Viacom suing Google - discuss

[mrryde]

http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/13/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Viacom sued Google and its online video subsidiary YouTube for $1 billion Tuesday, the first big lawsuit against the online video site and its parent for copyright infringement.



In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Viacom (Charts), owner of MTV and Comedy Central, said that "almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom's programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times."

In addition to damages, Viacom said it wants an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement.

Google said that it and YouTube had yet to see the lawsuit but added they feel "confident that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders and believe the courts will agree."

Viacom first demanded that YouTube take down videos from shows on Viacom-owned networks that were posted on the site without Viacom's consent. Google (Charts) bought YouTube for nearly $1.7 billion last year.

Viacom is the first major media firm to sue Google and YouTube for copyright infringement. Other media companies, including GE (Charts)-owned NBC Universal, CBS (Charts), and Universal Music Group, have decided to partner with YouTube, the world's most popular online video site. But Viacom said that it decided to sue Google and YouTube "after a great deal of unproductive negotiation."

"Obviously, they couldn't come to an agreement. Viacom must have felt its back was against the wall and had to pull the trigger and file a lawsuit," said Barry Cohen, partner in the intellectual property practice with Thorp Reed & Armstrong LLP, a law firm based in Pittsburgh.
Google CEO hits back on YouTube purchase

While other media firms, notably CBS, say they see promotional value in having snippets of their programs posted on YouTube, Viacom has led the charge against YouTube since it feels entitled to advertising revenues tied to viewing of its programming. YouTube typically serves over 100 million video streams a day.

"Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws," Viacom said in a statement Tuesday.

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman told investors at an industry conference last week that traffic to Viacom-owned sites has surged since the company asked YouTube to remove its content.

Industry experts predicted that other media companies might also decide to sue Google and YouTube.

"Every copyright holder has to be seen to defend their rights or otherwise they risk surrendering them altogether," said Brian Wieser, senior vice president at Magna Global, a media buying firm based in New York. "So even where there are minor infractions, if you are not defending a trademark or other copyrighted content, you risk losing those rights. It's too important."

Since Google currently has more than $11 billion in cash on its balance sheet, that also makes it a bigger target for media companies.

"If Google and YouTube don't demonstrate that (they're) taking concerns that media companies like Viacom have by implementing filtering technology and being willing to negotiate fair pricing for distribution and ad revenue sharing, then other media companies will pile on with lawsuits," said James McQuivey, principal analyst for television and media technology with Forrester Research.

One lawyer said the case hinges on who should be responsible for keeping watch over copyrighted content on the Web. Is it the responsibility of sites like Google and YouTube to proactively remove pirated videos or should the onus be on media companies to ask online video sites to take down illegal videos after they've been posted.

"The real question is going to be who needs to do the policing on the Internet. That's what this is a battle of," said Mark Litvack, a partner in the intellectual property practice of Los Angeles-based law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips "Do I think this is the last lawsuit? Probably not. Not until the rules are firmly set."
Time to kiss and make up with YouTube

But intellectual property lawyer Cohen said he wasn't sure if other media companies would be eager to sue Google and YouTube, which some jokingly refer to as "GooTube." He pointed out that since several media firms have already partnered with Google and YouTube, they may find that it is wiser to embrace "GooTube" rather than take an antagonistic stance against the online video kingpin.

"You're not going to stop technology. You're not going to stop advancement," Cohen said. "Everyone will keep intense eye on this case but you still have to do business with Google and YouTube since they are the 800 pound gorilla."

YouTube's massive reach, particularly with younger consumers, presents a unique problem for media firms. Even though media giants obviously would like to receive revenue from videos posted on video-sharing sites such as YouTube, getting a video seen on YouTube can lead to increased exposure.

For example, many credit YouTube with the recent resurgence in popularity of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" since the SNL skit "Lazy Sunday" from 2005 became a smash hit on YouTube after it was posted there.

"Marketing people love YouTube and legal people hate it and inside media companies marketing people are actively working with them while legal companies are actively thinking of suing," said Magna's Wieser.

Still, the big media companies are also investing heavily in their own online video sites and are partnering with other video upstarts. Viacom, for example, has purchased iFilm and Atom Entertainment in the past two years and earlier this month announced a deal to allow YouTube competitor Joost to host videos from Viacom-owned networks.

To that end, Forrester's McQuivey said that the lawsuit against Google and YouTube could benefit other smaller online video firms. But it was shame that Viacom and Google couldn't agree on a deal without litigation, he added.

"Now everybody is going to suffer. We are going to tie up the exciting revolution of consumer video in the courts," he said.

Google said, however, that it did not expect the lawsuit to affect YouTube's business. "We will certainly not let this suit become a distraction to the continuing growth and strong performance of YouTube and its ability to attract more users, more traffic and build a stronger community," the company said in its statement.

Shares of Google sank more than 1.5 percent in trading on Nasdaq Tuesday morning while Viacom's stock rose nearly 1.5 percent on the New York Stock Exchange.

[OldLarry]

They're just bitter cause they shoul've bought em in the first effing place

[iceman]

Nobody sued YouTube because they didn't have any money. Enter the fellas with the deep pockets and you had to know this was coming.

[cranked]

Nobody sued YouTube because they didn't have any money. Enter the fellas with the deep pockets and you had to know this was coming.

part of the 1.6BB that google bought youtube for was earmarked for lawsuits... ~$500MM. Those are deep pockets, but this could be an interesting trend...i see class action...

