Filed under: Copyright Issue, Copywriting, Google, Integrity, Intellectual Property, Legal Issues, Viral Videos, YouTube

YouTube has to fork over viewer records to plaintiff Viacom as a result of the recent law suit regarding copyright issues.  I understand Viacom’s desire for that, but I disagree with the ruling.

The cool thing is that Google - YouTube’s parent company - has successfully negotiated with Viacom to scrub and data that can be used to identify users.  Names and IP addresses are gone.

So, it’s likely, regarding privacy, the problem’s over in this particular case.

But there are two buts. Read more…

No Comments » Posted on July 16th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Aggregation, Blowback, Brand Promotion, Brand Protection, Case Studies, Citizen Generated Media, Content Filtering, Content Management Solution, Content Management System, Controversial Marketing, Copyright Issue, Copywriting, Corporate Responsibility, Crisis Management, Google, Google YouTube, Honesty, Information Technology, Integrity, Intellectual Property, Internet Culture, Internet Strategy, Legal Issues, New Media Strategy, New Technology, Online Brand Protection, Peer-to-Peer, Technology, Television, Video Over IP, Viral Advertising, Viral Marketing, Viral Media, Viral Propagation, Viral Videos, Web Strategy, YouTube, YouTube Marketing

The current legal battle between Viacom and Google/YouTube is going to have significant ramifications beyond today’s headlines.  It’s getting surprisingly little play amongst much of the social media digerati, but it’s something we all need to be aware of.

The lawsuit and the proceedings around it are truly a sign of the times.  It’s a direct outgrowth of what we’ve been emerging via the internet over the past several years.  Sites such as YouTube have essentially become free communicative vehicles to not only view, but  share and alter video productions of all types.  The concept of “share” is important because most of us use it.  But in reality, it is a nice way of saying “distribute”.  And from distribute comes distribution - a fundamental with tremendous legal ramifications.

Alter is a tough one too.  The “mash-ups” that many in social media and digital marketing talk of enthusiastically can be as problematic.  As, I guess, it should be.  At least in some cases.  An artist creates an original piece of work.  Then distributes it, usually netting some sort of financial gain.  Others take it, and now because of new tools can alter it and redistribute it.  Many times this new process leads to lost potential revenue for the original artist. Read more…

2 Comments » Posted on July 11th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Blowback, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, Case Studies, Citizen Media, Content Filtering, Content Management System, Controversial Marketing, Copywriting, Corporate Partnering, Corporate Responsibility, Google, Google YouTube, Honesty, Industry Reputation, Influence, Information Technology, Intellectual Property, Invasion of Privacy, Legal Issues, News Organization, Online Applications, Online Brand Protection, Online Copywriting, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Online Video, Personal Privacy, Personal Responsibility, Privacy

U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton may have opened up a Pandora’s box.

Last year, Viacom, the owner of  such major cable networks as Black Entertainment Television, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon, sued YouTube and Google because YouTube, through it’s uploading system, was allowing it users to upload Viacom copyrighted videos.  YouTube was profiting from this as it increased its audience and, thus, advertising revenue.  Viacom was, in turn, losing online audience and potential revenue.  It saw itself, legitimately in my mind, as a content provider for YouTube, without receiving compensation.

YouTube immediately began scouring its databases and removing copyrighted video from Viacom. But considering the amount of videos that are uploaded - every hour on the clock, 780 hours of video are sent to YouTube’s servers - the task of finding and identifying copyrighted material is daunting.  A lot can get by the YouTube’s regulators, so to speak.

So the lawsuit stayed, with Viacom demanding access to YouTube’s database of user info.  The database is larger that that of the Library of Congress mind you.

YouTube’s database essentially contains four pieces of info:  the user’s unique login ID, their IP address, the time frame that the video was watched, and the video itself.  Usually, a login ID and an IP address can’t be used to identify an individual, but “usually” is a very inexact word.

