Viacom Trying to Take-down Google YouTube

Viacom Trying to Take-down Google YouTube

Back in 2006 when Google acquired YouTube the company did so under the protection of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Act gives a company protection against users posting works that are copyrighted as long as the company removes the media upon notification. Lawyers for Viacom simply are not in agreement with that and lawyers representing Viacom have been very vocal about it. Paul Smith, legal representative for Viacom in this matter made an appeal to the courts that Google should not be legally protected from infringing upon the copyrights of others.

Google and YouTube

Google attorneys fired back claiming that Google/YouTube obeys the law and removes the content if there is a claim from the copyright owner. Since the original lawsuit was ruled on a number of years ago, YouTube has since developed technology to hunt down materials that infringe upon copyrights. The software, while impressive, still cannot find every instance of copyright infringement and Viacom pointed this out by stating that further exploitation should be expected if YouTube is allowed to continue with their practices.

YouTube and Justin TV

This does bring attention to the possibility of companies such as YouTube and Justin Tv and others like it to come to some kind of licensing agreement with the top names. While it will cut into any profits, these kinds of licensing agreements should clearly be part of the overhead in running a business that aggregates user uploaded media. The world is a much bigger and the internet obviously plays a much bigger role since the inception of the DMCA back in 1998. Viacom is not alone in the legal action as other plaintiffs are represented, including the Football Association Premier League.

Hulu and Hulu Plus

One of the major issues in regards to user uploads on YouTube is that they are in direct competition with companies that pay for these licensing agreements. Comedy Central programs are featured on Hulu and Hulu Plus. While YouTube is apparently good about taking down content, a common search of the Daily Show on YouTube will bring up a number of the episodes that show content of over six minutes. Considering that the program is only around or under twenty-four minutes, that’s a quarter of a copyrighted program that is being displayed.

One way that YouTube seems to be handling the issue is by moving to a pay per view model with movies and most recently with music.

Google owns several interests that users use everyday including, Gmail, Google maps, Google translate and Google earth. Viacom owns several media outlets including MTV and Comedy Central. The live streaming site Justin.tv recently made a deal with ESL to broadcast video game tournaments on the spin off game site Twitch.tv.