This is silly. It's really free publicity for shows/movie with clips up on YouTube. Why can't they just take the clips down that they are asked to anyway?
Viacom on Tuesday slapped YouTube and parent company Google with a lawsuit, accusing the wildly popular video-sharing site of "massive intentional copyright infringement" and seeking more than $1 billion in damages.
The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York contends that nearly 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom's entertainment programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
Viacom, an entertainment giant that owns Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks and a number of cable channels, said it has also asked the court for an injunction to halt the alleged copyright infringement.
In a statement, Viacom blasted what it deemed YouTube's "clearly illegal" business model, riding on advertising sales and traffic tied to "unlicensed content." The media giant accused YouTube of building a "lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent, Google."
"In fact, YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden--and high cost--of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement," Viacom said in a statement.
The suit is the culmination of what New York-based Viacom called "unproductive" negotiations. In early February, Viacom asked YouTube and Google to remove all offending clips from the site and said they had agreed to pull down more than 100,000 videos produced by Viacom properties, including MTV Networks, Comedy Central, BET and VH-1.
Google was not immediately available for comment on the suit.
Source: http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6166668.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news
I knew this was only a matter of time... depending on how this turns out.. other companys will follow.
(http://www.portablefilmfestival.com/upload/name/181/dr_evil.jpg)
The IC - that's great!
Perfect response...maybe someone will post it on YouTube -- ooops, that would be an infringement.
Quote from: The IC on March 13, 2007, 10:14:45 AM
(http://www.portablefilmfestival.com/upload/name/181/dr_evil.jpg)
This is far from baseless.
For one, way pay even $1 for a video or clip off of iTunes when it's posted free on YouTube? Or why watch network TV when you get the same "story" off of the net and streaming video for free? Sure it's not quality and if you're watching a good show like Heroes where the Look matters, it's not as viable an option but...
Then there's the role of policing it. Why should Viacom have to go through all of YouTube's 1,000,000's of videos looking for those that infringe on copyright? Really, since it's YouTube's space, then shouldn't YouTube be doing the work to be sure that everything is all good and legal?
Really it would make more sense for there to be some kind of screening process, but that would cost money to staff, and it would cut into traffic. Viacom is right in that YouTube's money comes from advertising on the site, and that cost is based on the traffic and that traffic is often generated by the knowledge that you can watch copyrighted content for free.
I don't see this suit as baseless at all, and would not be surprised if it means the end of YouTube as we know it. Look what the RIAA did to Napster.... I don't think it's a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination, but I think that they have a case. Otherwise they wouldnt' have filed it.
Mr. O
Well, they would file the suit in an effort to get YouTube's parent company, Google, to work out either better copyright controls or eventual revenue sharing. The RIAA suit actually wasn't what killed Napster, it was the advent of iTunes and a viable legal download music service. The number of copyright infringement cases the RIAA won were very small and directed at the end users of the pirated music. Ultimately, the question is who is responsible for the content, the individual uploading it or the site hosting it? Ultimately, responsibility lies with whoever aquired the copyrighted material and what they do with it. I think Google has every intention of providing better copyright protection on YouTube.
I didn't mean to say it's baseless or no case, what I mean to say is it is dumb. These guys should try to work together, not sue each other. I can bittorret whole episodes of TV shows in very high quality if I want to. A few minutes of a clip on YouTube isn't killing Viacom's business by any means. In fact, I could make a case that it is enhancing it.
In my view they are all fighting a losing battle. The genie is out of the bottle on these types of services. It's time to work out a deal and model that everyone can profit from rather than trying to fight it.
Agreed, Rico, which is why the suit in and of itself is not the end game for Viacom. They are just rattling the cage, just like RIAA did as they have been caught unprepared for this to happen to their industry, which is amazing to think they are so short sighted as to not see this day coming. Now it's damage control.
Yep - I agree. We are still in the early stages of all this Internet, file sharing, video clips, etc. What still kind of bugs me is why these guys don't see "the big picture" and try to do something innovative with all this great technology rather than fight it. If little mini films folks make can generate thousands of views, what could somebody make that actually has some money and time?