Viacom is saying that they aren’t doing this to go after individuals.  They’re not doing this to nail someone who uploaded last night’s The Daily Show.  I believe them, at least for now.  But that doesn’t mean that they keep to that forever.

It makes no sense for them to try to use this data to sue people who have been uploading copyrighted videos at this juncture.  The ‘YouTube culture’ is one that has permitted this to happen and Viacom needs to work to change that culture over a year or two.

Viacom is saying that it wants to gauge the popularity of its copyrighted material.  Again, that makes sense.  We are talking revenue generating material that, while on YouTube, ins not directly generating measurable video.

There is some good news here.  Google, while not appealing, has asked Viacom to give them time to erase user names and IP addresses.  Viacom is open to the idea.

That’s great.  But that’s only this case.   You can be that this is opening a can of worms.

I’ll be investigating this further.  Stay tuned.

No Comments » Posted on July 6th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC, Google, Robert Scoble, Twitter

Twitter’s become one of my favorite places to hang out when I’m online. But it’s become an increasingly frustrating place to be as there’s always something the matter with it. Part of it is down, the whole thing is down. Whatever.

This will eventually lead to a discussion as to whether Twitter will be able to maintain itself overtime or if it’s technical issues will cause enough problems for the service that it never creates the sense of critical mass that it may need to take it to the next level.

Scoble has a interesting take on Twitter’s viability. He says that the company’s lack of having a business model is unimportant at this point. In fact, he’s quite strong in his opinion.

In it he compares Twitter to Google of the late 1990’s. Google integrated itself into our lives and now is dominating the Internet.But I disagree. While I think that Twitter will be able to sustain itself, there are several differences between Google then and Twitter now.

No barrier to entry
All one has to do is head to google.com, plug in a term, and you’d get results. Click through and you were on your way. With Twitter, you have to sign up. And it can take weeks to figure out what it’s about. How to grow.

Amount of users
Googles users (or at least user sessions) went from thousands to millions to billions practically overnight. Twitter has less than 1,000,000 registered users.

User experience
In addition to the “in and out” aspect of Google, Google’s service is hardly ever down. Not so with Twitter. I’m starting to think that upside down birds and whales are my new best friends on Twitter. It’s happening to often and it may affect user loyalty.

Life integration
As much as the Internet was used by people in 1998-9, today it is that much more. The internet is no longer an essential tool, it’s part of people’s lifestyle. Twitter is one of may aspects of that and people will look to other similar services if it’s faltering, because…

Patience
may be a virtue, but its not as common as it used to be.

No Comments » Posted on July 1st, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC, Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Google, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Google Applications, Google Apps, Google Apps Premier, Google Gears, Google Juice, Google PageRank, Measurements, Open Kimono

So Google launched Ad Planner yesterday at an Advertising Research Foundation event in New York City. Ad Planner is an online analytical tool that gives advertisers deep information on which sites their targeted audience is visiting. Designed to make media buying more efficient, it puts Google in direct competition with comScore and Nielsen Online. A key difference here is that Ad Planner is free.

Ad Planner allows users to enter demographics of target audiences along with potential sites on which to advertise into its system.  The system then, presumably through data gleaned from web servers, will then spit out sites that an advertiser should consider for a media plan.  It would seem that it is an easy to use, inexpensive system to use.

Subscription fees from survey based services such as comScore and Nielsen can be exorbitant.  This further democratizes the web.

But free can come with a cost and that’s what others are worried about.

Google, in this capacity, may not be acting as an independently-owned third party delivering unbiased information.  There’s always a chance that the system may be tweaked to produce results that favor Google-owned property.  And, and the launch yesterday, Google product manager told a questioner that Google will get its data from a “fusion” of different data sources.  A follow up question as to whether or not Google will accept external audits was left unanswered.

That’s not a great sign.  But Google is now powerful enough that they can get away with not answering that while it brings in users.  Users like, quite frankly, me.

Thus is the nature of the web.

No Comments » Posted on June 26th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

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