THE BORE
General => The Superdeep Borehole => Topic started by: The Fake Shemp on March 13, 2007, 04:05:19 PM
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Viacom Sues YouTube Over Copyrights
By Frank Ahrens and Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 13, 2007; 12:58 PM
Entertainment giant Viacom Inc. -- home of cable networks such as MTV and Comedy Central -- is suing Google Inc.'s YouTube for $1 billion, alleging the video Web site knowingly violates copyright law by posting unlicensed Viacom content, such as clips from "The Daily Show."
YouTube, which allows anyone to post video to the Web to be viewed by a global audience, includes both user-generated video and clips produced by professional content-creators, such as Viacom. The Web site was purchased by Google in October for $1.65 billion.
In October, YouTube said it began purging Comedy Central clips from its site. But in February, the company demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 clips of Viacom shows. Also in February, Viacom agreed to license much of its content to Joost, a nascent YouTube rival.
Viacom alleges that YouTube does little or nothing to prevent users from posting copyrighted videos from appearing on its site, largely because such popular videos -- which include clips from Comedy Central's "South Park" and "The Colbert Report" and Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants" -- help drive viewers to the ads that appear on YouTube.
"Defendants know and intend that a substantial amount of the content on the YouTube site consists of unlicensed infringing copies of copyrighted works and have done little or nothing to prevent this massive infringement," reads Viacom's complaint, brought in a New York federal court. "To the contrary, the availability on the YouTube site of a vast library of the copyrighted works of plaintiffs and others is the cornerstone of defendants' business plan."
The Viacom suit alleges that YouTube's attempts to protect copyrighted material have fallen short.
Although YouTube touts the availability of purported copyright protection tools on its site, at best these tools help copyright owners find a portion of the infringing files, and, as to that portion, only after the files have been uploaded," the suit reads.
Google told the Associated Press it had not seen the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is reminiscent of the battles several years ago over music file sharing, when sites such as Napster came under fire for letting users share digitized songs with each other without compensating the artists or record companies.
Those fights among the record industry, Web companies and users in part produced the situation that exists today -- where legal sales of online music have proliferated and changed the way the recording industry works.
The spread of broadband technology has now provided the typical home computer user with enough speed and bandwidth to conveniently watch videos or share files -- and pushed arguments over video content to the fore. Traditional broadcast outlets are worried about how to keep audiences tuned to their channels -- and their paid advertising -- or at least get a slice of the revenue generated by Web companies.
YouTube took root initially as a site for users to post home videos, known as a place to watch quirky pet routines or for would-be comics to practice their shtick. But it expanded rapidly to become one of the central sites for video content of all sorts. Its purchase last year by Google promised to marry YouTube's popularity with the marketing and advertising clout of one of the Web's most dominant corporate players.
As it grew, so did tension between the company and the entertainment industry whose content was drawing viewers to the site.
YouTube and Google executives have argued that the presence, for example, of clips from Comedy Central on the Internet only makes the network more popular and serves as a promotional tool that entertainment companies should be glad to exploit. They have reached licensing agreements with some major content providers and have pledged to develop technology that would keep unlicensed content off of the site.
But the two companies have also come under widespread criticism for a cavalier approach to protecting content rights.
Microsoft's general counsel recently rebuked Google for its plans to post hundreds of thousands of books on line without negotiating rights with authors and publishers. And Internet and entertainment entrepreneur Mark Cuban earlier this month subpoenaed Google for the names of YouTube users who posted a version of the South Korean monster movie "The Host" online a week before Cuban's company was to debut the film in the United States.
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Alright.
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Bitch is going to lose his BET Gospel.
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That about wraps it up for youtube. :-\
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I love that Viacom was probably in a dark corner waiting for a buyout of YouTube to happen then attack the jugular. Ah well, I can't really sympathies with both Viacom and Google since their both juggernauts but Viacom really needs to get with the times.
