Sue you, YouTube
YouTube, a popular video sharing site is all over the news. After youtube.comhas been purchased bygoogle.com setting up a record milestone of $1.65 billion in stock in the developing saga of Bubble 2.0, the real issues started emerging, with a line of rights-holders ready to sue forming in front of the doors of video sharing site.From the early jokes made on Comedy Central's Colbert report, the cue of potential suers includes Universal Music, Bayern Munich, FA Premier League, TimeWarnerand even individuals.
Most of these are still in phase of verbal threats being laid out in public and can be seen as a tactic to cash in the best deal - with expectations and claims ranging in tens of millions. Universal chief executive Doug Morris, is most recent quoted executive threating YouTube.
"The poster child for (user-generated media) sites are MySpace and YouTube," said Morris, according to a transcript obtained by Reuters. "We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars."The quote made for The Guardian by Dick Parsons, the chairman and chief executive of Time Warner is the most illustrative:
"You can assume we're in negotiations with YouTube and that those negotiations will be kicked up to the Google level in the hope that we can get to some acceptable position."Much quoted Mark Cuban's post based on the 'anonymous insider' claims the following:
- "In the months preceding the sale of YouTube the complaints from copyright owners began to mount at a ferocious pace"
- Nearly 500 million of the 1.65 billion purchase price is not being disbursed to shareholders but instead held in escrow - to pay for future settlements and legal costsA
- YouTube approached the major media players and negotiated some deals in cash prior to the deal - buying a '6 months of piece' while Google comes up with tools to manage copyright issues in future
- The 'deals' were made as investment because rights-holders seem to be reluctant to share revenue with their "talent" which they would have to do if the income was labeled licensing
- In the meantime media owners continued suing other smaller user generated sites, effectively protecting Google from competition
At the moment the only defense is according to Digital Millenium Copyright Act , Section 512 a so called Safe Harbor and standard conventions of Fair use -- a weak position if you want to make money.
Finally, after being subpoenaed by Viacom, Paramount,YouTube disclosed the identity of user that uploaded 12 minute video based on the Oliver Stone's "Twin towers". The user, artist Chris Moukarbel web site says:
"Artist Chris Moukarbel is being sued by Paramount for allegedly using bootleg scripts of Oliver Stone’s 9/11 film - due to be released this August - to make a “poor-quality copy” and post it on the Internet. The artist is currently restrained from showing or distributing the work “World Trade Center 2006”."It might be just an isolated case not worth fighting from the perspective of YouTube legal.
YouTube according to various statistics is still in rapid growth. Official fact sheet states 100 million videos served, and 65.000 new ones uploaded daily and quotesNielsen Netratings report to have 20 million uniques.
There might be 2 different models that are not able to co-habitate in the same space and the solution might very well be in differentiating the Social network and Content delivery platforms. More in detail that later.
And last, Utube, company selling used tube machinery is suing for increased cost of operating their website utube.com resulting from increased levels of traffic by strayed audience in search of the video youtube - not the tube 'u-tube'.
They just don't know how to convert eyeballs to tubes...
