Viacom Suing Youtube for...well no need to guess really.

[Rainbow Man]

Yeah. Copyright infringement of course.

Welcome to the information age Viacom. Too bad the head of your company is still back in the pre-internet era.

It's not really surprising to see how media companies fail o see new opportunities and instead decide to feel threatened by new media such as youtube. The entertainmnet insdustry seen as a whole is an exceedingly shallow and conformant one rife with enforced conformity lack of imagination surface-over-substance and even more or less hidden sexism and racism. In all it bears most if not all the hallmarks of a stodgy conservative and it is not surprising new concepts are difficult to grasp for a great many stodgy conservatives at many levels in a company structure.

Together they represent significant mental inertia.

It is somewhat worrying what it would mean for the future should Viacom win this lawsuit. I don't really know their chance of success. It would seem (for an uneducated layperson such as myself) that youtube is in somewhat of a bind here since it can't rely on the "information carrier" defense available to ISPs since they don't just carry the copyright material. They actually store and serve it. And they can't rely on the "no copyright material present" defense used by for example bittorrent sites again because they actually store and serve the videos in question..

I don't think copyright law gives allowances for serving copytrighted stuff if you promise to remove it if/when the copyright holder asks you to., Oer does it?

Undoubtedly Viacom is asking for at least five bajillion dollars in "damages". As if this is actually measurable to any degree.

What if these youtube videos generated viacom sales? Logically that should mean viacom owes Youtube an advertising fee.
Peace.

 

[Zaphod]

What if these youtube videos generated viacom sales?

Trouble is that "the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action". I.e. Viacom can elect to get paid handsomely, in the amount of $750 - $30,000 per work ($150,000 if it's found to willful infringement), regardless of the actual damages.

Thus, such a legal action has little to no risk for the companies since a defense seeking to establish that actual damages are nonexistent could be cut off before the merit of the argument can be proven.

Google has deep pockets, and if found guilty, thousands of clips times thousands of $ adds up. However, if Youtube is worth $1.65 billion now, they'll definitely be worth less after an eventual loss which would open them up to similar action by others. Google certainly doesn't want that, an neither do Viacom as they feel entitled to a bigger piece of the pie over the long haul than they could recoup in any outright victory.

In the end, it's 'just' another negotiation play.

 

[Graham]

It's an odd one alright.

On the one hand, they will no doubt get a ginormous settlement, and the upper management will be vindicated. 'Yes, illegal distribution of our products has costs us $xxx million dollars, the courts have shown!'.
Yet on the other hand the viral marketing of their own shows by their own audience has suddenly stopped.


YouTube *really* needs to setup a advertising and profit sharing scheme with content creators such as this. That way we can say goodbye to unfriendly, unreliable abominations such as 'comedy central motherload'.

 

[Rolf N]

Yeah. Copyright infringement of course.

You know what? I'm relieved to read that. At first I thought they sued for patent infringement. A la "Method and apparatus to broadcast images to a remote screen over a network".

 

[Tetramagic2]

Yeah. Copyright infringement of course.

Welcome to the information age Viacom. Too bad the head of your company is still back in the pre-internet era.

I''m sure Viacom and its properties (MTV, CBS, Comedy Central) were doing just fine before Youtube came along. By "pre-internet" era do you mean not having others making billions off of your work while you are not compensated in return...

It is somewhat worrying what it would mean for the future should Viacom win this lawsuit. I don't really know their chance of success. It would seem (for an uneducated layperson such as myself) that youtube is in somewhat of a bind here since it can't rely on the "information carrier" defense available to ISPs since they don't just carry the copyright material. They actually store and serve it. And they can't rely on the "no copyright material present" defense used by for example bittorrent sites again because they actually store and serve the videos in question..

imo once youtube started to accept advertising on their site, they became financially liable. As long as they didn't have any advertising revenue they could have probably slimed out of any damages

I don't think copyright law gives allowances for serving copytrighted stuff if you promise to remove it if/when the copyright holder asks you to., Oer does it?

thats debatable. according to the DCMA you're right, but that could also be interpreted to mean that once you are asked to remove something it has to be kept off. and not reintroduced.
We're in virgin territory here with the law, it will be interesting what precedents the judge will introduce

Undoubtedly Viacom is asking for at least five bajillion dollars in "damages". As if this is actually measurable to any degree.

it is unmeasurable, but just for fun I will try to measure it anyway.
Viacom said their clips had been viewed "over 1.5 billion" times, which I assume is less than 2 billion. So for between 1.5 to 2 billion clips, they are seeking between 50 to 66 cents for each clip viewed. Since Youtube clips are between 0 seconds and 10 minutes (the maximum) long, I will assume the average clip is 5 minutes (which sounds about right for a music video or late night standup routine.
Basically it comes to about 10 to 13 cents/min per viewer.
Now for advertising comparison I will use the Superbowl: (taken from quick search online)
$2.4 Million per 30/sec ad
91 Million viewers roughly
comes to
0.00088$ or 0.088 cents/min per viewer.
So yeah CBS is suing for way too much damages, on the order of about 150 times

What if these youtube videos generated viacom sales? Logically that should mean viacom owes Youtube an advertising fee.
Peace.

If there was a preexisting agreement, then sure. But there wasn't. I can't start painting swooshes on T-shirts and shoes, start selling it as Nike gear, then have the audacity to believe that Nike would pay me for advertising their products instead of having me sued for counterfieting their goods

 

[Rainbow Man]

You bring up some very interesting points and educated arguments! Thanks!

By "pre-internet" era do you mean not having others making billions off of your work while you are not compensated in return...

