f13.net

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6446193.stm


Because yeah, 10 second clips of Pimp my Ride must really be hitting those DVD sales.

That said I imagine Viacom are right about the legality of the thing - ho hum.

> Lawyers deployed
Someone needs to make a legal system RTS.

Fuck Viacom. YouTube is FREE FUCKING ADVERTISING FOR THEIR SHOWS.

Yes, they probably are in the legal right. But for fuck's sake, it's just not that big a fucking deal.

Stop.  Think about the amount of money that YouTube is making off advertisements; quite a bit.  Now think about the amount of money that Viacom makes from this "free advertisement"; zero.  There is actual, demonstrable, financial impact since Viacom could theoretically host their shows on their site, along with ads, and make money that way.  Some places are doing this, for example Comedy Central (owned by Viacom).  Remember that the only way TV shows make money on TV is by ads; YouTube is directly dipping into their revenue stream.

I'm feeling contrarian this morning.


(emphasis mine)

But until they actually host their shows on their site, there is no "actual, demonstrable, financial impact" there.

YouTube polices SNL and Comedy Central stuff pretty rigorously, because those guys do have their own streaming sites, and have asked YouTube to sweep their stuff out.

Yeah, when Viacom starts hosting all their own shit, call me. Otherwise, I'll be in the corner watching shit on YouTube.

And if Viacom's ratings go up because of YouTube driving people to the actual shows, Viacom WILL profit by being able to sell advertising space for more money, or more advertising space. Seriously, Viacom doesn't lose dick with the situation as it is.

And there's something to be said for the convenience YouTube offers over Comedy Central's hosting.

For instance, if I want to show my parents when Colbert cracked up in the Filliam H. Muffman bit, I can just search "Filliam H. Muffman" and the right clip will come up.  I don't have to go episode by episode or through whole episodes.  Then, if I want to compare that to something on To Catch A Predator, I don't have to go to an entirely different site with an entirely different interface.

Point being, they can host all sorts of stuff, but I'm only ever going to watch it on YouTube.  If it's not there, I just won't watch it.

While you're here, would you mind emailing me a copy of NWN source?  Since I don't own or intend to purchase that product, there would be no actual fiscal impact.  Nor would there be until Bioware offered it for sale.

Somewhere between a third and half of Viacom's revenues come from advertisements.  As such, part of any strategic plan is to figure out how to get eyeballs on their ads which include both current product/ad revenue, and any planned or even unknown future product/ad revenue. Content which isn't hosted on their websites aren't done so because they feel they can make more money by holding back, likely either to get attention to their TV broadcasts or to later DVD sales.  Which, in turn, means that any such release is damaging to these other revenue streams.  Or maybe they would like to host a certain show.  Sucks that it's already been available on YouTube for however long, and not getting them that ad money.

My inbox is waiting.

Not the same thing, since you don't download a copy of the video from YouTube, only view it online.


You mean like viral marketing on YouTube? Or just having their videos watched by a bazillion eyeballs who might turn into a billion viewers?


Except that it's not, because you can't count every viewer on YouTube, or even of the original broadcast as a sale of the other revenue stream.

Case will get settled out of court for an undisclosed compensation and with the understanding that YouTube is the distributor in the future of Viacom media on the internet in return for a portion of the ad revenues.

Another major media conglomerate will smell money, sue Google, settle and YouTube will be able to legally distribute their material.  Wash, rinse and repeat.

End result?  Internet TV and Movies paid for by ad dollars and brought to you by Google and Youtube.

That doesn't matter from a legal standpoint.  YouTube is cutting into Viacom's market (actual OR potential) for revenue based on ads and page views that result from the copyright protected materials that it owns.  While you may be right from a philosophical perspective, the law says otherwise, IMO.

Don't forget the DMCA.  Glad to see that stupid ass law is screwing the big as well as the little guy.

Viewing things online does download - it just may or may not be permanent.  As for YouTube, it's easy to save the flv files and load them up again.  Harder than "Save As...", but not by much since there are plenty of directions on the net.  Google it for irony. 

Edit:  It took me longer to download the actual movie file than it did to find functional directions on how to do it.  I can now save/play YouTube vids at will.


Looking at the product (a show) does nothing for viacom.  They don't want you looking at their content.  They would be happy if you never saw their content, because they make no money off you viewing their content.  They make money off you looking at their advertisements or buying their product.


Yes you can.  It counts however the owner decides it counts.  Again, if Viacom thought they would make money by posting more stuff on the net with ads, they would have done it.  They could be wrong; but that's not your call (or YouTube's) anymore than you get to decide you're only going to put $3 on the counter to watch a movie in the theatre, or bring a camera in to make priated copies of later.

