Comments on: Viacom to YouTube: Take down pirated clips

Complying with the demand, YouTube will remove more than 100,000 clips from the video-sharing site, Viacom says.

[CBSTV]

Viacom but not CBS?

Since Viacom and CBS are now separate companies, I presume this
demand impacts content only on Viacom's cable networks, not CBS
Television Network programming. I believe that CBS has already
come to terms with YouTube.

[NerdPatrolAJ]

This is a conundrum

I agree...copywritten material should not be resold or distributed without compensation to the rights holder. But a line has to be drawn somewhere. Viacom is crying foul because You Tube is allowing material to be replayed from their site. They (You Tube) are not actually posting the material, but in essence..they are doing Viacom a favor. If, say, a Saturday Night Live clip gains popularity, and people that have missed the original airing of the show were to watch it on You Tube...does this detract from Viacoms earnings in any way? It actually helps, as it widens the target audience, who will now maybe start tuning in. Not to mention the fact that the original viewers didnt have to pay to watch it in the first place. So to sum up, Viacom wants You Tube to pay them for the privilege of promoting their(Viacoms) content, which they don't charge for television viewers who can tune in without even a cable subscription. Seems kinda screwy. Maybe legislature should be changed to exclude publicly aired material from these witchhunt lawsuites.

[umbrae]

I am willing to bet...

that if YouTube viewings were included by Nelson then no broadcaster would be complaining. They would be encouraging it.

[georgescott]

Charge Viacom

Why give Viacom tv shows free publicity. YouTube should charge Viacom to have clips online. If Viacom is not willing to pay AND Viacom also wants the content taken down, too bad for Viacom no more free publicity.

[jerrysproinger]

Free publicity? Give me a break.

If that were true, Microsoft would also be paying software pirates for giving them 'free publicity'. Get real.

[SgtSavage]

BEST PROPOSAL YET

SOMETIMES THESE GREEDY PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEAL OF WHAT THEY ARE GETTING. CAN'T SEE THE FOREST FROM THE TREES

[befuddledms]

short sighted

Viacom is being incredibly short sighted. YouTube is paying to host the material and for the bandwidth. As others have said, the material posted can only draw more people to watch the shows on their networks. I guess all of the executives over at Viacom are worried about their ability to buy solid gold toilet paper holders for the 5th house.

Just plain stupid.

[solmajeur]

I disagree

For one thing, in order for this to be a promotional tool for Viacom, they would need some way of measuring its effectiveness. Having viewers post pirated clips makes this practically impossible.

And secondly, I seriously doubt that this has any real promotional value to Viacom.

[Don_Dodge]

Like Napster all over again

This will be very difficult for YouTube to do in a comprehensive way. I was VP of product development at Napster when the RIAA and Federal judge asked us to filter out all copyrighted music. It was difficult with music?it will be nearly impossible for video.

The problem is completeness. You can put together hashing algorithms and ?finger printing? techniques to find the obvious stuff?maybe 80% of the copyrighted content. The remaining 20% is nearly impossible to identify with precision and completeness. It will require lots of human review to get it done.

Then the users will get very clever in disguising the clips they upload with different names, tags, sample rates, lengths, fake lead ins, etc.

The judge in the Napster case demanded 100% compliance, not 90% or 95%?100%. There was no way to effectively do it so the judge just shut Napster down.

The truth is that Viacom probably couldn?t provide a 100% accurate list of their clips either.

I wrote a blog on this topic today, and anothrer on my experiences at Napster battling a similar problem with the RIAA. See http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/02/viacom_serves_y.html

[garrywdm]

So long, Viacom

Who needs ya Viacom. We don't watch your crap anyhow. We make our own crap, perhaps that's what's bothering you, you don't own it! This is 'the world', nitwits, not north America, you're out of your depth. Sack your execs for being small minded navel gazers.

[iiswansongii]

Didn't care when google didn't own...

Viacom didn't care when google didn't own...