For starters is youtube actually bringing in even one cent in profit much less billions? Whenever I go there I always get very little in the way of ads.. Most of them seem to be for youtube and its originally hosted material itself actually.. And the monthly bandwidth bill must be absolutely monstrous not to mention server and storage costs..

Second.. This would onl yreally be applicable methinks if youtube's business plan was to rely on copyrighted material to generate profit. However tyhey're not. They delete copyrighted clips whenever tyhey're asked to do so.

That's more than any old CD/DVD burner ever did. They don't pay out royalties from your credit card when you burn music CDs TV episodes opr movies nor do they filter out copyrighted material either automatically..

imo once youtube started to accept advertising on their site, they became financially liable.

The mail carrier of your country of choice will charge you money to trasport that package of counterfeit Hollywood blockbuster DVDs (or drugs explosives whatnot). Does that automatically make them guilty of the same crime you are? I dont agree that's the case.

but that could also be interpreted to mean that once you are asked to remove something it has to be kept off. and not reintroduced.

That's impossible to guarantee though. Any such law would either stumble and fall on the limits of technology (because foolproof screening measures do no texist) or simply force any site like youtube to shut down. Even manually viewing each and every clip to make sure there's no infringing material would not be 100% successful. People can make mistakes and there's so much copyrighted stuff out there to keep track of. Beside sit would just take way too much time and manpower. Upload queues would grow to unmanageable levels.

And where do you draw the line if you have a parent taping a little girl's birthday party and there's a disney cartoon going on the TV visible inb te background?

We're in virgin territory here with the law, it will be interesting what precedents the judge will introduce

Indeed. Kind of castor oil enema interesting I guess. Judges/the law always seems to be dragging a tleast a decade behind the technical developmnt curve.

So yeah CBS is suing for way too much damages, on the order of about 150 times

How unexpected. Besides superbowl adrates are way way above normal. That would of course have to be taken into consideration thus making the $1bn asking price even more prepostrous.

I can't start painting swooshes on T-shirts and shoes, start selling it as Nike gear, then have the audacity to believe that Nike would pay me for advertising their products instead of having me sued for counterfieting their goods

What I said wasn't meant to be taken seriously of course.

Yet one should look at what possible beneficial effects youtube videos have for copyrighr owners. One can't simply dismiss out of hand that some people might see an episode or a clip of something and get hooked abnd buy the rest on DVD for example to view it in higher quality.

But to these companies any duplication is only measured in damages. That's an expected way of them going about things I guess. But a narrowminded one.

Peace.

 

[bloodbob]

If this was in Australia IMHO google should loose. Sharman lost because they had a fincial interest in warez being distrubted because it increased their advertising revenue. So does google. Sharman has been giving a court order requiring to ban any file with the word yellow in it. Because there is a song called yellow. Sharman media wasn't even hosting the content and google/youtube all they wrote was the software which frankly could just as well easily be modified by the end users to bypass filtering.

However frankly I think under the sharman media ruling google.com should be shut down too because well you can type mp3 and warez in the google search and get access to illegal download and of course that gives google advertising money.

 

[Tetramagic2]

That's impossible to guarantee though. Any such law would either stumble and fall on the limits of technology (because foolproof screening measures do no texist) or simply force any site like youtube to shut down. Even manually viewing each and every clip to make sure there's no infringing material would not be 100% successful. People can make mistakes and there's so much copyrighted stuff out there to keep track of. Beside sit would just take way too much time and manpower. Upload queues would grow to unmanageable levels.

And where do you draw the line if you have a parent taping a little girl's birthday party and there's a disney cartoon going on the TV visible inb te background?

about the second point, I don't know. if the material is altered in such a manner that it really bears no resemblance to the original material, then I suppose the content owner would not feel threatened by it

About the first, I disagree! youtube is very quick to remove any adult content from the site within minutes of it being uploaded. I believe this is done because they monitor more stringently for that sort of stuff, and also because the community of users is quick to notify them of that sort of material. So why not have a button for people to click if they see copyrighted material on the site? Why not monitor it a little better? If I can spend just 10 minutes surfing through it and find tons of copyrighted material, I am sure they can too.
Its just intrasegience on their part, they know illegal content drives traffic to their site and they are very blase about the whole issue.

 

[V3]

The mail carrier of your country of choice will charge you money to trasport that package of counterfeit Hollywood blockbuster DVDs (or drugs explosives whatnot). Does that automatically make them guilty of the same crime you are? I dont agree that's the case.

Youtube is not like a mail carrier. They are broadcast service over the internet. Its like if your mail carrier offers a duplicating services for your counterfit blockbuster DVDs (or mass produce drugs/explosives from the sample you gave) and distribute them to many recipients.

Yet one should look at what possible beneficial effects youtube videos have for copyrighr owners. One can't simply dismiss out of hand that some people might see an episode or a clip of something and get hooked abnd buy the rest on DVD for example to view it in higher quality.

But to these companies any duplication is only measured in damages. That's an expected way of them going about things I guess. But a narrowminded one.

Peace.

Copyright infrigement is copyright infringement, so what if it benefits you. If you can double dip by getting the benefits and damages, why not.

Anyway I think copyright should be shorten to 5-10 years instead of a century. It gives too much value to them. It needs to be kept in check with other stuff, that can't be copyrighted.

 

[bloodbob]

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=...scription++size++(wma|mp3)+&btnG=Search&meta=

Click that link and tell me that google isn't helping piracy of music.

 

[Zaphod]

Click that link and tell me that google isn't helping piracy of music.

Here's what I get after the 100 first (not very pirate-ish) hits:

We're sorry...

... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.

We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google.