globeandmail.com: Viacom sues YouTube for $1-billion — Viacom is going to have a hard time proving it LOST money because of these little clips. But apparently they saw the deep Google pockets and the dollar signs lit up.
MTV owner Viacom Inc. said Tuesday it has sued YouTube and its corporate parent Google Inc. in federal court for alleged copyright infringement and is seeking more than $1-billion (U.S.) in damages.Viacom claims that the more than 160,000 unauthorized video clips from its cable networks, which also include Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon, have been available on the popular video-sharing Web site.
The lawsuit marks a sharp escalation of long-simmering tensions between Viacom and YouTube. Last month Viacom demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips after several months of talks between the companies broke down. In a statement, Viacom lashed out at YouTube’s business practices, saying it has “built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google.”
“Meanwhile what is this???”
I’ll tell you what it is! It’s a link to Viacom’s sites like Comedy Central, where it takes half a lifetime for tiny, unsatisfying clips of The Daily Show to “motherload”, so you just give up and go for a walk.
Please let us have them back on you-tube.
1 billion dollars??? That is ridiculous.
Quick, let me join the legal team. Er, either side would be OK. It doesn’t take a PhD in Math to figure out who’s going to win this one…
I thought YouTube’s compliance with Viacom’s takedown notice was going to avoid this lawsuit.
Viacom has already announced their partnership with Joost (a startup from the same guys who brought us Kazaa and Skype). I wonder if Viacom is using this new lawsuit plus the partnership with Joost to force an even better licensing deal with YouTube. It’s always hard to spot the true goal behind legal maneuvering.
I serious doubt Viacom expects to make anything off of this exercise, but instead try to retain some control of their copyrighted material.
This is just an attention getter.
I was wondering why my Google shares kept dropping today… Damn Viacom
“Viacom is going to have a hard time proving it LOST money because of these little clips.”
Understand this. YouTubes business generates money with Other Peoples Intellectual Material” (OPIM…opium: so named because of its addictive nature.)
Each dollar generated using Viacom’s intellectual assets is all the proof necessary that Viacom lost money.
the nut
Corporate greed never ceases to amaze me.
“Understand this. YouTubes business generates money with Other Peoples Intellectual Material” (OPIM…opium: so named because of its addictive nature.)
Each dollar generated using Viacom’s intellectual assets is all the proof necessary that Viacom lost money.”
Except that in reality, now both companies will suffer loss.
Youtube will lose directly, and since the much-vaunted
“intellectual property” of Viacom will only lose
free advertising, and enjoy stagnant use in Viacom’s hands
anyway. Many indirect losses, all to protect what in all
but a pitiably few cases is nothing more than a
useless abstraction.
You Tube should counter sue for all the advertising Viacom got but did not pay for. To me this is a statement from Viacom on what they think of us, their customers. We are, all of us, actively looking for ways to rip them off.
If they made these clips available themselves they could add mini Ads in the clips and post these on YouTube themselves. These guys are so clueless it actually hurts to think about it.
#10 they did make it available on TV and via the link under the quote.
Viacom must be the dumbest company in America. They saw the money and grabbed for it but forgot that all that money can buy very good lawyers. Google is in a safe harbor that Viacom can’t touch.
Viacom loves free publicity… On their terms..
I understand Viacom’s concern, but suing GooTube for a $1B… nah, now you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Strike a deal with GooTube, just like the BBC did. Let’s say Viacom don’t, and GooTube backs down and removes the content. What’s that… Bittorrent, DC etc? Can we sue them too?
If “Information wants to be free” was the slogan in the early 90s, it’s “Content wants to be free” now.
#14 Oops… the Information wants to be free slogan was a couple of years earlier than that…
Maybe Google can just buy Viacom and fire all those killers of viral buzz. If I were on one of the shows often clipped at YouTube, I’d be furious at the suits working against my show that way.
Here’s the lawsuit that they’ll try next:
Viacom Demands YouTube Pull 400,000 Ex-TV Viewers From Its Site
http://tinyurl.com/yr4klv
#7
Maybe these A-holes should ask themselves why did the viewers left them.
youtube had it coming, everyday I log in there I can find at least 10/20 videos of copyrighted material in the “Most Viewed Today” section. Ans it´s not just american stuff, there´s also japanese, british and even portuguese material.
Redstone is no lightweight, tough old bastard to enjoy kicking Googleass. Count on it.
G traffics V’s product. How is this Not theft? After this loss, expect fights over libraries, and the “Cache” aka,the entire web, copied
and served up at G.
Google wants/needs this fight, the YouTube purchase occured to manage control of this fight. It was a longshot, took some gall, guts
and likely a large supply of strong medications.
Search is a reference,a table of contents. The cache and YouTube are the thing itself. This is common sense.
Just a thought… why doesn’t google start charging viacom and only viacom 1 cent per hit reported on any of viacon’s assets: a search for south park returns 205,000,000 hits, the daily shot reutrns 197,000,000 hits, viacom returns 12,000,000 hits, comedy central returns 20,000,000 hits
…
…
just an idea
J. Bouma