Reader Comments

Uh oh, Booble's gravy-train may be slowing - you can't fight city hall or the copyright police...

"According to Viacom, YouTube has displayed over 160,000 unauthorized video clips that have been viewed over 1.5 billion times by users."... giving unprecedented free publlicity to shows ranging from "SpongeBob Square Pants" to "The Daily Show". Clearly, they're not being harmed by the subpar preview-quality clips on YouTube. Look at the shows mentioned in the story..."The Daily Show" and "South Park" are cultural icons. "SpongeBob" is considered a contemporary classic, and is making Viacom more money than they could print. And "An Inconvenient Truth" just won an Oscar, fercryinoutloud. Viacom should be thaking whatever God they pray to that YouTube exists. Particularly in the case of "The Daily Show", it's been a gift from Heaven. Viacom: May I introduce your gun to your foot? You just pull this little trigger right here...

Viacom flip-flips on YouTube more than a US politician. They should be grateful because ratings went through the roof for mentioned shows after youtube took off.

lotsa - Weren't you one of the people calling those who download music and movies via BitTorrent sites thieves? I'm just wondering what, in your mind, is the difference here? --tayme

tayme: The difference is the quality--YouTube's "preview-level" quality is vastly different from what you find on the filesharing sites. Ten-minute fuzzy videos are great for promotion, but lousy for downloading and burning to a DVD. Anyway, Scoble said it better than I did: ""if I were a smart content guy (hint, I’m not) I’d be opening my video archives and saying “post them where you want.” "If I were even smarter I’d say “cut them up, edit them, mash them, do what you want with them.” I’m not that smart either. "And, if I really were blessed with a brain like Douglas Engelbart’s I’d make video for where the big audiences are (hint: it’s YouTube, StumbleUpon, Digg, Flickr, Blogs, and search engines like Google/Yahoo/Live). "I’m not that smart, but other people in this industry are. "Yeah, Viacom will end up with a billion bucks. Its stock price will go up temporarily, but will drop the next day as Viacom’s investors realizes that Viacom has just put itself into a box. One from which it will not escape. "The world of media is undergoing radical change. "Not only can I send my boring, long, geeky videos that no one cares about but we can do all sorts of weird stuff and show that off to the world. Translation: Google won’t be bothered by this lawsuit at all. While Viacom will limit its audience growth, will ruin its ability to participate in this new world."

Google should just turn around and threaten to remove all references to Viacom and any of its shows from its search engine. See how quick Viacom backs down then?

"The difference is the quality--YouTube's "preview-level" quality is vastly different from what you find on the filesharing sites. Ten-minute fuzzy videos are great for promotion, but lousy for downloading and burning to a DVD." and yet it's still copyright infringement and/or breach of intellectual property rights. it's the same argument that the RIAA makes on illegal MP3's, and we all know that there are some really bad quality MP3's on file-sharing networks. "if I were a smart content guy (hint, I’m not) I’d be opening my video archives and saying “post them where you want.” so by his own admission he's not smart, so, in other words, we should ignore what he says because he doesn't know what he's talking about.... "The world of media is undergoing radical change." according to the RIAA, MPAA, and the software industry, it's a change that involves casual piracy for the masses and no IP rights. XP

"The attitude of Google and YouTube has been to take people's content and ask questions later," Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said. Sadly, that does seem to be the case.

@Waethorn: "according to the RIAA, MPAA, and the software industry, it's a change that involves casual piracy for the masses and no IP rights." Couldn't agree more. Napster and P2P services have created an online culture that expects all content to be free. There's a great little song called "Code Monkey" by Johnathan Coulton. The digg article pointing to his blog is filled with postings on how to download the song for free without paying him a stinking dollar, the price to legally download the song. The piracy community points to artists like U2, Metallica, etc who have made enough money to make Solomon blush and that they won't miss the money these pirates are stealing from them. What they don't point out is the mentality of wanting everything for free doesn't affect just big artists - it affects all artists. Viacom has the right to protect their property.