Youtube had it coming. Unfortunately, it's physically impossible for Youtube to screen EVERY video that comes through there and there are people who make a living off getting those video blogs out on a timely basis (don't ask me how). As such, if Youtube started putting in a screening delay, they would hurt those people a lot more than Viacom. Getting to the actual trial though will cost Viacom more than they have lost from Youtube, guaranteed. Winning the case? A LOT more. See, all of this "finanacial loss" implies that people would have watched Viacom stuff in some capacity and their viewing would have made Viacom money.

No, it doesn't. Many, many people do not buy stuff based on advertisements. Many do, yes. But I imagine the crossover to the web-savvy pirating Youtube crowd isn't very high.

It's sort of like calling a person who bittorrents stuff a thief. Sure, in the noble sense of the word, he is MOST DEFINATELY, a thief. Unfortunately, that guy probably wasn't going to buy the product to begin with. As such, while he may reform by the time you have your next movie/game/album out, he did just get it for free and you have to deal with it.

All that said, Viacom is just being a bunch of pantywaists.

The words in bold do not go together.

Doesn't matter.  YouTube's best defense is that they're a service provider within the definition of the DMCA -- they cannot be expected to police what those wacky users do.  Viacom will likely argue that they're more like P2P companies that encourage/endorse piracy.  Whether the users of YouTube really WOULD be money in the bank for Viacom is immaterial.  It doesn't matter one iota -- copies of protected material were made and distributed.  For purposes of the copyright act, that's all you really need.  There's other nitpicky stuff that can get argued back and forth, but at least for purposes of the lawsuit, it doesn't really matter what kind of financial loss Viacom argues -- it does for SOME types of claims, but not all.

You may be right about the habits of the average YouTube user, but that's not really important for Viacom to win.  Assuming that by "win" we mean, "go to a full trial and emerge the winner."

Doesn't really matter if nobody buys stuff off YouTube ads; YouTube makes money from the ads themselves.  That is money earned from someone else's content.


The actual loss is what YouTube earned as a result of profiting from someone else's work.  Viacom's potential profit is only theoretical in the sense that they haven't done it for some specific shows.  The point isn't to say that $100 earned by YouTube is $100 lost by Viacom; in some alternate universe Viacom could have earned a tenth of that, or ten times as much.  It doesn't matter which.  All that matters is that someone else is profiting from their work.  This violation is worse than peer to peer issues because there is actual profit motive.

This isn't true. There is value in owning a culture. Just ask Microsoft Business Group President Jeff Raikes who said (http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/03/12/microsoft-executive-pirating-software-choose-microsoft) he'd rather have people pirate Windows than use something else.

this is a negotiation tactic.  Nuff said.

In other words, to boil it all down, copyright law has been bought and paid for to fuck everyone who isn't a big bankrolling media company, using the normal consumer as their phallus.

And yes, it is a negotiation tactic. Viacom didn't like the numbers YouTube was throwing at them. It'll get settled out of court and copyright laws will still be a corruption of the intent of the original laws.

Agreed.  ALmost nothing goes to trial, and when it comes to companies this big NOTHING goes to trial.  The consequences losing for either side are way, way too fucking high.

But its always good to watch Roac twist and turn arguments in order to stand up for the little guy.

No one was looking to help the little guy when the RIA stormtroopers went after individuals. Now that corporations are suing corporations we might get some goddamn clarity - hopefully sane clarity.

There are no little guys in this lawsuit.  That said, little guys are wrong sometimes too.

Actually you do download a copy of the video to your machine -- it's sitting there right now in your browser cache. Flash Video is not a "pure" streaming format like, say, ASF. If you want to keep a copy of a YouTube video, or any other FLV/SWF video around, use IE (yes I know, but keep reading) to watch the video and then just drag it out of your Temporary Internet Files folder when it's done loading. Firefox and Opera make it a super pain in the ass to copy things out of their caches which is why I recommend using IE to do this. Of course, you do have to be careful if you are trying to copy a FLV video from a dodgy site when using IE.

That didn't work for Napster and it wouldn't work for Google. YouTube is not only doing the conversion of copyrighted material from one format to another (converting them to FLV format), creating illegal derivative works, it's actually *hosting* the files, which even Napster didn't do (it was just the index for P2P files).

You can just reference them by a link.  There's a handy script you can add to the Greasemonkey extention that makes it easy to d/l as well.

Referencing them by a link requires reading through the source or memorzing the path format and then pasting in the cryptic ID code for the video. Greasemonkey works well cause it can put a download link on the page for you and Opera has User JavaScript which is basically the same thing, but the regular UIs for accessing cached content on Opera and Firefox is just an incredible PITA.

