People posting copyright material on YouTube shouldn't be surprised if the company makes no effort to protect them in a copyright battle. The video-sharing site may hand over information on those who post video clips of movies and TV shows if they're accused of copyright infringement, something perhaps not well known by those who do so.
Robert Tur, a Los Angeles-based journalist who recorded scenes of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, filed suit against YouTube in July after seeing numerous clips of his video on the site. In a letter to Tur, YouTube attorneys told Tur that he should instead go after the person who posted the video, according to Tur's attorney, Francis Pizzulli.
"Mr. Tur was advised that...he could file a lawsuit against the YouTube user," Pizzulli said. "Mr. Tur was informed that it was YouTube policy to provide copyright owners with user identification information (after receiving a valid subpoena)."
After receiving such a subpoena in another case last summer, YouTube turned over information belonging to Chris Moukarbel, who was being sued by Paramount Pictures for making a movie based on a script owned by the studio, according to a Friday story in MarketWatch.
A YouTube representative did not respond to an interview request from CNET News.com.
That YouTube will not cover up for accused lawbreakers shouldn't come as a surprise. The company has consistently said that it will obey the law and that it doesn't want copyright material on its site. That message is spelled out in YouTube's user agreement, as well as in a computer prompt that appears before a person uploads a clip.
The company also says it removes clips once notified of a copyright violation.
But YouTube owes much of its early fame to the unauthorized posting of movie and TV show clips.
YouTube first began attracting attention after clips from NBC TV's "Saturday Night Live," showed up on its site. Much was written about the show's appearance on YouTube and the subsequent demand by NBC that the clips be removed. Since then, slices of sporting events, news shows, feature films, soap operas and music videos have appeared on YouTube.
And the payoff came earlier this month. It was YouTube's 16 million monthly visitors that helped convince Google to pay $1.65 billion for the video-sharing site.
Since the sale, entertainment companies have begun making noise about their unwillingness to stand still while YouTube and others attract crowds with their properties. A group of Japanese media companies demanded Friday that YouTube remove more than 29,000 videos, and the company complied.
Universal Music Group said on Tuesday that it had filed lawsuits against video-sharing sites Grouper and Bolt.com for the alleged copyright violations on their sites. It remains unclear why Universal did not name YouTube in its suit.
YouTube has said it is working on new methods to help thwart copyright violations. The company has also said that it is not responsible for copyright violations; the users are.
source: http://news.com.com/2102-1030_3-6128252.html?tag=st.util.print 21oct2006
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG - message board) executives put some color around their decision to buy the video sharing phenom YouTube during its quarterly earnings call with analysts Thursday. Google announced earlier in the week it would pay $1.65 billion in stock for YouTube.
After reporting surprisingly strong third-quarter earnings, much of the discussion on the analyst call turned to the use of video advertising to ensure Google's future growth.
Google execs explained that they believe many products sell better if they can be shown in action on video. "This may sound like heresy for Google, but search isn't always the best way to learn things," says Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "If you want to learn a sport or learn how to build a house, video is the best way to do that."
Google VP of product management Jonathan Rosenberg was a little more specific. "One of our customers sells a guitar tuner, and it’s a cool product, but the only way to see how the product really works is to watch it being used, and the only way to do that is with video."
Asked why Google did not pay cash (instead of stock) for YouTube when the price of Google stock is still perceived as undervalued by the company and many analysts, Rosenberg said the stock transaction was a "one-off" and may not be repeated in future acquisitions.
Still, Rosenberg defended the use of stock. "We have been able to do some really interesting deals, and what we've found is that in our partnerships that work the best, both partners have a share in them."
Analysts also expressed concern over the copyright liability of some video content shown on its new YouTube property. Copyright protected video can easily be published at YouTube, but the company has fashioned its policies around the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to avoid legal trouble. (See Will Content Deals Save YouTube? below)
Google lawyers are apparently satisfied that YouTube has limited its exposure. "We did a lot of research on the company as part of due diligence and we were satisfied with what we saw," Rosenberg said.
Investors liked what they heard Thursday. In mid-day trading Friday Google shares were trading up $29.17 (6.85%) at $455.23. The shares had closed the day Thursday at $426.06, and Wednesday at $419.31.
Some analysts agree that Google has the best chance of anybody to make YouTube a big bread winner. "In our view, YouTube is in better hands with Google than with a big media company (difficult to sign content deals) or other Internet media company (less traffic monetization), so Google was in a position to be the highest bidder," writes Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. analyst Justin Post in a recent investor brief.
Hitwise says Google Video and YouTube collectively attracted 57 percent of all September visits to video sharing sites, while rival Yahoo Video won only about 5.6 percent of the visits.
Google reported a strong third quarter as revenues rose 10 percent from the previous quarter, fueled by steady international ad sales.
The search giant earned a third-quarter profit of $733 million, or $2.36 a diluted share, on revenues of $2.67 billion, compared to with earnings of $381 million, or $1.32 per diluted share, on revenues of $1.58 billion during the year-ago quarter.
Google's numbers came in well above Thomson analysts' expectations; they'd expected Google to earn $2.42 per share on $1.81 billion in revenue.