And google responds http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1316411620070314

Clips from shows owned by Viacom only boosted their popularity, this is why CEO's shouldn't be technologically stupid. If there's one thing that's made me smile regarding the DMCA since it's inception, it's this article. Essentially, Google's defense is that videos that violate copyright are removed as soon as they are reported, in compliance with the DMCA. Viacom can't effectively keep up with the illegal content that's posted. Their lawsuit is out of frustration, not violation. I think everyone agrees the DMCA gives copyright holders too many rights . . . this is the first time I've ever seen copyright holders view these rights as burdens, and I think it's funny. Keep suing Viacom . . . because from here on out, you're shooting yourselves in the foot.

"Clips from shows owned by Viacom only boosted their popularity, this is why CEO's shouldn't be technologically stupid." You know what? Songs downloaded through p2p networks only increase an artist's popularity, but does the artist get any money out of it? No! And anyway, if copyrighted material available on Google's servers without permission, I think it's Google's responsibility to clean it up, instead of coming up with silly excuses.

"Clips from shows owned by Viacom only boosted their popularity, this is why CEO's shouldn't be technologically stupid." What are we basing that on? Conjecture or actual statistics. Boosting popularity/exposure only helps Viacom if people actually tune in to Comedy Central, .......

"Boosting popularity/exposure only helps Viacom if people actually tune in to Comedy Central, ......." Exactly! Paul is wrong, by the way. Google is not evil, it's arrogant. It's the kind of arrogance that comes from making a lot of money in a short period of time.

"Google is....arrogant." that's true. very, very true. "Google is not evil" i think the jury's still out on that one. for a company to have amassed as much personal information data as 100 CIA's, i don't think that their business practises really benefit anyone. "What are we basing that on? Conjecture or actual statistics." likely it came from a Google-sponsored compilation of data from previous studies. ;) XP

@shark "And anyway, if copyrighted material available on Google's servers without permission, I think it's Google's responsibility to clean it up, instead of coming up with silly excuses." Silly excuses? Are you kidding me? I suppose you do not realize they remove this content as fast as it is reported. Until more advanced algorithms for scanning submitted videos are, developed Viacom is just going to have to deal with the process as it stands currently. "You know what? Songs downloaded through p2p networks only increase an artist's popularity, but does the artist get any money out of it? No! " Do you know anything about the music business? Most artists revenues per unit vary depending on their contract but for the most part the record companies get the majority share unless you are a big star who can pull your weight around. How does this help the artist at all? Oh that's right, they have to do relentless touring, some bands touring 18-24 months at a time to break even and profit since album sales alone don't justify being a full time musician for most artists. In addition, you want an example of piracy working. Here is a story about a hip-hop artist "Tech N9ne" who offered his album free on his website, doubling his sales and ultimately bringing him to the spotlight in the independent hip-hop world. He has since gone on to sell 600,000+ units. (Here is a link to prove that statistic, http://tinyurl.com/2qfbmc ) Here is the article talking about offering his album: http://tinyurl.com/349pvg "Google is evil" Then stay evil because my stock value is looking lovely regardless if it goes up or down $20 or so. "Google is...arrogant." That is true. Very, very true." Microsoft, Apple, and every bigwig tech company in American market are not? Pointing this out is a useless statement.

"Do you know anything about the music business?" Yes, in fact, I do know a little bit about the music industry. There is a difference between the hip-hop artist offering his songs for free and albums being put up for free downloads without the artist's permission. Similarly, it's okay for someone to post a video that he has shot on YouTube. It's not okay to put material from Comedy Central without Viacom's permission. In any case, it's Viacom's decision, not Google's. It seems to me that you're simply using the anti-RIAA sentiments to justify online music piracy.

"i think the jury's still out on that one. for a company to have amassed as much personal information data as 100 CIA's, i don't think that their business practises really benefit anyone." Another issue is that most typo-squatting websites have ads placed by Google. It's probably easy for Google to identify these sites, but, as usual, google probably chooses to do nothing about it unless they receive complaints from the original website owners.