Comments on: Viacom sues Google over YouTube clips

Media company seeks more than $1 billion in damages, claiming that nearly 160,000 unauthorized clips appear on video-sharing site.

[Dr. B]

Subject line:

Didn't Youtube already take down all the Viacom clips they know
about when asked?

[c|net Reader]

You Missed the Point

As the story notes, Viacom is complaining that they and other content owners must police YouTube to ensure their copyrights aren't violated. They contend that YouTube, making the opportunity to violate content owner rights at a profit, must police itself. Would that people understood that there are things one mustn't do and actually exercised self control to avoid doing them. Then, Viacom would be complaining and YouTube wouldn't need to police its contents or fight a lawsuit.

[Hardrada]

Oh yeah, like nobody saw this coming...

YouTube exists almost exclusively for the purpose of distributing pirated clips. The whole 'user-generated content' angle is pretty much just a big joke.

[eldernorm]

The real point is

Lawyers, Lawyers, and damn lawyers. :-)

Its all about what can I take from you. period. Google has already negoiated with several companies, Viacom just wants too much money for nothing.

Lawsuits used to be a way to redress wrongs. Now they are used for everything else, politics, creating Spin, pure greed, you name it.

Ben Franklin had it right. "First we shoot all the lawyers..." :-)

EN

[wbenton]

Speculation!

Anybody wanna bet that Microsoft doesn't have a back hand in here somewhere?

There is a bigger story here... but will CNET get to it first?

The suspense is killing me... (* CHUCKLE )*

FWIW

[YankeePoodle]

YouTube was copy-righht landmine

Everybody knew Youtube was a copy-right landmine and the content sharks are waiting to pounce on the new buyer of the company. Mark Cuban has warned about what was about to come a YouTube buyer. This was to be expected. I dont know if MSFT is in play, this would have happened no matter who is behind, because the Studio fat cats want money.

Youtube is a good website and I honestly believe it can do without the Mainstream Media junk. This is just an arm-twisting tactic to make a deal with youtube.

Hey google for one day disable all those hollywood studios searches and blame it on a glitch. I love it when tech companies pay back this studio fat cats.

[TomMariner]

Windfall

The first rule if you are going to sue someone is "do they have deep pockets?"

If the answer to rule one is yes, one does not need to even consider points 2 through 10 which deal with trivialities like whether anyone was harmed. The prospect of having a "jury of peers" consisting of housewives and retired sanitation workers (both honorable professions) located in Viacom's home town to make a decision on a billion dollar windfall to their local company would seem to motivate Google to consider a nuisance payment.

Of course, then everyone who has a home video on YouTube would ask for their piece of the action so one hopes that Qoogle is employing squads of lawyers to keep their company. Of course all of funds spent on attorneys against attorneys would never have been put to better use -- like new product development or hiring the best and the brightest.

A mediocre lawyer can beat a great techie hands down, any day!

[kyle172]

Better get use too it Viacom

I've never seen such cry babies on my whole life. I don't think youtube is in violation of any degree. Most of the videos are centralized in one place it's not like people are sending them one to another such as like file sharing

[Lindy01]

How much

will the purchase of youtube really cost Google in the end? Didnt Mark Cuban predict this???

Youtube and myspace are human garbage collections on the Internet.

I hope they win.....it could not happen to a better company.....save maybe Sony.

[unknown unknown]

Viacom is full of it

As usually content companies think that when someone doesn't do things exactly they way they want, it's illegal. Google as far as we know has fulfilled it's obligations under the DMCA to promptly remove material upon receiving a valid notice. Hell they even removed material that didn't belong to Viacom because Viacom could be bother to verify the stuff they wanted removed was actually infringing. They've even complied with requests to identify individuals who post material.

[unknown unknown]

One more thing

Maybe Google will do like IBM is doing to SCO, and bankrupt them....We can only hope.

[wfseube]

I think Dvorak made the most appropriate comment about this...

at http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=9584

Idiots.

[blmlwd]

Theft

What YouTube is trying to do is the same as if I stole my
neighbours stuff, and then said, "Look, all you had to say is that
you want it back..." YouTube is knowingly engaging in theft, hoping
that most companies and people won't know it's actually been
stolen.

[databyss]

wrong on so many levels

... it's almost comedic.

First off if you steal your neighbors stuff, they don't have it anymore. When a video is on youtube, the owner still has the video as well.

Secondly, users upload videos to youtube, so to go with your analogy, it would be like some unknown third party making a copy of your neighbors stuff then giving it to you.

The only thing youtube is knowingly engaging in is hosting videos from unkown third party sources.

[databyss]

and theres more

What's more is that when notified of a copyright problem, youtube is overly proactive in removing that content immediately... even to the point of removing legitimate content.

viacom has used this method plenty of times to their approval, so it'll be hard for them to claim that now, all of a sudden, youtube is engaging in blatant copyright infringement.

