it. Your arms are broken!
Sure they do. It's called a Tivo.
A TiVo DVR costs at least $150 (for satellite) or $300 (for over-the-air) for the box plus $400 for a subscription, per TV set, in addition to what you already pay for the TV and programming. To some people, avoiding commercials isn't worth $550 or more.
an episode that gets shown on TV say 10 times a year or B) the same episode that is online for viewing 24/7. More views == more money, granted, online distribution has a slightly lower profit margin, but it also has slightly lower costs.
Unless upstream copyright owners charge residuals per view. For example, owners of copyright in a novel, movie, or comic book series on which a TV series is based may get a royalty, and so might the composer of music used in the series. The ad revenue has to be at least enough to cover the server costs, the bandwidth costs, and the residuals.
It seems like you just argued having ads online wouldn't work because people would turn to somewhere that had no ads, and then you suggested Viacom wants people on ordinary TV... which has ads.
The fact is, people are used to some amount of advertising. You can get away with having some amount of advertising, if it's reasonably hard to skip but reasonably easy - or, God forbid, actually entertaining - to sit through.
In other words, restrict yourself to a few minutes per hour - perhaps 3 minutes - of advertising. And MAKE IT RELEVANT. If you have a bunch of content I can get easily - and it's stuff I want - I'll happily watch a few ads. I'll even tell you what I think of them, and I'll give you feedback saying, "Not remotely interested, don't even think about displaying it again" to "intriguing, send me more info (later, I'm watching this show)".
In other words, if you're Coca Cola and you want to brandstorm my attention with garbage: Your time is up, go away and die. If you're someone who has a cool product that I'm likely to want and you just need me to know about it: your time has come.
Imagine a world where I can get any new show(s) I want automatically put on my iPhone, with modest amounts of embedded advertising, and the ability to click a "go away" or "interesting" button as I watch. Powerful, powerful transformation.
Even for traditional programming, one-way advertising is a stupid waste of time and effort for all involved.
Not only is this not "interesting"; its also stupid, of course Google employees ARE NOT uploading unsanctioned duplicates of tv programmes. Google are making more money than the us tv networks legally, why on earth would they pay some people to risk it all. They wouldn't. *IF* a person or two were found to have uploaded unsanctioned duplicates AND happen to work for Google then it would be someone who happens to work for google, not a google employee asked to do so. Bank on it. Now fix Google groups 2 damn it.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Even if Google purposefully used Viacom's content that is no reason Google should have to give away it's property, the log files for usage statistics. If a walmart employ steals a CD from Target, that doesn't give Target the right to start stealing Plasmas from Wal-mart. This is a wide-net search for illegal activities of private citizens as well as international viewers. To me that is a clear violation of the 4th amendment. The judge should have ruled that it is the burden of Viacom to find the specific videos that violate their IP rights and notify YouTube of infringement. At that point either the video is taken down or they pay off Viacom to use the video on a case-by-case basis. If I were the Viacom CEO I would work out a deal where Viacom would either sell high-quality clips or better yet offer them in exchange for the user statistics inorder to better judge who likes certian shows so they can use more targeted ads during their TV and full-length web showings. It seems to me that many big Corps care more about using their power to bully people around than they do about actually making money, or to increase profits in other related markets. Ex. A Record label that owns CD producing factories have more incentive to kill mp3's since 10 CD sales gives them a higher net profit than 100 iTunes downloads. Personally I like watching HDTV better than crappy web videos for full-length TV shows, but in case I miss the broadcast of "The Office" it's nice to watch it on the web the next day at work so that i'm not out of the loop for the next broadcast.
I was watching 30 Rock yesterday and found it ironic that on the show, Alec Baldwin visits Youtube and watches a copyrighted video.
Did in the last post on this topic, it came out that the judge called Googles claims of privacy infringement "speculative"?
Oh Oh - I know - we're not going to be able to prove what we *thought* we could prove with the logs we wanted . . . . So lets look for something we can use to show somebody from Googles thousands of employees *also* uploaded a video.
Cuz we only need one naive judge to buy into the argument that Google is 100% responsible for what *any* employee does to win!
Plus we can sell off all these [I *{heart}* apocryphal evidence!] bumperstickers!
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
i don't think the internet ads model generates a lot of revenue.
I think you'd have a hard time coming up with data to back up that claim. http://www.google.com/search?q=internet+ad+revenues
..because that is the only thing they found, because that is all that is there. If provided by work and all they can find is windows, then there ya go. If they go into compu-stor-be-us, and all they "find" on the shelves is windows, then there ya go. And you can go to cuzin leroys house out in the sticks where he owns ten hound dogs and they all hang in the front yard and anyplace you step you "find" dogshit, it still doesn't make it convenient just because you found it, it just means you are stuck having to deal with crap ;)
I bet a one month limit on logs of user IP addresses is looking really good now.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
you don't seem to get it.
Google not only provided a very easy method of permanently removing clips from youtube, they even took their suggestion to make the proactive "filtering" they've been lobbying so hard for on the general internet.
They are not after their own content on youtube because they have the capacity to easily remove it.
they want you tube shut down, and they want a precedent which will be used as a cudgel to prevent any end user participation online
If they get the ruling they want against youtube, it will apply to everything from other video sharing sites, to ebay, to slashdot.
That's right, slashdot will be in very real danger if (or should i say when in this graft/corruption rich environment) this ruling goes Viacom's way.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Do you have any evidence of that? Every time I install various *nix distros I find they take about as much time as Windows.
Why in the hell is this modded to -1? I must be missing something.
(-1: Twitter)
This means Viacom knows they can't win on the original merits of the case. Google's position is pretty solid - they comply with DMCA, and the DMCA shows that Congress thought that the cost of enforcing copyrights should be borne by the copyright holder. So Viacom is trying to prove that Google is encouraging copyright violations, a la Kazaa or Grokster. This is an unresolvable case, because copyright law is too broken. Either side winning a complete victory would be bad - either intellectual property laws will be gutted or the Internet will be shut down. This whole thing is a ploy to get Congresscritters to revamp copyright law for the Internet age - even Viacom would benefit from clear, simpler laws. But I'm not gonna hold my breath.
Mode me visible please...
Can we discuss the veracity of this?
"While this might seem off topic, I would like to remind everyone that half or more of Viacom's board of directors is made up of Scientologists. The article also implies that IP addresses could be included in this information. If you have a YouTube Anonymous channel, I strongly suggest investing in some proxy condoms if you haven't already."
http://forums.enturbulation.org/15-media/judge-orders-youtube-give-all-user-histories-viacom-21046/
Get botnets to start loading quick views of known Viacom videos on Youtube. Give them something to work for!
He posts at -1 by default, for trolling and shilling. See here and here for more information.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
They hate twitter and free software.