[shamrockpow]

Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavs and a film company that made the recent Enron and Spelling Bee movies) has been on the GooTube hate bandwagon for quite a while now.

Here's what he wrote last week on why GooTube would not be able to hide behind the DMCA Safe Harbor clause:

Subpoenas and Gootube

Mar 8th 2007 10:33PM
This past week I decided to supoena Google to get the names of users that were uploading copies of our movies. I have no intention of pulling an RIAA and suing the users. I do have every attention of sending supoenas early and often to get the names and emails of users uploading our content they have pirated.

Why ? To learn.

I expect that the users will have given fake information, but i want to confirm that is the case. It will be a useful data point. ( I will be interesting to see if when there is ultimately a legal battle, that the courts will allow a company to present itself as a hosting company when it has no idea who ANY of its customers are and it has no business model that creates revenues from hosting.) I suspect that from time to time we will get the emails and actually be able to make contact with users. That is when it could get interesting. I want to ask them some simple questions. The first of which is why ? Sure there are a lot of possible and obvious answers, but maybe the will tell me something new or interesting that I can learn from.

The 2nd question will be whether they were induced by Google in any way to upload the video. Not that I think Google coerced them in any way. I don't. But I want to know if they feel that Google endorses and supports uploading and streaming of pirated content. I want to know why they ignored the warnings that are on the video upload page.

Knowledge comes not just from supoenas.

This is a page that has the first 9 minutes of our movie The Host (which opens today, Friday March 9th across the country . See it, its a great movie.). We decided to not send a takedown notice for this clip. In fact, there were several of the clips we didnt send notices for.. Again, as a learning experience.

The comments on this page could potentially be very interesting. As you can note, we sent takedown notices for clips 4 through 13.

silverskates216 (1 week ago)
youtube deleted 4& up so i have to re-upload it. It may take some time.
(Reply) (Spam)

pooh666666 (15 hours ago)
can you re-upload the rest ? because the website that the links go to don't allow us to upload even one file at once . please ?
(Reply) (Spam)

silverskates216 (13 hours ago)
I tired to re-upload and it won't work. Plus that would endanger my account. If you message me with details of what the exact problem is I may be able to fix it.


What is interesting from the comments is that the re-upload didn't work. Does this mean Youtube is proactively filterning content ? Of course the user could be lying or just had tech problems. Who knows. But if they are proactively filtering, they lose ALL of their Safe Harbor protections.

The 2nd point of interest is that we didn't send takedown notices for parts 2 or 3 of the movie, but they are now gone. Why would the user take it down but leave up the first clip ? Did somebody at Youtube take it on themselves to take it down ? No idea. Again, if they did, goodbye to all the Safe Harbor protections.

Then there is the link by the user to rapidshare for the movie (which hopefully will be down by the time you read this). Is this the start of a trend ? Use Youtube as the "catalog" or a way to create traffic, but host on a 3rd party ? Time will tell.

And it appears they are now removing pages they had content that has been removed for whatever reason. Has anyone noticed this ?


One more thing.

It may suprise you that I dont have a problem with what Rapidshare is doing. I see them as legit, while you know how I feel about Gootube. Why ? Because Rapdishare is really a hosting service. They have customers who pay for the service. They dont create an index of the videos they host. They don't try to create traffic for the infringing videos they host. . They do what a hosting service does. They host.

If by chance someone uploads pirated content to them, they truly don't see it. They didn't create a napster/youtube like environment where you can search for any video. The video is only available when the uploader publishes the link.

Rapidshare deserves every bit of the protection the DMCA Safe Harbors offer. If we see our content with a rapidshare link published, as it is in this case. We will send the takedown notice and move on.

Contrast that with Gootube that flaunts their position that when pirated content is hosted on Youtube or Google Video, they are legally safe. Think that might send a message that encourages their users to upload pirated content ? Think maybe people who ignore the copyright warnings prior to uploaded pirated content might feel safe doing so because of Google's public position ? Or the fact that they see pirated content all over Youtube and Google Video, so it must be ok to ignore the warnings ?

I know a hosting company when I see one. Google Video and Youtube are not hosting companies.

Google may have bit off more than they can chew with Youtube. Luckily for them, Larry and Sergei piss $1.6 billion. Worst case scenario is that they shut down the site, create a killer video search app, and settle the outstanding suits out of court...

[Platinum Pete]

part of the 1.6BB that google bought youtube for was earmarked for lawsuits... ~$500MM. Those are deep pockets, but this could be an interesting trend...i see class action...

That $500mm did not include all the $75mm stock grants that they gave to a bunch of the major media companies to keep them at bay for 2 years. The bill is getting big.

[mr_gyptian]

Nobody sued YouTube because they didn't have any money. Enter the fellas with the deep pockets and you had to know this was coming.

this sucks. youtube gave life to Will Ferrell's John Rocker skit and will forever have a special place in my heart.

however, if they've pissed Sumner Redstone off it could get real ugly, real quick for Google. I think Sumner's credo is "If you don't have the stomach to kill for the last penny, you should prepare to stomach losing the last million."

[gg8983]

I think GooTube will eventually fall the way of Napster. It is at the most basic level illegal to post copyrighted material online. It is just a matter of time before the courts catch up to common sense.

Cuban brings up some good points. I really like reading his blog when work is boring, he is a smart mofo.