Viacom Claim Google Made 'business decision' Over Piracy

[engine]

Viacom Claim Google Made 'business decision' Over Piracy [news.cnet.com]

We've heard these kinds of sweeping declarations from both sides throughout the legal standoff, which began when Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google in 2007, claiming YouTube encouraged users to commit intellectual property theft. A review of the documents filed with the court on Thursday shows that much of the material, such as Google employees making critical statements about YouTube's "rogue" business model before buying the video sharing site in October 2006 have been well covered.

But Viacom said in a statement that the new documents show Google "made a deliberate, calculated business decision not only to profit from copyright infringement, but also to use the threat of copyright infringement to try to coerce rights owners like Viacom into licensing their content on Google's terms."

"It's revealing that Viacom is trying to litigate this case in the press," said a YouTube representative. "These documents aren't new. They are taken out of context and have nothing to do with this lawsuit."

Earlier story

ViaCom Finds Smoking YouTube Gun [webmasterworld.com]

[zett]

Nice find.

Pressure premium content providers to change their model towards free

The word "pressure" is quite worrying in this context. "Pressure" from the biggest search engine and traffic source is not something anyone would want to feel. (And that's why standing ovations should be made for Viacom for fighting this to the very end.)

play first, deal later around hot content

Google has proven time and again that they are not interested in dealing with concerns of copyright holders prior to the launch of a new service. Instead they usually launch a feature, even if it may violate copyright laws, and indeed deal with such claims later.

So, yes, Google appear to be more evil by the minute.

[brotherhood of LAN]

I'd tend to agree with Viacom's side of the argument, as said time and again it's always been quite obvious, particularly when youtube was purchased, that such a site is always going to be hosting unauthorised/copyrighted content without a means of the site to screen for it.

It may mean that a colossal video upload site is untenable, but the disregard for copyright remains.

[graeme_p]

The word "pressure" is quite worrying in this context.

That is why Viacom use it!

"Pressure" from the biggest search engine and traffic source is not something anyone would want to feel.

Yes, because Viacom are a hapless small business.

It may mean that a colossal video upload site is untenable, but the disregard for copyright remains.

Innovation vs copyright?

The problem is that you also end up barring lots of legitimate uses - just as banning bittorrent would mean my linux ISOs would download a lot slower.

[hutcheson]

>banning bittorrent would mean my linux ISOs would download a lot slower.

I volunteer at Project Gutenberg, which provides (carefully vetted and demonstrably copyright-free) books via bittorrent (and when the Supreme Court considered "peer-to-peer file sharing", which filed an amicus curiae brief to the same effect.)