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March 13, 2007
Viacom Waves Stick at Google; Entrepreneurs Elsewhere Scurry
How seriously should we take this newly-announced Viacom suit against Google over copyright infringement? The former alleges that $1-billion in damages over 160,000 "unauthorized" clips of Viacom programming that have, Viacom says, been viewed more than 1.5-billion times.Read the full suit text, which has some entertaining stuff about how YouTube's "friends" function, and here is the statement Viacom released this morning:
"YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google. Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws. 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.Translation: Viacom doesn't like the deal it has been offered by YouTube, so it is bringing out the big legal stick. Google has almost certainly realized by now this entire business of clips is, despite their best intentions, going to the courts, so this action had real inevitability. Nevertheless, it still has a reasonably high chance of being settled before district court judges get to weigh in, even thought the stakes just went up markedly.
This behavior stands in stark contrast to the actions of other significant distributors, who have recognized the fair value of entertainment content and have concluded agreements to make content legally available to their customers around the world.
There is no question that YouTube and Google are continuing to take the fruit of our efforts without permission and destroying enormous value in the process. This is value that rightfully belongs to the writers, directors and talent who create it and companies like Viacom that have invested to make possible this innovation and creativity.
After a great deal of unproductive negotiation, and remedial efforts by ourselves and other copyright holders, YouTube continues in its unlawful business model. Therefore, we must turn to the courts to prevent Google and YouTube from continuing to steal value from artists and to obtain compensation for the significant damage they have caused."
More broadly, this is, of course, dumb on Viacom's part. Having one good place to view content is such better marketing than having to wander all over the web to view thirty-second clips from myriad shows. This is the continuing triumph of hidebound copyright law over marketing, the impact of which will almost certainly continue to be the rise of new grassroots content -- like WallStrip, etc. -- less concerned about redistribution of their content.
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I found this opening statement very interesting -"YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business ..."
So what's Viacom saying, if YouTube were a not-for-profit organization, it would give away all its clips to YouTube for free?! Right.
Talk about ignorance and greed. Traditional media companies have no clue what creates demand for their shows nor can they figure how to make money off their own product. YouTube figured that out, so Viacom's dumb response: Instead of negotiating a smart deal with YouTube, let's kill that proverbial goose.
Oh please.
Let's be serious Google is arrogant. They think they take all the content and media companies should be happy. They have a service that is nearly ad free and they complain that they don't have a business model.
Those "clips" are content and consumption at YouTube not promotion. You can go to any of the websites to get them. It's youTube and Google who are being short-sighted. Just pay the $ and get the clips on there so we can all enjoy them.
How would you feel if someone scraped this site and reposted it on another URL with no links back here.
Work for you?? Same difference.
Google is becoming more and more like Microsoft. It's sad. I think they would not have done this a year or two ago
YouTube users may not condone stealing but they will blame Viacom for the missing clips and YT gets valuable publicity. The public will side with YT against Viacom right or wrong.
If YT were a significant part of G's revenue this suit would be a serious matter, but it's not. This just means that acquiring YT was a little more expensive than 1.6B.
YouTube has been the target of copyright infringement lawsuits even in the pre-Google days. So the whole "Google is evil" story doesn't really fly in this case.
Google hasn't served itself well with it's arrogant attitude about digitizing all the world's books. Their demonstrable lack of respect for copyright law will cause serious problems for its defense. In this regard, Google is evil and should have the book thrown at them by the federal government as well.
Google is evil to content producers perhaps. To me they are useful. I've never said that about a content producer.
The general public will equate Google with Napster and Viacom with the RIAA. But unlike Napster Google has a huge revenue stream independent of its file sharing hobby.
The public never thought Napster was evil, the brand still has value after the file-sharing died.
Sharing my stuff with other people is evil, sharing other people's stuff with me is awesome. :)
The legal situation here does not mirror Napster's situation and Google knows they don't have that kind of liability. The main legal difference is the content is generally snippets and the service is not primarily for the transfer of copyrighted content. Go read the Napster ruling and you'll see a similar judge will rule in favor of Google.
>>> The legal situation here does not mirror Napster's...
But the public's perception does. G will not tarnish their name or lose market share because of this, if anything they benefit from this publicity--legal consequenses notwithstanding.
great stuff. Putz's. freaking lawyers win again. no risk and all gain.
It's funny how after Viacom had YouTube bring down their Comedy Central clips, I don't watch Comedy Central any more. Nor do I talk about it at the water cooler. I didn't realize the marketing effect of YouTube was that strong but I can't argue with results.