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
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