[The Vanish]

Free advertistment

Try to give Viacom free advertisement and what happens? You get sued for it. The cost of the ad is probably into the $100000 but over 1.5 billion that had seen the ad and the cost per person dropped into the pennies. Why stop it? However, its fine with me. I haven't seen the Ad nor do I know what they are selling. I guest I won't know... haha, I won't be buying anything from Viacom.

[Phil_Canyon]

MMMhmm

You tube is great when they want to hock their hokey wares for free but don't want anyone else to do put what they LIKE on you tube to share. I don't understand why we have to police everybody. How the hell are we to have an open expression free site when someone is always having to work at controlling everyone.

[cohaver]

Viacom European SS units

Viacom need spend more time taken care of problems in China(china shops) and Russia(dollar stores). Going after the people who make and sell thousands of copies and less the little guy who only expressing him or herself
Making thousands of programmers and engineers Robin hood will only bring about your down fall.And add to fare use debate. Viacom is fighting their drug copyright war and this will be lost.

[john55440]

No surprise...

At the time of Google's purchase, numerous analysts pointed out that YouTube was a copyright lawsuit waiting to happen.

[fxjamusa]

Easy Fix

Before posting any video clip, YouTube should warn end users of the legal and financial ramifications of posting copyrighted material. If the end user accepts the terms of use, then the financial burden should fall on them and not the service provider (YouTube). YouTube would be obligated to reveal the identity of the violator to the copyright holder as part of end user accepting the terms of use.

[umbrae]

I believe...

it already works that way. There is a warning, and technically YouTube is not responsible. The problem is that Viacom is not wanting to find the infringing content.

[kjledoux]

Agreed!

I believe that YouTube will slide out of responsibility by hiding behind the provision that they police and remove copyrighted material when it is discovered. However, if the fat cats threaten the users, the infringement will stop or at least drastically reduce to a manageable pace making it easier to police. In the end, neither YouTube or Google really care what happens. The founders of YouTube have their money, Google can shut it down and claim a tax loss but at the end of the day, they are all still billionaires.

[umbrae]

To Viacom....

You would not be incurring any fees if YOU JUST LEFT PEOPLE ALONE! Who care that someone posted a 5 min clip of your shows? Its called "FREE ADVERTISING".

[extinctone]

To YouTube...

Take your crappy amateur cliplets and your copyright violations and cram them. Here's the real test of what you're worth: would anybody actually pay for a YouTube subscription?

[trueview]

::: PEEKVID.COM HAS 100'S OF RIPPED MOVIES ON GOOGLE SERVERS...............

HURRY! LOOK AT PEEKVID.COM. THEY HOST 100'S OF PIRATED, RIPPED, CAM-CORDER RECORDED, MOVIES. FULL LENGTH ON GOOGLE YOUTUBE AND GOOGLE VIDEO. THEY DO THIS SO THEY CAN MAKE DEALS WHEN PEOPLE COMPLAIN. I DO NOT THINK THEY DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS. YOU CAN TYPE "DOWNLOAD YOUTUBE VIDEO" ON GOOGLE AND A WIDE VARIETY OF PROMOTIONS AND LINKS COME UP TO DOWNLOAD THESE. THIS IS VERY WRONG AND UN-AMERICAN TO ABUSE THE SYSTEM LIKE THIS. WHY WOULD GOOGLE CAST TRUSTED RELATED BEHAVIOR ISSUES OUT THERE? DOES GOOGLE THINK THEY ARE SMARTER THAN THE FRAMERS OF THE LAW? IF ANY COODINATION I SPEAK OF IS GOING ON, THEN THERE IS A MUCH BIGGER ISSUE PERSONALLY FOR THE GOOGLE OWNERS TO SANCTION THIS. IT THINK THE BEST EXAMPLE, THE STRONGEST THING THE USA CAN DO IS TO TAKE VERY HARD-LINE ACTIONS AGAINST A COMPANY WHO FIGHTS THE GOVERNMENT, AND ABUSES AND COORDINATES THE PUBLICATION OF FULL LENGTH FEATURE FILMS BY THE HUNDREDS ON GOOGLE YOUTUBE AND ORIGINAL GOOGLE VIDEO SITE.

[phantomsoul]

Brilliant!

To the geniuses at Viacom: Grow the @#$! up! No one can control the Internet, especially in the way media content used to be controllable before the digital age. Not even a multi-billion dollar corporation like you. Not even a corporately biased government like the one we currently have in Washington.

Suppose Viacom won all their terms and You tube was shut down. Well guess what folks -- the Internet moves on with or without YouTube, and media pirates will find a new home to collaborate all their stashes with each other and you can rest assured someone somewhere will find a way to profit off it. And worse yet, after all this litigation time, money, and other resources are wasted, and absolutely nothing has been accomplished.

