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Google Spent $100M Defending Viacom Lawsuit
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Lawsuits are never cheap, even if you're on the winning side. But not many cost as much as Viacom's lawsuit against Google. The search giant won before trial, and even so Google spent $100 million defending themselves. Incidentally, Viacom is appealing the ruling, so it's not even over yet. Perhaps it's no wonder our rights are vanishing online when it takes $100M to protect just one of them."
On all matters regarding intellectual properties, only public defenders may represent both parties.
And move to a non-profit court system. Some jurisdictions figured out they could attract dollars by being attractive venues for lawsuits.
Maybe that's something that needs to be outsourced - civil suits. The way legal firms rack up billing is as great a crime as Hollywood / RIAA accounting.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Perhaps the data is published somewhere or is simply waiting to be compiled, but I would like to know how much was spent lobbying for the DMCA in the first place. This figure can then be compared with the money spent defending. Those numbers could then be used to show how much money was wasted on this and similar laws that offers negative net benefit to those whose copyrights are being "protected."
As we know, belief trumps fact. It has been widely believed to be true until studies have proven it to be true. So perhaps such a study would be an exercise in futility, but perhaps before MORE stupid laws and treaties are put into place, these sorts of facts need to come out into the open to show the world what is really going on and who is really benefiting. Turns out that the individual people aren't benefiting (we already knew that) but the parties allegedly being defended aren't benefiting either. The courts systems are being burdened and tied up as well. It's all a tremendous waste and the only beneficiaries are the lawyers behind it all.
He spent every cent he had, and went into deep deep debt, trying to keep out of jail for a prosecution orchestrated by RSA as a political favor payback by the US government.
And here I was thinking RIAA's 16M was bad...
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It's not always expensive to litigate. The classic example is the one against McDonald's.
I'm wondering how much Viacom spent on that lawsuit.
litigating laws that should not exist in the first place
a kind parasitism, that we are all paying for
legal cruft, created by lawyers, in the service of paying lawyers and keeping them busy, but adding nothing whatsoever to society or the common good, serving to do nothing but waste other people's money and time and keep a bunch of pointless people buried under paperwork
what do these people create?
i'd like one of these lawyers in cases as pathetic and pointless as this to actually try to defend their useless existence
how can they wake up in the morning and not put a shotgun in their mouths, so utterly without any redeeming quality is their useless existence?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
nt
One would assume that Viacom will be required to pay Google's defense fees. And a nice counter suit is always a possibility.
Florida has an answer to appeals trials. One is required to post the sum awarded by the lower court as well as a hefty fee to appear before an appeal court. Since it takes three or four years to get to trial as a rule the lost interest on the money as well as the build up of ongoing legal fees generally rules out any hope of an appeal trial giving relief. Then just to put the frosting on the cake the superior court often rules that the case must be kicked down to the first level and decided from scratch all over again. Then it takes another year to get back to court and get a ruling and there is no guarantee that the case will not be appealed a second time. This turns into a case lasting for fifteen years with expenses so great that the person fighting the uphill side of the battle will drown before it is over.
Google is not blatantly violating copyrights. As a common carrier that does not censor postings, they are not directly responsible for material posted to sites owned by them. In addition, Google would claim they have promptly taken down infringing material as soon as they were notified. Now, has Google assisted other individuals in violating copyright? Yes, and one could argue that as a corporation they should be held liable for contributing to copyright infringement. But they did not intentionally or blatantly violate anyone's copyright themselves.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
As much as I disliked the DMCA, the safe-harbor provision has done its job.
Google didn't violate peoples copyrights. The individual uploaders may or may not have,
according to the varying nuances of fair use. The benefits of youtube far outweigh
the theoretical loss of revenue.
Google spent a 100m not defending its good name but to set a legal precedent and defend the value of its company.
Once the legal precedent has been set, the cost of defending these suits will drop a great deal.
Of Google will claim the entire 100m as a tax writeoff.
The purpose of the judicial branch of government is to adminstrate the assertion of the will of the rich over the poor, with the appearance of justice.
And it is working just fine. A bit slow perhaps, but good enough.
Got a list for Islamic followers?
make the loser pay the defendants costs. viacom would think twice before entering into such a lengthy law suit that benefits neither viacom nor google's users, regardless of the outcome.
and $100m? wowzers! americans just LOVE money, hey?
i wish i was but oh well
]]] "Florida has an answer" should send you running for the hills.
Hills? In Florida? Have you been recently?
[I know, maybe some low ones in the northern parts of FL, but certainly not most of the state. ;-) ]
Every time two huge corporations duke it out in court, it's always a long protracted battle that can have only ONE clear winner: THE LAWYERS.
I can't load the linked article - but I can't help but wonder if Google spent $100 million because Google could throw that kind of money around without second thought rather than because it truly costs that much.
Google is defending their rights, not your rights.
The only reason Google gets away with it is because they are helping Viacom take away your right.
Whats wrong with the system we have in sweden - looser pays all legal costs.
That way you dont need to counter sue everytime, and even big corps wont take you to court unless they think they'l win
Of course it would hurt if the small guy sues big corp and looses, but thats not different in the us, so I dont think we are worse of in that perspective.
Our rights in any form now goes to the highest bidder.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They could have built a competitor to StarCraft for that much!
The sad thing is Google could have spent this money else were and actually did something that would have helped the technology community if they did not have to fight this stupid law suit. They are burning money defending laws that should not need to be defended. I hope Google keeps winning.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
Why does the OP say "our rights" when Google was ostensibly not defending "our rights"... but rather their rights. And even then, what rights of ours would those be? Does he believe we have a right to redistribute the works of others?
It's possible GP was talking about the book deal instead of Viacom v. Youtube.