All Blog Posts from Public Eye

OK, OK, the headline is a bit lame. But it's appropriate: Viacom Inc. has announced a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube and its owner, Google, for copyright infringement.

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."

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On the heels of this morning’s news that CBS News will be simulcasting the “Evening News,” we decided to revisit a story we did back in late October. Back then, we wondered why there wasn’t more of CBS News’ content available online in its entirety – as opposed to shortened clips of “60 Minutes” broadcasts or selections of “Evening News” segments. At the time, we spoke with Preston Farr, senior vice president of affiliate relations at CBS, and Betsy Morgan, senior vice president and general manager of CBSNews.com, who explained that the reasons were a combination of exclusivity agreements with affiliates and a lack of demand for full-length programs online.

So, nine months later, what has changed? The network’s agreement with affiliates for one, Farr told us. The existing agreement, which dealt with a variety of issues including the restrictions on repurposing news content, expired this year. One of the changes in the new contract is that CBS news programs are exempt from the restrictions that previously existed, said Farr, which means all news programs can be repurposed on the Web in their entirety.

And what about Web users’ tendency to prefer bits and pieces of video content, instead of full-length programs? Morgan still sticks to her comments to us back in October, which cited that tendency as one of the reasons CBSNews.com didn’t feature full-length programs. But over the last nine months, “we've seen an interest in watching full broadcasts online,” in both the realms of entertainment and news, she said, citing the success of PBS’ “Charlie Rose” on Google video and the popularity of full-length programs on iTunes. Still, the press release notes that “viewers may build their own broadcast by choosing individual reports from each CBS ‘Evening News’ program.”

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By now, there's a decent chance you've heard the story of Jason McElwain, an autistic high school student from Rochester, N.Y. McElwain, who managed his school's basketball team, saw some action in the team's last game of the year – and scored 20 points in four minutes as his team and the fans went crazy.

McElwain's inspiring story first aired on CBS on last Thursday's "Evening News." Then, citing the "incredible response," the network decided to air it again the next day, which meant bumping the you-choose-the-story segment "Assignment America" to the following week. It was an uncharacteristic move, one that prompted TV Newser to ask: "When was the last time an evening news program aired the same piece two nights in a row?"

The "Evening News" wasn't the only place the story got heavy play. It exploded on the Web, with CBSNews.com featuring McElwain on the homepage even through today and the blogs buzzing about the "incredibly powerful" story. Many of the blogs weren't linking to Steve Hartman's story on CBSNews.com, however, which featured the full video of his story. Instead, they were linking to YouTube, which bills itself as "a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide." Someone had uploaded the "Evening News" story to Youtube, complete with Bob Schieffer's introduction, and it became the most viewed video of the week. At last check, more than 1 million people had watched the "Evening News" piece there.

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