Supposedly some people think (http://www.slate.com/id/2152264/fr/rss/) the fact that they are hosting the actual files makes YouTube more legitimate than Napster because they really are a service provider under the DMCA. Under Napster the service provider was the ISP. YouTube has significant non-infringing uses (including fair use and parody material) which arguably Napster never really did. Additionally, YouTube has always had the little "don't upload copyright stuff" notice which was an issue Grokster had. I'll wager that every clip would have to be individually analyzed to see who uploaded it and why to find out if it qualified for fair use or not.

Leaving aside the actual merits of the case, Google has a hell of a lot more money than Napster did.

There are Firefox add-ons/extensions that will let you easily DL flash movies… …in fact one will add a little animated icon in your toolbar (I don't have one loaded on this work machine, but there a are a bunch) that will permit you to download all the Flash source on a given page. From there, it's a simple utility to convert the .flv into a video file of your choice (or just use the Flash player on your local copy)… …on my Macs, I use iSquint (http://www.isquint.org/) to convert some to H264 for video iPod use…

That said, Viacom is being stupid, and this guy offers up a cogent summary of the matter (http://www.buzzmachine.com/2007/03/13/demonizing-us/):


Actually, I think youTube is still a loss leader for google. Most of its traffic and a big source of how it eclipsed to widespread popularity is the easy ability to embed video in your own page. I would wager that most bandwidth devoted to offering up the video is embeds in other peoples pages. And that's what makes youTube so ubiquitous.

Mark Cuban has subpeano-ed Google (http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/03/08/supoenas-and-gootube/),  though he says he's not interested in suing, just proving his assertion that they are not a "hosting company" they define themselves as…

Dinosaurs still asserting their reign… …just like the farmer that sued the government to stop airplanes from flying over his land… …unfortunately, these dinosaurs are armed with mega-lawyer teams and won't be easily thwarted in their quest to turn back the clock…

Google is not simply "transmitting" the data, they are converting it from one format to another creating a derivative work. By converting the videos into a more compact format they are in effect facilitating the propagation of possibly copyrighted material without permission. They can not possibly claim to be an ISP where they are simply passing bits around.



"the right and ability to control such activity" is analogous to what got Napster into trouble. The courts ordered Napster to filter out the infringing tracks (with lists provided by the music companies) and basically threw up their hands and said "we give up". Google provides indexed pages of all the videos uploaded and most importantly they receive financial benefit from the infringing activity. This is different than, say, a blogging service where the user has to create the pages and links to let people access the content they've uploaded. A blogging service doesn't control what pages and links people create. YouTube can control what videos are available for download cause they build those pages. Sure it's an automated procedure (right now) but that software is under the control of YouTube.

I said it was their "best" defense, not that it was a winner.  ;)

Hey, here is the Firefox extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3006/) I have installed on my home box(es) to extract Flash video (and any other such media…).

See how much I love you all… …to actually remember and in a half inebriated state come back and post a link… …:)

could it be I'm wrong?

Mark Cuban, FWIW (http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/03/13/you-go-viacom/)

I think that last point is at least noteworthy -- there is no user facing data (at least) on who is uploading what consistently, it's all based on the rating of the clip itself, and the 12 other versions of it. 

I think this just another example where IP is stifling creativity not fostering it.  So the only way, this particular technology would be acceptable would be if 100% guarantee the person posting owned the copyright.  Which is impossible since there is no list of copyrighted works.  So this technology is suppose to die because it doesn't fit well with our old fashioned notations of copyright.  Seems to me it should be the other way around.

I bet that a great portion of uploaders Viacom content are indeed Viacom employees themselves… …it's amazing how fast stuff will go up, and at times it appears to me, only someone "on the inside" could possibly be feeding youTube…

I haven't being paying attention to what cookies YouTube is setting these days (since I have them mostly turned off) but I'm pretty sure Google has a extremely good idea who uses YouTube. They store every fricking search query that anybody has ever typed into Google and they track that data by cookie, IP and other identifying information. Remember when that AOL search data got leaked out and people were able to identify specific people just based on the search terms? Imagine that except multiplied by orders of magnitude more information. Now of course there are plenty of ways to "anonymizing" yourself on the Internet but how many of the people uploading copyrighted vidoes to YouTube are doing that sort of thing?

Lawrence Lessig
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003734.shtml

As the saying goes, "He who has the gold, rules." The major copyright holders have been working the copyright laws in their favor for decades now. It used to be that copyrights lasted for a handful of decades. Now it's the lifetime of the creator + 70 years for new works and lifetime + 95 years for older ones. Basically everytime Disney was about to lose the copyright on Mickey Mouse (because of the age of Steamboat Willy) they would go up to Congress, give them the whole song and dance about how America would fall apart if Disney lost control of Mickey, and Congress would grant yet another extension to the length of copyrights. SCOTUS even got involved (Eldred v. Ashcroft mentioned above) and decided that even though the Constitution explicitly says these things should be protected for a "limited time", somehow lifetime + 70 years qualifies.

well, that's how it works in Canada :-o