While it can be said that the Internet has largely taken intellectual property hostage, such is the reality of the information age. Whether or not it has been intentionally designed that way is debatable, but one thing is for sure: we're all going to have to adapt to it eventually.

[csg7]

What took this so long !

I am in favor of user generated content but then there has got to be better way of monitoring and sharing it without copyright problems.
YouTube should have been sued long time back so that that process would have started much earlier.

[Had_to_be_said]

Simply using "copyrighted material" DOES NOT, always, "violate copyright".

First... "copyright" was supposed to serve "society", at large, by temporarily protecting a small-set of, so-called, "intellectual properties". It was NOT created to hand, nearly-absolute, power to a few mega-corporations... at the expense of nearly everyone else.

It is only thanks to extremely recent changes in the United States 200+ year-old copyright-laws... that EVERYTHING is now AUTOMATICALLY copyrighted. Before that, only those items that were, specifically, intentionally copyrighted were locked-away from general public-use, for any length of time, at all.

Additionally, originally, copyright was only supposed to last about 7-years. Again, it was only fairly recently, that the amount of time that a copyright lasts... has actually been extended to a period, literally, longer than any, current American... will live.

Also, ONLY unique-works, in their general entirety, were supposed to be protected by "copyright"... "Clips", "excerpts", and "parodies" were, and still are, supposed to be specifically exempted... by LAW.

And "copyright", by the original concept of those that created it, was supposed to be a civil-matter. Whereby, it IS the copyright-holders responsibility, no one elses, to protect THEIR copyright-interests. That too, was only recently changed, at the Federal-level.

And finally, so-called "common-carriers" WERE "exempt"... right up until "Sony Betamax" was, effectively, completely-overturned... after nearly twenty years of lobbying, manipulation, and pay-offs, by the entertainment-industry. Even now, defenders of the "DMCA" continually tout the, clearly-illusory "safe harbor" provisions. However, it HAS been PROVEN, time and again, that these, alleged, "protections" are, in reality, nothing more than a BOGUS-SHAM.

Now, certain big-money interests would have you believe that, literally, every-single -burble- which arises from the depths of their clearly insanely-greedy, and wholly-corrupt, guts... is, for some indefinable reason, ABSOLUTELY THEIRS... FOREVER... Further, they actually demand that every American accept that, in order to preserve civilization as we know it, it is ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE ELSES night-and-day responsibility to actively prevent anyone from, so much as even thinking about, "violating" their WILDEST FANTASIES of virtually ROYAL-OWNERSHIP of "art" and "information".

Frankly, in my opinion, the "pendulum" of, so-called, "intellectual-property" law hasnt simply swung too far. It has actually swung so far... that the weight has flown-off... rolled across the floor... and dropped, almost irretrievably, down the grate.

Or, maybe, I maybe Im just completely-wrong in thinking that we should, as a nation, try to balance the WHIMS of business, with the RIGHTS of the citizens...

Silly me...

[Thomas, David]

WHAT?

First impression ... ***!?

[Thomas, David]

Let me try again

You COMPLETELY TWISTED the purpose of a copyright to one of
protection for the author, to some bull--it --ck-me statement that
whatever an author produces is owned by anyone BUT the author.


I really hate people like you. Create your own ---ng content from
now on.

[erixgirl86]

Really Sad

It just shows that all these stupid big companies are out for is money. They're not there for the people, just for their pockets and will go to anylow to make them bigger. It'd really suck for them if they got youtube shut down and all the users got Peed and boycotted them....Like that'll ever happen lol

[kribor]

A prime example of the dumbassification of America

Boycott what?!? So what are you going to do, stop watching Comedy Central and the rest of Viacom's cable networks? (I mean this is CNET, so I know aint none o' you folks watching BET) What will you supplement them with? Movies perhaps? Oops! Viacom distributes those too. The fact is, the demographic of the American that is biggest part of the YouTube audience is also the most naive, lazy and soft segment of th population. THat is, they are the least likely of all Americans to successfully boycott anything, from farting in public to gadzooks! a full blown boycott of a multinational media conglomerate -- all this in the age of 24/7 media consumption. Dumbassification indeed!

[chuck_whealton]

Re: Really Sad

Well, you're right when you say "Like that'll ever happen". It
won't. People won't boycott either company and in the case of
Viacom, why should they? Google is showing their video without
paying for it.

And the truth of the matter is that if content companies go after
individuals who download "music", why should Google be
exempt when they're actually using the content in money
making website, unlike the majority of ordinary people who have
downloaded music?

Personally, I say go at them in full force and nail them to the
wall. Unfortunately, I'm sure Viacom will somehow let it go, or
it'll be some stupid Viacom-Google deal that'll go pretty much
nowhere (kind of like the Google-Sun deal?).

Charles R. Whealton
Charles Whealton @ pleasedontspam.com

[robertz1200]

To Viacom.....

...... GET A GRIP and back off morons.