Viacom Sues YouTube Copyright Infringement, Claims $1Billion in Damages
 

Viacom Sues YouTube for Copyright Infringement, Claims $1Billion in Damages

NEW YORK ? It was bound to happen sooner or later: A major media company has taken issue with Google?s YouTube service.
Claiming copyright infringement, Viacom filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York against YouTube, seeking $1 billion in damages.

http://xbiz.com/news_piece.php?id=20067


I didn;t see that coming ... :upsidedow

we know.....

Not a problem. I'm fairly certain Google contemplated this exact situation with countless lawyers, even before they bought youtube.com for $1.65 billion dollars.

Damn, I thought they were trying to work out some sort of deal.

I bet it s all part of their marketing plan

Viacom's just another greedy company out to milk a nickel.

Google's had people coming after them for some time now, and will continue to get it. Funny how the original YouTube owners were never in the cross hairs hmmm...

I bet in the end, if it goes through to competition, you are going to see some change, and watering down on the internet and intellectual property, or some mega deal to allow this stuff on the net.

:2 cents:

it's pretty cheesy...if they were going after p2p sites that dish out, i might agree with their gripe....but youtube has the smallest with the worst resoltion and it'sjust cheesy to fuck with them:2 cents:

This only happened after Google obtained youtube...you can't get blood from a stone, so when youtube was owned by a couple of "kids", we'll call them, they weren't a very good target. Furthermore, Viacom recently made the mistake of requesting 100k videos to be pulled from youtube, many of which were completely legitimate and could have ended Viacom up in a heap of legal trouble for "bullying". Viacom's profits have slumped over the past couple of years and the 100k videos "reported" was a way of showing investors that they were "still strong"...except this plan backfired in their face. Now, they need fresh ammunition to keep the bottom line crisp, so here we go with the lawsuits...

You know those annoying public comments youtube tolerates?

Well, Google/Youtube will win by satisfying the "commentary, criticism and parody" is fair use defense. As well as by demonstrating that they comply in a timely manner to C&D Take down requests by copyright owners such as Saturday Night Live which has hit them hard and repeatedly in the past.

The issue of the Viacom lawsuit isn't a debate as to the speed that Google / Yourtube reacts to remove when notified, but that the same videos re-appear within minutes, which makes the notification process useless. If you are going to delete a video and then allow your members to re-add it right after, you may have fulfilled the letter of the law, but you are dodging the intent of the law, which is to stop copyright violations.

The very nature of Youtube and other "social sharing" networks flies directly into the face of copyright law, and they really don't have a leg to stand on. Your "parody / commentary" concept doesn't fly, because the intent of posting is to share copyrighted material, not to comment on it. The comments are not an integral part of the youtube experience (because the content can be used in places such as blogs without those comments being visible).

Google knew what they were getting themselves into..

agreed. after dealing w/ adwords last year i won't shed a tear for goofle no matter how hard they are slammed over youtube... the business model is inherently shady and i hope they get nailed to the wall w/ law suit after lawsuit..

Google is the new company to hate. And I can't say I disagree. They profit off stolen content and their adwords/adsense programs are full of fraud. Fuck 'em.

I am sure much of this was very calculated as already mentioned!

While I don't have much love for google, I do think it's silly to go about things this way. People want to see Viacom's stuff and obviously there is a TON of ad money to be made by offering it online and on demand. If they were smart, they'd make their own youtube... and maybe they already are.

Open: 450.25
High: 451.93
Low: 442.83

Ouch. With the subprime scare and the recent crash GOOG is taking a beating.

funny that infringement is a billion dollar issue only after one of the richest companies on the planet buys it. ;)

about time.

fair use defense im not sure will work here, but if they complied with all the dmca sent by viacom they have pretty much nothing to worry about.

This is how youtube will respond:
Nobody can govern how their software is used.
Therefore, the person at fault is the one who uploads or downloads files illegally, not the person who wrote the software. Basically the P2P defense which has already seen time in court.

Again youtube will pass the buck of intent to the users and claim that they have termed users, complied by providing info. on users who violate to FOX and other companies to sue individuals. Parody / commentary is not a just a concept I have, it's a "fair use" exemption to (U.S.) copyright law. But after reading you comments I do agree that it's not a very strong endgame defense for youtube in this case.

This is the rub of web 2.0. People in adult have dealt with the concept in the past, with secondary providers for adult content. And just like the tgp owner is responsible for a submitted cp clip, Youtube is responsible for their content. If you can't regulate it because you have a catch all concept, then fuck it, accept that you have to scale down, or find a way to regulate how people upload. Yes, that would diminish the concept, but that's not the point. You own a site, you're responsible for the shown content. End of discussion. As much as I don't give a shit about Viacom, I hope they win.

I doubt they'll win but they'll get some nice advertising through the deal from the press.

I think youtube should hire a shit load of reviewers and review all content before it goes live. This would solve the problem or help. Then media companies could sign deals with YouTube. I think http://www.vmix.com/ is a better company anyway.