An example of this were the little mini episodes the Galactica guys did to connect seasons 2 & 3. Great concept and idea to generate some interest in the off months. That's the kind of stuff the web is great for.
Viacom brought this lawsuit only after it inked an exclusive deal with Joost to distribute their content online.
I agree with Rico on this. Viacom is being utterly daft by suing YouTube. Youtube is where everyone goes for TV and Movie clips. NBC and CBS both distribute their content to YouTube and in return they get more viewers. Viacom simply doesn't want to be on the one site on the entire internet where everyone goes for that kind of content right now.
http://www.viacom.com/view_release.jhtml?inID=10000040&inReleaseID=227591
Quote from: The IC on March 15, 2007, 09:16:09 AM
NBC and CBS both distribute their content to YouTube and in return they get more viewers.
I don't think that'a the point of the lawsuit.. like you said NBC and others distribute their own stuff on You Tube. Viacom is sueing because of the stuff that was put up there that they did not do themselves.
Quote from: StarTrekFanatic5 on March 15, 2007, 09:27:57 AM
Quote from: The IC on March 15, 2007, 09:16:09 AM
NBC and CBS both distribute their content to YouTube and in return they get more viewers.
I don't think that'a the point of the lawsuit.. like you said NBC and others distribute their own stuff on You Tube. Viacom is sueing because of the stuff that was put up there that they did not do themselves.
I agree, but originally NBC and CBS demanded that YouTube remove all of their content, until some brilliant higher upas at CBS and NBC realized that these clips actually boosted the ratings of their shows. They then signed agreements with YouTube to distribute their content, and allow 3rd parties to upload clips of their shows.
Viacom is shooting itself in the foot by doing this, and $1billion is a tad bit excessive for a settlement.
I would love to see Google come back at Viacom with a check to purchase the company, or better yet have google purchase Joost!
Viacom could have sued YouTube on principle long before it was purchased by Google. They knew that YouTube didn't have the money to pay them if they won, so they waited until YouTube had an owner with deep pockets.
Again, I maintain they just have to work out a solution that everyone can profit from. Time to start thinking more like Quark on DS9!
Rico, Rico, Rico
Profit for eveyrone isn't any good if it means less profit for me.... :)
I also think there's an Intellecutal Property issue here that they want a court to settle. CBS and NBC are free to say "Go ahead" to people illegally posting owned content, making it legal posting. Until Viacom does the same, then, legally speaking, it shouldn't be up to Viacom to police YouTube's servers.
I paint a picture, I shouldn't have to go around and ask people to remove it from the websites they posted it on without my permission; they just shouldn't post it without my permission.
That, I think, is one of the cores of this suit.
Mr. O
MrO, MrO, MrO....
I still say good luck to Viacom at putting the genie back in the bottle. In an ideal world I agree with you. But the world is not ideal and I'm a realist. We shall see how this all works out in the end.
Quote from: Rico on March 15, 2007, 04:14:21 PM
MrO, MrO, MrO....
I still say good luck to Viacom at putting the genie back in the bottle. In an ideal world I agree with you. But the world is not ideal and I'm a realist. We shall see how this all works out in the end.
You're totally right. I just wish I knew my rules of acquisition well enough to be able to quote one here. :)
It will be hard to stop the sharing of videos on the Internet, now that this phase of sharing has been reached.
I wonder if this was what forums would have looked like if we had had the internet when the Xerox machine was first introduced.
Mr. O
I found an interesting article on Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070319-infringing-videos-on-ifilm-could-cause-problems-for-viacom.html
QuoteEven as Viacom sues YouTube for what it describes as "brazen" copyright infringement, some of Viacom's own dirty copyright laundry is being aired. Ars searched one Viacom propertyâ€"iFilm, which was acquired by Viacom in 2005â€"and found several instances of infringing video hosted by iFilmâ€"content for which Viacom does not own the copyright.
Perhaps Viacom should clean up it's own act before accusing others of doing what it is doing.