Professional Important Updates on YouTube and Video Policy

What a week.  Blink and a dozen big Internet video events fly by.

Fortunately, Demetri Martin on The Daily Show summarizes some of the big issues with the Google/Viacom battle in his Professional Important News segment....

Of course, ha ha, there is no shortage of irony in the clip or on the Web.  Thus:

Speaking of Viacom...

...their GC interestingly has a "why we sued YouTube" op-ed in today's Washington Post.  Cynthia Brumfield at IP Democracy analyzes the piece and nudges Viacom for not getting their case out in the court of public opinion earlier (UPDATE:  See Cynthia's comment below that clarifies her perspective).

Sure, but it takes two to tango and Google could sure do a heck of a lot more to be proactive in explaining their vision for what is right, fair and mutually beneficial to content owners, distributors and consumers.  I'd look for an op-ed response from Google soon. Then, we'll see if they take the offensive in the perceptional fight. 

(BTW, we never said it would be easy and openly hoped that Google would have taken the online video policy leadership mantle and more once they singled their intention to buy YouTube.)

The venue for the Viacom op-ed is hopefully not lost on any readers of this blog.  Clearly, the suit not only has duel purpose of a legal action and a negotiating tool, but it also could help drive debate over legislative remedies for copyright in a new media era.

Of course, there was also the NBC Universal/News Corp Newco announcement this week of a site that will eventually provide a home for traditional media Internet video and another way for ad dollars to be made online.  Since no big online joint venture between big media companies has ever worked before, there was naturally a good amount of skepticism.  Including from Wall Street analysts.  But, other objective folks think that the broadcast guys have learned from the mistakes of the record labels and movie studios.

Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee wonders if the delays in implementation of YouTube's copyright filters and their legal issues are a coincidence.   Somewhere, Mark Cuban is giggling.

Thanks to travel and real work, I haven't had a chance to blog yet about the very good Video on the Net conference and the panel that I moderated way back ages ago on Monday.  Thanks to Patrick Ross of PFF, Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine, blip.tv COO Dina Kaplan, K&L Gates attorney Marty Stern and the Distributed Computing Industry Association's Christopher Levy for being great panelists.  You all got a lot of compliments from folks after the gig.  Patrick Ross blogged about the panel here.

Comments

[Cynthia Brumfield]

Sean,

You're dead on when you say that the venue for Viacom's piece (The Washington Post) was strategically chosen.

But to clarify, I'm not chiding Viacom for failing to get their views out in the court of public opinion sooner. The opposite: I'm suggesting that they didn't make their case well enough in the court of law to begin with. If their initial legal complaint had more specificity about the DMCA and how it doesn't apply to Google, they might have had a stronger legal case going-in.

Their initial legal complaint was very mushy - maybe intentionally so as a matter of litigation strategy.

Now they seem to be making a stronger case, but in the court of public opinion.

[Sean Garrett]

Thanks, Cynthia. The clarification is much appreciated. If anything, all these questions over what the DMCA is or isn't or how opaque or specific one should be in discussing it, only suggests that "V v. G" is only the first front in a long battle. And, this isn't lost on the principle participants.

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[Yulia]

Heh, I heard this rumour a few mohtns ago too. As far as I know, there's no chance of a takeover in the near future. Not from Viacom at least, but probably not from anyone.

[Aderonildo]

My bet is that this can't be resolved bascuee its just too hard of a problem. Unlike music, with video there are so many content owners and rights are shared and split in so many complicated ways, it would be very difficult for viacom to make a blanket deal bascuee they still owe their partners who often own shares of or points in a property. This means that YouTube will have to become much more involved in what gets posted, whether they have the right to show it, and who to report it too. This is a massive undertaking that cannot be totally automated. I still believe some massive lawsuits that Google cant win, are in the offing.