IT was only a matter of time, really. As expected, NBC has also joined the bandwagon of companies who are suing YouTube.
Here’s an excerpt from the Agence France-Presse story:
NBC and Viacom are backing Los Angeles newsman Robert Tur, who filed suit against YouTube in July for letting users post his video of trucker Reginald Denny being beaten during riots in Los Angeles in 1992 in Los Angeles riots.
“We are confident in our legal case, and more importantly in the tremendous benefit of giving creators a place to post and discuss their videos, whether it be an individual’s family video or the BBC’s decision to partner with us to host their content,” Google said on Monday in response to an AFP inquiry.
“We meet and exceed our responsibilities under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which balances an easy takedown process and provides complete safe harbor for hosts such as YouTube.”
The Viacom-NBC alliance, revealed in a US district court filing in California on Friday came as YouTube was hit with a class-action copyright violation suit filed by English football’s Premier League in New York State.
Will all this eventually spell the end of YouTube as we know it? Will YouTube become online video’s version of Napster?
I hope not. If we look at the history of music downloads, it wasn’t the music companies who resisted technology and fair pricing as long as they could which made the digital revolution possible. It was Apple’s iTunes, and, let’s face it, the fact that peer-to-peer networks and online piracy had become so popular among consumers that forced music companies to adapt to change.
For all the lip service music companies now pay to music downloads, let’s not forget that if they had their way, they’d charge us an arm and a leg, while restricting use of what we already paid for via Digital Rights Management.
So God forbid if the future of online video would ultimately depend on the whims of TV executives who long resisted the Internet and the advent of online content, but who are now pretending they were Internet believers from the very start.
June 13th, 2007 at 11:18 am
I think users should be more responsible with the content that they upload. Youtube is giving a free service and with the millions of video uploads, it would be very hard to administer and filter every video that is uploaded to their site.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
uh..uhh!! i haven’t even began youtubing yet..
May 29th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
oo nga ,dapt puro bold na lang hehehehehe
May 27th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
I believe that these TV companies want YouTube to charge viewers so they can have their cuts…
May 27th, 2007 at 7:56 am
hmmm, interesting
Traditional media (NBC & Viacom) versus New media (Google & YouTube).
Let the body count begin!!!!
May 16th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Ganging up…. interesting title. I believe it’s just another scam for a buck in hope of removing potential competition. YouTube offers free videos of all sort. Much of which is personal videos from the everyday Joe Smoe.
May 15th, 2007 at 3:49 am
Get it off your chest you’re overreacting!
May 14th, 2007 at 8:42 am
I really and honestly don’t think that Youtube will end in the near future, or even the future in general.
But you have to look at this situation from the perspective of all the employees, producers, actors, and companies who rely on their content for advertisement dollars…
If Youtube only had the sense, to implement an advertisement plan for their videos, then I think the companies would have been more willing.
But the fact is that Youtube has been slow to act, and that action only shows their lack of respect for intellectual property rights of owners.
I’m not against Youtube, I’m probably their most loyal fan, but in the end, Youtube should be more responsible, and Google as the parent company should definitely speed up on advertising for video content…
May 11th, 2007 at 2:16 am
I think not. YouTube would survive. Google’s management is onto it. It’s up to the lawyers (of YouTUbe/Google) how to go around with this.
And for the TV execs, they need to reconsider the net to survive.
May 8th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
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