If you didn’t know about the lawsuit Viacom has against Youtube, don’t feel bad, I didn’t even know about it until today. I was reading the news on Cnet.com and there is a nice article there giving the highs and lows of said lawsuit that apparently is going on 3 years old.
The copyright fight worth $1 billion is stating that Youtube has been “looking the other way” when footage owned by Viacom
was uploaded to the site. Basically, was Youtube aware this was happening? I would say, “how could they not know?”, right!? If you don’t care about the lawsuit, you should really think about how easy it is to share content, like music and videos, on the web and that any decision in this case could really put and end or “tame the web” in so many words.
The question really is WHO is responsible for allowing the copyrighted content on the site, owners themselves or those that operate it. Obviously, this type of lawsuit could really take some time (it’s already been three years) and whomever loses WILL appeal with any doubt.
Google’s point is that if they are being forced to double check every piece of media that is uploaded, before it’s made live, then sites like eBay and Craigslist should have to do the same. Checking every single post that a person makes (could be 100,000 per hour) would create extra costs for the provider, as well as, jam up all the content in a “virtual queue”. I am a Google fan and most know that, but this could be a tough lawsuit for them. The $1 billion price tag is steep, but Google should be able to come up with a filter that can check media better. At least they have the money to fight for what they believe in.
you got it wrong. this is not about copyrighted content, as all videos, even home-made ones are copyrighted. this is about infringing content and whether anybody but the owner could know what content is infringing. not even Google, with an army of lawyers could “clear” content. only the owner can do that.
Only a few people work on YouTube/Google and thousands and thousands of people upload videos on the service, how could a few people have time to check every video uploaded by some users to see if it has copyrighted content or not?
YouTube can’t review all the material that’s uploaded. Many people do upload copyrighted material. I suspect YouTube is very good about taking down copyrighted material, although I haven’t had to test that.]
It all boils down to one thing: Money.
Revenue is generated when these shows are aired from ads placed by the show’s sponsors. That’s how a company makes money and stays in business. What’s happening is that when these shows are rebroadcast outside of the channel’s or company’s control, they don’t get any revenue because they have no provision for getting paid by sponsors for rebroadcasts of their shows. (It would be hard to negotiate that, anyhow since it’s hit or miss what gets rebroadcasted and how often).
YouTube and other such sites get ad revenue from people who browse their sites the same way broadcasters do. And they don’t share.
It boils down to how to share revenue. Broadcasters want a per view rate – which is extortionate to say the least. Internet media providers don’t want to pay anything because policing what is seen and how often is impossible (these shows aren’t tagged in any way so as to track them automatically).
If they got away from the ‘per view’ paradigm or even per show, they’d probable settle on an overall revenue sharing scheme that is equitable if they based it on a scale derived from overall viewership of a particular channel during the previous month, quarter or year. Neither side should be allowed to have with they each demand from the other and a reasonable compromise should be achieved. Otherwise, the battle will continue or YouTube will be shut down – in which case we all lose.
Even Viacom (since getting SOME revenue from online viewership is better than getting nothing and having viewers post their shows on other media viewing sites – which is exactly what will happen).
Viacom just want some money just like the rest of Google’s court enemies in the past and that’s just downright despicable…
sorry, but you have to be aware that viacom uploaded their own stuff to youtube(very cleverly) just to promote their own products, they changed their own videos to make them look stolen or pirated and they forgot they did this, therefore they are the only ones in the wrong, besides google should NEVER have to filter their stuff as this is not only bogus, but might be the end of nearly every user submitted site on the entire internet if they win. it is also obvious that you have no Idea what kind of artificial intelligence would be required for such a task as you believe is justified by viacom to demand of google and or any other site. the ai would have to possess the most difficult to define of most of the human traits that allow us to do these tasks on their own. besides do you really want google to have a staff of half the earth’s population filtering the content?
Youtube currently can filter any videos that infringe on copyright music and otherwise, so the “AI” isn’t all that impossible. The just site wouldn’t be able to do every single upload (which I think I say in the post).