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Actually, what happened is that they were in negotiations for licensing content, like almost all the other big networks have agreed to, and when that fell through - they decided to sue.
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Ahhh I see. If anything though, Google obviously knew what they were buying in too. I wonder if they figured the benefits from owning YouTube would outweigh the giant target they would have on the service after they had bought it out.
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Well, Viacom is pretty much the only big name left that wouldn't negotiate some kind of licensing fee. They must've wanted a lot. Now it's all sour grapes. If Google had agreed to their contract price, we'd be hearing a press release heralding digital video content instead.
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How can you KILL the best thing to happen to the internet? FUCK.
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How can you KILL the best thing to happen to the internet? FUCK.
youtube will survive
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There's other similar websites.
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youporn and haporn :hyper
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I meant less gay!
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I meant less gay!
porn=gay?
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Well, there's usually a lot of cock involved with porn, so...
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youporn and haporn :hyper
Haporn>>>>>>>>>>>>>>YouPorn
:hyper
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youporn and haporn :hyper
Haporn>>>>>>>>>>>>>>YouPorn
:hyper
agreed!
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I've never been to this haporn that you speak of it. I know what I'm doing when I get home!
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porn=gay?
doesn't youporn have a lot of gay stuff?
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porn=gay?
doesn't youporn have a lot of gay stuff?
pornotube has the most
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pornotube has the most
maybe just gayer...
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I do not feel bad for youtube or Google. There's still no way in hell Viacom will be awarded 1 billion dollars.
My opinion is that if anyone is going to get 1 billion dollars and damages they should have to be part of a class action suit that covers multiple companies. I don't think Viacom alone is entitled to 1B when other companies content is stolen just as much. Viacom can fuck itself they do just as much shady shit as anybody.
I do think this will ruin youtube, and possibly some aspects of the internet if won.
The internet is going to suck massively in a few years.
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I do think this will ruin youtube, and possibly some aspects of the internet if won.
The internet is going to suck massively in a few years.
Maybe this will end up like napster and every year there will be a new popular video site that everyone uses until it gets shut down. Then they'll move on to another vid site and the cycle continues.
Btw, how long has limewire been around now? Is there anything newer/better?
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Besides bittorrent?
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I don't think Viacom can win this lawsuit. I mean, I was reading a while ago how there's a law about "tolerated use" as opposed to "fair use", which means that companies like YouTube aren't held responsible for the content their users put up, as long as they remove it when the companies that own said content notify them. I think Viacom's idea is just to try to hurt Google/YouTube financially through a protracted legal battle.
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Besides bittorrent?
Yeah. I meant a p2p program. That's what the limewire/morpheus/napster-like programs are called, right?
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Theres underground sites that host shows YouTube style (but the community regularly uploads new videos like everyday. I'm talking shows like 24 and stuff off HBO). Its all about hosting though...so if Bittorrent was somehow applied to streaming video..then that would be cool. But the nature of bittorrent is more scattered collecting bits and pieces of info until you get the whole content. Not good for streaming.
So it seems like purely streaming video is always going to be at the hands of the media giants. While people who don't want to pay need to download in bulk and watch (like it is now with Bittorrent).
Anyways, at the latter part of YouTube being owned by those dudes and into the Google buyout, YouTube's content was dropping like flies. Its gonna sink unless some plan is put into place that keeps the media giants happy and delivers worthwhile content (like recent shows of 24 being put up with advertisements of course). Or a pay-per-view scheme.
But YouTube was never meant for shit like this. It was always about the end user, the consumer like you and me uploading our own vids.
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I loved using YouTube to watch music videos. There really isn't any other service on the internet that let's me watch music videos on demand for free. I knew it was the beginning of the end when they started randomly deleting user accounts.
That said, way too many people on the internet have an undeserved sense of entitlement when it comes to who owns the content they actively acquire and distribute. A lot of the people uploading content to the internet really don't believe that copyright laws apply to them.
Oh well.