CNet reports on what may be the stumbling block in Google and Viacom’s failure to reach an agreement regarding YouTube user data (which I’ve blogged on here and here):
Viacom wants to know which videos YouTube employees have watched and upl…

I wonder how will all of this play out. YouTube should finally settle their policies against copyright infringement and avoid hundreds of possible new lawsuits.

The main problems is that YT played “Big Brother” but gave in to pressure from a “bigger brother”.

In the end, as the new Internet tools become more and more powerful, the big media companies are loosing their voice and relevancy. Their reaction is one of fear and desperation so hopefully they are on their way out entirely and our voices will be OURS rather then through the filter of corporations and the collectivist ant-people.

Why do individual users allow themselves to be at the mercy of big corporate machines? Even ones that “Do No Evil”.

brian
http://www.them...rfulcompany.com

Q: So why didn’t you sue YouTube? Plenty of pirated stuff there. A: All the time. Simpsons are all over it. We had mixed feelings about it, but when it came down to it, we figured it was doing more to promote our shows than it was to hurt them.

(AllThingsD.com via AlleyInsider.com)

Therefore, in my view Viacom (Sumner Redstone) is taking the worst possible route: The recent court subpoena for YouTube’s viewing records is already a PR disaster. What Viacom should have done/be doing is force YouTube/Google into a deal where they get to place ads next to this “appropriated” content, and get a share of the fees plus free advertising for themselves (e.g. in the end frame).

But after you threaten and posture, you lose most leverage that you might have had to politely force a Win-Win. (BTW, I don’t hold Google entirely blameless in this, they could have done more to court the “old media” content providers, and might be monetizing YouTube a lot more efficiently than they have been doing so far. Which is to say, they haven’t.)

Better yet, they (Viacom) should have been the ones uploading the content THEMSELVES on YouTube, with their own link text showing, etc. (rather than create me-too sites that are slow to catch mind-share). If they were even marginally Web-savvy, they would have surfed the YouTube wave themselves, and would now be positioned a lot better than they are.

This way they could have LEVERAGED YouTube for their own purposes, sending people from there to their full-scale episodes. I said 2-3 years ago that I’d be willing to pay $1 for each of my favorite Daily Show episodes, etc. Why did Viacom fail to see that they could have had their own iTunes-like TV content distribution?!?

This copyright infringement thinking is pure scarcity mentality: It is one thing for an unknown author to not want their articles/books/etc. being used verbatim and without attribution somewhere else, but for a well-worn-in BRAND such as Viacom’s shows, that’s simply not the problem. Everybody already knows who created it and where it runs. (This is BTW the reason why YOU MUST BRAND!)

Most of the time as a business/author/etc. you have the exact opposite problem: That no one gives a dear about you or your ideas/products. We should all be so lucky as to have our (sufficiently branded) stuff ripped off…

In fact, you WANT your stuff to be saturating every nook and cranny. More power to you.

What you don’t want is to be perceived as anti-consumer, even worse as anti-fan(atic). Grave mistake. They are your best customers, your best evangelists. Working against them is madness.

Someone who goes to all of the trouble to record a TV show, convert it, and upload it in snippets to YouTube, snippets that they themselves CANNOT monetize, is by definition a fanatic.

Nurture the infected.

Many big (and small) companies are paying viral marketing consultants big bucks to try and get their ideas/wares to “infect” the public, often unsuccessfully. They are paying to try and find and infect what Malcom Gladwell in “The Tipping Point” called “the few”: The connectors and mavens that might push your business over the top. And it’s HARD. Often impossible.

BTW, SiliconAlleyInsider just reported Nielsen Ratings that while the average American watches 120+ hours of TV a month, Web video accounts for less than 3 hours a month. So Viacom should be using YouTube and similar means of free distribution to get a greater share of the 120 hours…

Rather than suing while sucking air.

On the other hand, Viacom did set out to break the trust that users had established with Google. I think this is more evil. It is Viacom who originated this evil action, not Google.

Posts like this are delusional and bratty — they reflect a baffling ignorance of the fact you’re using someone else’s service. If you choose to use that service, fine — just don’t be stupid. If you use the service and you’re not stupid — i.e., you don’t use it to upload or watch essentially stolen material — then you’ve nothing to worry about. If you did, well, you should’ve known better.

What did you think? That the world would sit idly by while millions of Google users stole its stuff and distributed it for free? Isn’t that a little … well, just plain stupid?

I also employ the same (or nearly the same) user ID all over the web. It would be rather simple for anyone to google my user ID from youtube and quickly follow the online trail to my door … literally.

Play games at harryballs.com.

Hee is one of the links:

http://www.grok...080704201419392

After calling someone a loser to posting a question on FF and everyone taking it as some type of rumor and miss pronouncing my last name I have some gal to post without doing even the basic research..

You will find in the trial proceedings that quite the opposite in that Google was fighting for users privacy…

Now do the damn basic research, please! Your writing has so much merit when its backed up by basic research.

For a company that claims to not be “evil,” (Defined by whatever Mr. Brin says fits that nebulous standard) Google does evil things. They have the highest regard for using others IP without compensation under the theory of “if I use it, I shouldn’t pay, while attacking others who dare to use their IP. The Viacom case is an attempt by Google to evade what they are doing- making money from others, by tarring the other side as the privacy bad guy. For Viacom, how else do they prove their damages?