Brit Canuck
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"Time is up for YouTube": Viacom lawsuit may be only the first
Viacom has launched a major lawsuit against YouTube.com and its owners, who also own Google. There are hints that other major studios and production companies may follow suit (no pun intended).
Will Viacom Suit Send YouTube Down the Tubes?
Industry analysts were waiting to see whether other media companies would follow Viacom's lead in suing Google subsidiary YouTube for copyright infringement or instead use the threat of legal action as leverage to create favorable partnerships with the popular video website. Even at major media companies themselves, there appeared to be disagreement in the ranks over how such video-sharing sites should be dealt with.
In an interview with CNNMoney.com, Brian Wieser, a senior VP at media buyer Magna Global, observed, "Marketing people love YouTube and legal people hate it." Indeed, Paul Cappuccio, the general counsel for Time Warner, signaled Tuesday that his company may be considering similar action. "Time is up for YouTube," Cappuccio told the Wall Street Journal. "It's no longer permissible for them to have unauthorized copyrighted material on there."
News Corp spokesman Andrew Butcher told Bloomberg News: "We have always been supportive of content companies protecting their copyright." However, several reports indicated that some media companies may be less inclined to sue because they may not wish to risk harming existing partnerships with Google. Nor is it clear that they'll win if they do sue. YouTube has said that it cannot be held responsible for what users post on its site and that it removes copyrighted material at the owner's request. "We are confident that YouTube meets and exceeds its legal responsibilities," Google attorney Alexander Macgillivray told today's New York Times.
But in an interview with USA Today, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman described Google/YouTube's course as "Take people's content and ask questions later." Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone added in an interview with the Los Angeles Times: "Any company or any person who illegally misappropriates our product has to be stopped."
Reporting Viacom's $1-billion lawsuit, the Baltimore Sun commented today: "The notion of the Internet as a free ride, a place in cyberspace where almost anything is available for nothing, might at last be put to a real test."
- IMDb Studio Briefing, March 14th, 2007.
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3/15/2007, 6:06 am
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lunablu
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Re: "Time is up for YouTube": Viacom lawsuit may be only the first
I know the English Premier League legal reps are asking various sporting bodies around the world to combine for a class action lawsuit against youtube for showing sporting matches on its site. It will be interesting to see the fallout from all this....
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5/19/2007, 4:44 am
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WaffenSS
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Re: "Time is up for YouTube": Viacom lawsuit may be only the first
Moderator, please delete this post.
Last edited by WaffenSS, 7/25/2009, 7:04 pm
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7/25/2009, 6:46 pm
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