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Viacom v Free Speech?
March 13, 2007
Viacom has already made itself unpopular with the free speech crowd by telling YouTube to remove 100,000 clips from its servers. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have complained, that has led to many non-infringing videos being removed by mistake (see the EFF video below, which you can also view on YouTube here.)
So imagine the angst that will be caused by Viacom’s latest salvo: a $1bn lawsuit and a request for an injunction that would bar YouTube from posting any of its copyrighted material in the first place. The collateral damage could be huge.
There’s no way that YouTube can guarantee to keep Viacom material off its site. As we reported at the start of this year, a promised technical fix to prevent copyright video from being uploaded has not materialised. So the only way to meet the terms of an injunction would be to close the site down completely. Surely no US court would order such a thing?
Why not? YouTube’s entire business is premised on massive, illegal, copyright infringement.
Posted by: Chadsworth McBillingsly | March 14th, 2007 at 9:43 am | Report this commentYouTube’s entire business is NOT based on copyrighted videos, as Napster’s business was. Remove the Viacom videos and you still have a tremendous amount of legal content. Remove the Viacom videos and the value of YouTube as a distribution platform for rival Viacom studios goes up.
Posted by: Tom Foremski | March 14th, 2007 at 5:50 pm | Report this commentViacom gets its videos back, and faces the daunting task of building its own YouTube and matching the same distribution/reach. Brilliant strategy.
In any event, the article’s focus on ‘First Amendment’ issues is way too restrictive to help much. Viacom is suing Google for worldwide infringements of its rights, including copyright infringements in many, many countries which have no comparable First Amendment protection to the US law, and which provide no DMCA ’safe harbours’ for Google. It’s their choice. If they want to do business worldwide, they have to comply with local copyright laws too, not just the US ones .
C Rubini
Posted by: Carlo Rubini | March 14th, 2007 at 6:18 pm | Report this commentRome
“Remove the Viacom videos and you still have a tremendous amount of legal content.”
Don’t be silly. Remove Viacom and you still have huge amounts of other’s company’s content. Everything from Howard Stern to your local news broadcast. YouTube wants people to believe that their traffic was built on videos of people getting hit in the groin, but that’s just not true. People are watching copyrighted content.
Posted by: Chadsworth McBillingsly | March 15th, 2007 at 9:27 am | Report this comment