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March 13, 2007
More on Viacom/GooTube Suit: Playing Infringement Favorites?
An interesting snippet from the Viacom suit text. Is GooTube playing infringement favorites?YouTube’s failure to take reasonable measures to prevent infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrights stands in stark contrast to the protection which YouTube offers for the content to which it has acquired licenses through various business partnerships with other copyright holders. YouTube’s cofounder and chief executive Chad Hurley has publicly stated that YouTube will use filtering technology to identify and remove copyrighted works for companies that grant licenses with YouTube, but not to companies that decline to grant licenses on YouTube’s terms. By limiting copyright protection to business partners who have agreed to grant it licenses, YouTube attempts to coerce copyright owners to grant it a license in order to receive the protection to which they are entitled under the copyright laws.
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Couldn't agree more. As I said in an earlier post today, while Viacom may be waving a stick at YouTube, the real people who will be scurrying -- mostly in glee -- will be entrepreneurs pushing cable/television bypass.
Worth pointing out that Viacom has a distribution deal in place with Joost.
Perhaps Viacom isn't just negotiating with GooTube through this effort, perhaps they are trying to influence the direction of online video in a direction where they have a tad bit more control?
Comparing legit video vs. User generated clips of girls fighting, I wonder which is more attractive to future advertisers?
$1.6 billion huh?
Letting content owners control their content and still be able to publish on third party sites is the legitimate way to distribute content. Viacom is right in controlling their content and hoping to do the distribution according to their terms and conditions.
Genwi.com, approaches media aggregation (videos, blogs, podcasts, news and much more) and distribution based on this approach.
You might not want to use "GooTube" to talk about the Google/Youtube thing. GooTube is taken by a less.. mainstream.. organization.
If you google GooTube you end up at a youtube for porn.
Paul,
Wow, thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't read it on any other news stories about the suit.
YouTube, in my opinion, has just been out of control. I think this lawsuit will wake them up. If Viacom wins, YouTube will lose all of its content, and most of its audience. Or, they'll be cutting deals left and right, in desperation.
Personally, I'm happy to see all of this go down. I'm excited for services like Joost, and these are based on legitimate business models, not piracy. That's the only way that we'll see cable-bypass television take hold.
- Hashi