Viacom ******; Sues YouTube for $1 Billion

[JPS]

Re: Viacom ******; Sues YouTube for $1 Billion

yeah its all free publicity, and as far as I know, you cant download videos so its not really negatively affecting them any, if anything, it promotes shows

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Viacom ******; Sues YouTube for $1 Billion

Yeah, but YouTube is more similar to a file sharing program than an ISP, so not sure how much immunity they will have.

Can't say I didn't see this coming, as though they do have a best effort policy, with all the money they have they should be able to screen at least 75% of the video they have. So they could stay in business if they queue videos until they're approved. Yeah this will **** off a lot of users, but the ones who aren't posting copyrighted material shouldn't have to worry. So yeah it's kind of sad, but really YouTube has become the new file sharing, for both videos and songs. So unless YouTube starts sharing some of their profits with all the media companies they're going to lose this case more than likely, or at least have to settle. Even though you can't download the videos, most people have an internet connection, and are therefore are able to watch them at anytime, so while not the exact same thing it is similar.

[The_Real_Crunk]

Re: Viacom ******; Sues YouTube for $1 Billion

And youtube is pretty good about taking down Viacoms stuff. whenever a new episode of somethign comes out people put it up on youtube, and within about an hour its taken down. All 10+ versions uploaded by different users.

Its all the little 2 min clips that Viacom is getting anal about.

[JPS]

Re: Viacom ******; Sues YouTube for $1 Billion

2 minutes is like a preview though

YouTube only allows upload limits up to 10mb I think, which is like, what? 1 1/2-2 minutes? after that you have to pay to upload larger files, which is probably what viacom is complaining about, because theyre basically saying "pay me and upload shows"

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Viacom ******; Sues YouTube for $1 Billion

The limit is 100MB or 10 min, without a premium account. And since you get unlimited uploads, it's pretty easy to put up any length show or movie.

So though there is still a lot of gray area, I think the media companies would just like a little better policy than best effort on curbing piracy. Which I think they are at least somewhat entitled to. Yeah it can be free promotion, but it's not really a promotion when someone is able to watch the whole thing. I'm not up on the average response time for copyrighted material to get taken down, but I think YouTube put a little too much faith in it's user to not put up copyrighted material, as that's at least a half of YouTube (how much of that is with permission who knows, but I would venture it's less than half of that 50%). So I think Viacom is right to want some compensation if YouTube is only able to provide 'best effort' protection and not have a prescreening process. Itunes has to to the best of my knowledge. Also this is slightly different than private file sharing as anyone is able to view your file (again similar to the old P2P networks).

While it's nice to have things for free, that doesn't make it legal. While it's reduced quality, it's still a copy.

[The_Real_Crunk]

Re: Viacom ******; Sues YouTube for $1 Billion

Im all for removing entire movies from there. But if somebody puts up the new episode of South Park on there or something, hows that stealing from Viacom when it was just on TV?

[JPS]

Re: Viacom ******; Sues YouTube for $1 Billion

Im pretty sure youtube will lose this one, just like winmx did, though winmx was smart in that they shut down before legal action was taken which probably saved their hide.

Youtube should let volunteer moderators filter the submissions, that would work out pretty well, but some mods would end up letting copyrighted material get through

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Viacom ******; Sues YouTube for $1 Billion

Im all for removing entire movies from there. But if somebody puts up the new episode of South Park on there or something, hows that stealing from Viacom when it was just on TV?

Because they're not seeing any money for it's use, like they do on TV from advertisers. They don't get this with YouTube, YouTube does (also remember they're probably not happy they lost the cases on the personal right to make personal copies of shows using a VCR or similar recording device). And if you're going to take something and don't want people to not find out about, you certainly don't try to make money off of it. Not that the consumer does, but like has been said, YouTube does. Why do you think Google bought them for $2 billion. Though Google loves creative technology (or at least that's the image they put out), they're not going to sink that much in something that doesn't make a lot of money.

So really it's all about getting permission, which to my knowledge YouTube and it's users don't.

[DarkwingChuck]

Re: Viacom ******; Sues YouTube for $1 Billion

The more people watching it on YouTube, the less people watching it on TV and the less advertisers want to buy commercial spots during that show. You really have to exaggerate the reality for it to become an issue but that's probably how Viacom is seeing it. It's not really costing them anything but there's the vague potential of a problem.

[tjoris9]

Re: Viacom ******; Sues YouTube for $1 Billion

Im all for removing entire movies from there. But if somebody puts up the new episode of South Park on there or something, hows that stealing from Viacom when it was just on TV?

I think the smart companies are putting the whole episodes up on their own website for internet viewing, thus making advertising revenue AND offering the content on the web so people don't feel a need to watch the episode on Youtube.