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paul President


Joined: 15 Oct 2002 Posts: 8314 Location: UK 11706 ants
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Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:05 pm Post subject: $1bn YouTube lawsuit |
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I have to say... it was only a matter of time...
Quote: | Some 160,000 clips of Viacom programming have been illegally available on YouTube and have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times, Viacom said. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and also seeks an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement.
"YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google. Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws," Viacom said in a statement.
"In fact, YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden - and high cost - of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement," Viacom said in a statement. |
Paul _________________ UK Hotels - UK Selfcatering
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trev President


Joined: 15 Oct 2002 Posts: 3011 Location: NW England, UK 4037 ants
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Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:26 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm....wonder why they have suddenly woken up to this then. Couldn't be anything to do with Google taking it over and thus there actually being some money behind it?
One thing they forget is that YouTube is seen by people all over the world, most of whom don't have access to Viacom programmes, thus how can they possibly be losing money? This could infact increase their chances of getting programmes out there as for example someone in the UK might see it, tell their friends and eventually Channel 4 or similar could pickup a really big hit programme, thus making Viacom money.
Corporates never seem to be able to see past the end of their monthly balance sheets!
Trev _________________ Mad Theories - Ambleside - Coniston - Grange |
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stephangrobler Executive PA


Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Posts: 72 Location: Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa 99 ants
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Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 1:21 pm Post subject: |
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I totally agree with Trev, we here South Africa never would have seen some of viacoms programs. As for keeping the 160 000 clips of permanently, it is going to take some serious labour to get it off and keep it off. _________________ For the most rewarding online advertisement for your South African Business, visit SABD.co.za - the South African Business Directory |
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Old Welsh Guy President


Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 1866 Location: Wales UK 2041 ants
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Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 3:02 pm Post subject: |
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IP is IP regardless. Google/YT is breaking the law, and they SHOULD be punished IMO.
Google makes billins off other peoples content, and the 'do no evil' tag dropped off a long time ago. Wake up and smell the coffe guys, time for the big dog of Google to be slapped around a bit.  _________________ Internet Marketing bloke - My SEO Agony Uncle Blog - free deep link directory |
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adigaskell President


Joined: 01 Jul 2004 Posts: 5428
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Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 9:52 am Post subject: |
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It will be interesting to see how the NewsCorp/MSN/NBC deal will impact things as they're planning to offer downloads for free from their networks. Whilst YouTube started out as a place for users to upload their own videos I suspect they get far more traffic now from people viewing copyrighted material. _________________ My social media blog |
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snanny Executive

Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Posts: 138 Location: London 212 ants
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Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 6:06 pm Post subject: |
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Well this took a long time...
I must admit I'm using Youtube sometimes to watch my favorite programs what I miss in TV. |
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trev President


Joined: 15 Oct 2002 Posts: 3011 Location: NW England, UK 4037 ants
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Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 6:23 pm Post subject: |
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Old Welsh Guy wrote: | IP is IP regardless. Google/YT is breaking the law, and they SHOULD be punished IMO. |
The only thing is - since Google took over YouTube after most of the offences took place presumably, can they actually get money out of Google or purely YouTube coffers? And considering how much YouTube was spending, I doubt it actually had any money to pay the billions.
On the downloadable TV front - if anyone actually signs deals to do that, I really hope they do a better job than Channel 4 On Demand service. The download speeds are around dialup level of 40kbs max so one episode of a program (170MB average) is taking 20 hours on broadband!
The people behind Skype seem to have the best idea with the Venice project whereby you use downloaders systems to upload to other users, and some big names are jumping on that one. Strangely, this is what peer to peer did and the same big names tried to kill that off...!
Trev _________________ Mad Theories - Ambleside - Coniston - Grange |
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paul President


Joined: 15 Oct 2002 Posts: 8314 Location: UK 11706 ants
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Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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Hmmmm....
Quote: | In a rare opportunity to play the wronged party, Google responds to Viacom's copyright infringement case against Youtube with a lashing that brings the very notion of individual freedom into question. Search Engine Land synopsizes.
To quote from the first paragraph of Google's lengthy response:
Quote: | "By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for internet communications, Viacom's complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression. Google and YouTube respect the importance of intellectual property rights, and not only comply with their safe harbor obligations under the DMCA, but go well above and beyond what the law requires." |
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I'm not sure the courts will buy that one. What do you think? _________________ UK Hotels - UK Selfcatering
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adigaskell President


Joined: 01 Jul 2004 Posts: 5428
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Posted: Fri May 04, 2007 1:29 pm Post subject: |
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So they're basically saying that Viacom should go after the users that upload the content rather than YouTube?  _________________ My social media blog |
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paul President


Joined: 15 Oct 2002 Posts: 8314 Location: UK 11706 ants
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paul President


Joined: 15 Oct 2002 Posts: 8314 Location: UK 11706 ants
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Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 2:25 pm Post subject: |
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Another case just in...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6627135.stm?ls
Quote: | The English Premier League is to sue video-sharing site YouTube for alleged copyright infringement.
The football organisation said YouTube had "knowingly misappropriated" its intellectual property by encouraging footage to be viewed on its site.
Google-owned YouTube already faces a $1bn (£501m) lawsuit from media giant Viacom, accusing it of illegally showing clips from its TV shows.
YouTube has denied those claims, saying the suit threatens the internet. |
Could numerous lawsuits such as this actually bring about Google's downfall?
Paul _________________ UK Hotels - UK Selfcatering
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adigaskell President


Joined: 01 Jul 2004 Posts: 5428
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Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 3:35 pm Post subject: |
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Hasn't really stopped Microsoft has it. I dare say Google's lawyers could drag this out for quite some time. _________________ My social media blog |
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Eagle President


Joined: 06 Mar 2004 Posts: 644 Location: UK 659 ants
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trev President


Joined: 15 Oct 2002 Posts: 3011 Location: NW England, UK 4037 ants
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Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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Well, what's the likely actual cost of this going to be if they lose? They sued for $1b, but that sounds an awfully round number to be honest and I wouldn't be surprised if part of this is simply to generate publicity for Viacom programmes. The final number will no doubt be a lot lower than that as each side works out what it's spending on legal fees.
Then again, there are rumours that Google might buy one of the networks that's suing it, so why not buy Viacom?
As for the downfall of Google - well yeah, but do you really think Yahoo and MSN combined would be able to deliver the traffic that Google does? We'll end up back in the days where we creates pages optimised for 10 different engines which really complicated things.
Trev _________________ Mad Theories - Ambleside - Coniston - Grange |
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adigaskell President


Joined: 01 Jul 2004 Posts: 5428
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Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 11:50 am Post subject: |
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Quote: | Then again, there are rumours that Google might buy one of the networks that's suing it, so why not buy Viacom? |
That would indeed be ironic seeing as it was the AOL/TimeWarner merger that effectively saw the end of the dot-com boom. I wonder if they'll have learnt from history at all? _________________ My social media blog |
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