SueTube
Reports Reuters: "The suit accuses Web search leader Google and YouTube of 'massive intentional copyright infringement' of Viacom's entertainment assets and seeks an injunction against further violations." Viacom says clips of its programming have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times on YouTube.
Viacom, which owns MTV, Comedy Central and many other properties, split with CBS at the end of 2005. It's been interesting to watch the dance between big media companies and YouTube: As Variety pointed out over the weekend, while the marketing people at the big media companies want to embrace YouTube, their legal counterparts have debated, and sometimes undertaken, legal action.
The whole process has been something of a nervous flirtation, one that has long seemed like it might go either way – as Melissa Lafsky points out, the BBC cut a deal with the company, while other media companies, "unsure of whether to exploit its massive traffic and promotional opportunities or issue injunctions to protect their copyrighted material," continue to negotiate. The Viacom suit certainly feels like the throwing down of the proverbial gauntlet: As Lafsky, channeling a silver screen classic, put it in her headline, "it's on."
New media evangelist Jeff Jarvis calls the Viacom move "boneheaded." He writes: "Viacom complains about YouTube but, in truth, they're complaining about their own viewers. They whine about theft but, in fact, they're whining about recommendation, about their audience finding them more audience. Viacom is trying, singlehandedly, to turn the TV industry into the music industry."
At this point, CBS is clearly more of a friend of YouTube than Viacom, though the situation is still murky. Last week at the Online Publishers Association gathering, CBSNews.com Senior Vice President & General Manager Betsy Morgan laid out the CBSNews.com's strategy for dealing with YouTube. Here's what she said, according to paidContent.org:
"We've got a team of lawyers that goes through pirated CBS News videos on YouTube and calls up YouTube every day and says 'you've got to take down these clips'. Every pirated 60 Minutes clip that goes up on YouTube, we're putting up the authentic, authorized version of that clip. We're sensitive. If we're going to take down that illegal video, we are certainly going to give you the experience of that piece [by supplying a new clip] and often the quality is considerably better."
That sure seems like a lot of work for the CBS folks, though it does mean that media consumers who want to see CBS News content on YouTube will be able to find it.