I've been following the
"YouTube Roolz" blogfest with extreme boredom, its clearly pre-emptive posturing before the Viacom court case - but
this response shot from Viacom piqued my curiosity as its sets out the Viacom position:
YouTube was intentionally built on infringement and there are countless internal YouTube communications demonstrating that YouTube’s founders and its employees intended to profit from that infringement. By their own admission, the site contained “truckloads” of infringing content and founder Steve Chen explained that YouTube needed to “steal” videos because those videos make “our traffic soar.”
Google bought YouTube because it was a haven of infringement. Google knew that YouTube’s popularity depended on infringing materials with several senior Google executives warning that YouTube was a “rogue enabler of content theft.” Instead of complying with the law, Google willfully and knowingly chose to continue YouTube’s illegal practices.
Google and YouTube had the technology to stop infringement at any time but deliberately chose not to use it. They would only offer to protect Viacom’s content if Viacom agreed to license those works, effectively holding copyright protection as ransom for a license.
The law is clear that Google and YouTube are liable for their infringement. The Supreme Court unanimously held in Grokster that a service that intends infringement is liable for that infringement. No case has ever suggested that the DMCA immunizes rampant intentional infringement of the sort Google and YouTube have engaged in.
These facts are undisputed. The statements by Google regarding Viacom activities are merely red herrings and have no relevance on the legal facts of this case.
Its interesting because it is in essence implying that even adopting the piracy business model is a de Jure illegal act. It has a huge impact - if you go back to our work on the evolution of the Web TV world, you will see that we assume that the very turbulent "Pirate World" holds sway in the next few years, and quite a few of the winners longer term are effectively the corporates bankrolling these Pirates (what we call Privateer Plays as a more accurate term here than Pirates). Google and YouTube being the prime example.
This is significant - when we build scenarios we add in "milestones" or "signposts" you have to watch for, and one of them that signals a shift back to The Olde Worlde media is important.
This is such. One of the conditions in our "Pirate World" and "New Model Media" scenarios was that the regulatory regimes did not shift to the side of existing rightsholders (when we
did the work in 2008 the regulatory regime was fairly hands off, but its behaviour globally has been by and large increasingly "for" the rights of the rightsholder since then as country after country has become unwilling to lose the revenues from these large industries).
Thus, a 2 year refresh of our work would be to increase the probability of Olde Media doing better, and if Viacom wins this - with significant enough damages - it may put the kibosh on Privateer plays completely.
Arrr, so the winds be a-shiftin, Jim Lad. That'll send a shiver down the corporate timbers at Social Media Central.....but the pure Pirates, it seems, will be
forever with us.