Google's ad business has grown 60 percent this year and is expected to grow 30 percent next year. Most of that revenue comes from search-based advertising. "Advertising continues to grow and this is likely just the beginning of what is likely to be a very transformational industry," Google CEO Eric Schmidt told investors Thursday.
source: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=107860&print=true 21oct2006
A couple of British politicians are up in arms about online videos of random acts of violence, and want "legal controls" to curb their spread. Yesterday, Commons leader Jack Straw argued for such measures to be added to the Violent Crimes Bill up for discussion next week.
He was responding to Labour representative Iain Wright, who had been shown a YouTube video where one of his constituents was kicked unconscious. "I am concerned that acts of violence and instances of happy-slapping recorded on mobile phones are transferred to the Web for wider consumption," Wright said. "I'm aware that several Hon[orable] Members have found and used the YouTube website," he continued, referring to a YouTube video where his Labour party compatriot Sion Simon spoofed Conservative leader David Cameron's messages.
Banning violent videos from YouTube, which Google bought for $1.65 billion only last week, isn't likely to have an impact on random violence anywere. The whole issue smells of vote-fishing, and it might be a better idea to use those videos to catch happy-slapping punks. That sort of thing has been done before, and can be done again. As long as there are stupid kids, there will be a way to catch them doing stupid stuff.
Wright and Straw's anti-video crusade also smacks of the stateside shenanigans of the Parents Television Council (PTC) that floods the FCC with complaints whenever something it deems objectionable crosses the airwaves. Parental guidance isn't enough for this group, which prefers to get the authorities involved at the first hint of objectionable content. And if Britain passes some sort of law against violent videos published online, how does the government expect to enforce it? Again, it's much ado about nothing, but the British media is lapping it up.
source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061020-8043.html 21oct2006
Independent website 101greatgoals.blogspot.com has been warned not to show footage of FA Premiership goals on the video website YouTube.
NetResult , which is a firm monitoring the internet on behalf of the Premier League, emailed a warning to the website and told them it was "infringing" Premier League copyright.
Links from 101greatgoals to YouTube are believed to have been disabled by YouTube itself but other links to Premiership goals were still available.
This follows the video-sharing service YouTube wiping nearly 30,000 files from its website after Japanese media companies said their copyright was also being infringed.
YouTube, which had been launched in February 2005 shows about 100 million clips per day and mostly hosts homemade videos, however, it also contains clips of copyrighted material. It was recently bought by search giant Google for $1.65bn (£883m).
YouTube has recently signed distribution deals with media groups including Universal Music Group, Warner Music and CBS.
source: http://www.enjoyfrance.com/sport/news/1634/ 21oct2006
Can YouTube Inc. forge a new business model with content partnerships to avoid the litigation that took down Napster, Kazaa , and others?
YouTube says it's delivering video to more than 100 million sets of eyeballs and adding 65,000 new videos to its hosting servers every day. But as with its peers in the P2P music world, it's easy for users to upload copyright-protected content to the YouTube site.
Before its $1.65 billion acquisition by Google was announced Monday afternoon, YouTube was clearly aware of the legal danger in that, and made moves to contain it.
Both Google and YouTube have been working diligently to form content hosting agreements with some of the largest media companies in the world, and with success. With all those eyeballs at stake, major media appears to be choosing to play ball instead of fight.
Monday morning, Sony Corp., CBS, and Universal Music Group announced new content agreements with YouTube. NBC signed a similar deal with YouTube in June. Warner Music Group and Sony announced separate agreements with Google Monday.
Those deals offer specific cover for a certain amount of content, but have symbolic value too. “We've found that doing deals with content owners makes a big difference in that it opens a steady and trusted dialogue between partners,” said CTO Suranga Chandratillake of the video search site Blinkx.
(Blinkx had its own news Monday. The firm agreed to provide its video search services on some Microsoft Corp. MSN properties.)
“Having said that, the deals also limit YouTube's activity -- they will have really aggressively to ensure that there's no illegal content from their partners,” Chandratillake says.
Still, while the media giants own a lot of content, they don’t own it all. Smaller content owners could easily try their luck in court against YouTube.
One Stanford Law professor who specializes in digital copyright law thinks YouTube is probably safe. “Because they don't post their own content, they will not be liable for copyright infringement as long as they have a mechanism for taking down content when the content owners complain,” writes professor Mark Lemley in an email to Light Reading.
Accordingly, YouTube announced this summer it will provide content owners with the tools to easily identify and remove pirated audio or video from the YouTube site. Alternatively, content owners will be given tools to authorize and place ads around their content at the YouTube site.
“The relevant statute is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. sec. 512,” Lemley adds. Section 512 was built onto the copyright law in 1998 to limit the liability of Internet sites in circumstances where they merely act as a data conduit, transmitting digital information from one point on a network to another at someone else’s request,” as the U.S. Copyright Office puts it at its Website.
But the statute goes further. Section 512 even protects sites like YouTube that may unwittingly host pirated content. Again, from the Copyright Office site: “Under the knowledge standard, a service provider is eligible for the limitation on liability only if it does not have actual knowledge of the infringement, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent, or upon gaining such knowledge or awareness, responds expeditiously to take the material down or block access to it.”
Blinkx’s Chandratillake agrees that YouTube may not have as many legal troubles in its future as some have speculated. “I think the copyright issue has been overblown -- these things take a long time to fight and, with the combined traffic and momentum of Google and YouTube, they could build a legitimate business while things were sorted out in the courts.”
source: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=106925&print=true 21oct2006
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