YouTube and Viacom – A great response

A friend left such a fabulous comment to my post on the YouTube and Viacom dispute (see two posts back – Piracy what not to do to stop it) that I have gotten his permission to publish it here, rather than letting it vegetate in the comments section on my blog.

And he says: “It spells doom for many but something tells me Viacom won’t be walking away from this lawsuit empty handed.

I also think YouTube has been very disrespectful. I say this for two reasons: (1) Viacom’s actions: they’ve just signed a deal with Joost indicating they’re VERY open to webTV; that’s a lot of shekels to Joost that could’ve all been YouTube’s! (2) YouTube responded to Viacom’s lengthy negotiations by literally spitting in their faces: asked to remove copyrighted material, YouTube more or less said, “we’ll do it ONLY if you alert us to the infringement”. Reason: under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s Safe Harbour provision, a content host/provider isn’t required to monitor the copyright infringements of its public users.

Google, YouTube and a Stanford Law Prof named Lawrence Lessig say that’s enough to beat Viacom – but is it?

YouTube also countered matter-of-factly that it could never monitor every video for copyright infringement because they didn’t have the manpower to scan every single video – a blatant lie. YouTube scans every video for porn and other horrid things that are wont to fester on our online cesspool – so they HAVE the frigging manpower.

But here’s the kicker: they’re not technically covered by the DMCA’s Safe Harbour provision.. ja.. You see YouTube has to reformat every file its community uploads into a “YouTube video extension”. Which ‘technically’ means that YouTube is complicit in the copyright-infringing actions of its community. You can’t pretend to not control what you do, sayeth the law.

So the all-heal DMCA might not hold now. Had YouTube not have been so arrogant, Viacom would’ve been a cash-cow; I mean, Viacom didn’t need to negotiate with them, but they did – they clearly wanted to make a deal (as indicated in their watertight happiness with Joost), YouTube just got too big for their boots.

Some 2.0-starstruck prawns like to mouth off that Viacom needs Google/YouTube more than the latter needs the former. Well, let’s see here: Google/YouTube don’t make any content but depend on it to attract advertisers (the bulk of Google revenue).. So let’s see who swerves first in this billion dollar chicken run..

Thanks Brent. Hope to see your articles published soon. “You’re worth it”!

Brent Tollman is a business strategist, copy writer extraordinaire, marketer, whizkid and a lot more other suitably positive attributes. He lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.