Viacom Demands YouTube Remove Videos

AlHunt writes "According to the folks at PCWorld Viacom has publicly scolded YouTube for continuing to host throngs of Viacom videos without permission. They are demanding that over 100,000 of its clips be removed from the site. This includes content from Comedy Central (no more Daily Show), MTV, Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures, and VH1. YouTube has acknowledged receiving a DMCA request from Viacom, and the article notes what a dire precedent this could be if Google can't reach an agreement with Viacom and its fellow IP holders."

A Series of Tubes....

What use are the internets without my daily fix of Stewart and Colbert?

Who didn't see this coming

You need to make deals with copywright holders to show/sell their product online. The hard part is negotiating deals with everyone, not just having a site that supports video.

You don't.

Actually you don't. The DMCA says that the user that upload the videos are the ones who may be breaching copyright. Online Service Providers such as YouTube have safe harbour from copyright liability provided that they remove content if and when they receive a take down notice from the copyright holder. What YouTube are doing is perfectly legal as it is.

Reaching agreement with the big media companies might make reduce YouTube's workload and reduce news stories such as this one. But it's absolutely not necessary.

Re:You don't.

There are tens of thousands of videos on the site. How is Google supposed to police them all? Removing existing clips is about the best they can do, and maybe banning a user who uploaded copyrighted content, to address your reupload thing. I suppose they could filter certain titles like 'Daily Show' but then the uploader could use 'Daily_show' instead. It'd be pretty hard to keep it all off, without a full time staff of video reviewers.

Re:You don't.

The fault does not lie with Google. They are doing nothing more than providing a service where people can upload video. Are you going to blame the ISPs next because they facilitate copyright infringement, too, by allowing people to upload that material in the first place? Perhaps the people who programmed Bittorrent, too, since people use that for piracy? And the computer manufacturers, without which none of this would happen? Where does the blame chain end?

The users who upload copyrighted material are the ONLY ones at fault. That's it. There is nothing besides that.

To use your own analogies, Ford sells cars, but is in no way responsible for what their owners do with them. SmithKlein sells drugs, but isn't responsible if people OD on them.

Just because people abuse a system doesn't make it the system owners fault.

Re:You don't.

The fault does not lie with Google. They are doing nothing more than providing a service where people can upload video.
I recall Napster tried that defence. Didn't work very well.

The difference is, I think, that Napster's main purpose was to distribute copyrighted music; non-copyrighted stuff was the exception not the rule. YouTube's main purpose is to distribute bad karaoke videos and other things in the same vein, but happens to have people posting copyrighted material.

Bad for Viacom

Honestly, the reason I watch the Colbert Report is Youtube. If I hadn't seen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, I might not watch the show. I mean, they should complain about full episodes, but if there's 3 minutes of Colbert or Stewart on there, it's just advertising to watch those shows.

Re:Bad for Viacom

But they don't stop to think: "Hey, someone liked this part of this program enough to go through the effort of editing our clip, and uploading the clip to let other people watch. His time wasn't free, and he deemed that our product had enough value that other people should also enjoy it. We aught to let those other people watch it, so they will be more inclined to watch our show live when they see it on their cable box, and those eyes will see our ads, too!"

I mean, it's one thing to upload a whole program to these sites, those videos should, and undoubtedly will be taken down as they are uploaded... A smart company, however, would KILL for advertising like this. It's free, it takes no effort beyond the initial investment whatsoever, and it's highly effective because it targets a niche market which is proven to enjoy your product. If anything, Viacom's stockholders aught to be lynching the management for not figuring out a way to make this phenomenon *more effective*, to establish more mindshare, to draw in more viewers, to up the ratings, and to make more money in the end!

Re:Bad for Viacom

Viacom IS Comedy Central. But you're right that lots of Comedy Central people seem to be savvy to this. When Colbert jested that Youtube owed him $400 million or whatever, he meant the opposite.

I thought so, too

Viacom has threatened YouTube before, and I remember hearing that the Comedy Central clips had gone back up. Here's the previous coverage from Slashdot,

YouTube Removes Comedy Central Clips Due to DMCA [slashdot.org]

YouTube Restores Comedy Central Clips [slashdot.org]

Apparently it wasn't as clear cut as I'd recalled, though, and Viacom never actually gave YouTube permission to put the clips back up, they were simply interested in reaching an agreement ($$$). Apparently the recent threats came about because the talks fell through.

Since i know people are thinking it...

...part of me wants to say "fuck 'em"
because someone will re-upload those clips whether Viacom likes it or not.

OTOH, I understand why GooTube doesn't want to piss off the big players in the media industry & will eventually compromise in one way or another.

Drop them

Google should use the enormous power it wields. Tell Viacom they are being dropped immediately from any search results. Anything that references them or leads to any of their sites or properties, are effectively GONE. That's what I'd do, and Viacom would have no recourse, no legal action. Google doesn't HAVE to return search results for them. Then we'd find out how fast the fat little corporate piggies would squeal when the traffic and subsequent dollars they get from having visitors find them for whatever the myriad of reasons that they would be being searched for. Of course, Google won't do this, because, well, they're corporate screws now too. Sure would be nice though.

Viacom has rights

Viacom is just saying, "It's our content, give us what we want or you can't host it...pay to play suckers!!!". Fault them if you wish but they are well within their rights. Viacom is operating from a position of having the law behind them. Because of that, they get to dictate terms. If they don't like the offer they can tell YouTube to fuck off and die. Maybe the folks uploading the content are ultimately at fault for the copyright violations but YouTube has the responsibility for removing that material at Viacom's demand. Would you want your content out there for free if you could otherwise get paid for it?

Re:Viacom has rights

Absolutely, however GooTube is pretty good about removing material when asked to do so by copyright holders. The problem is that it keeps getting re-uploaded, and the DMCA doesn't (as far as I know) allow for blanket removal. That is, each instance of infringement must be included in the DMCA takedown request. So Viacom has to constantly monitor the site and send out the requests, and someone at Youtube has to take them down, one by one. Viacom can't say, "Please remove all Daily Show content," or, "Please remove all of our content." It just doesn't work that way.

This is one reason that negotiating a deal would be beneficial to both parties. There are many more users willing to upload content than Viacom employees working to search it out, or Youtube employees capable of removing it. The money lost in fighting the infringement is probably significant.

That said, as long as it continues to be (financially) worth it, Youtube will continue to host videos and will simply have to deal with the takedown notices. And Viacom (and other copyright holders) will have to continue to monitor these sites for infringing content.

Dear Viacom

Our business model is to host content made by others and become fabulously wealthy. If you don't allow us to freely show the material you've paid for our bottom line will be negatively impacted. Please reconsider, for at least as long as it takes to sell our Google stock.

Sincerely,

YouTube

Re:Dear Viacom

Dear Youtube,

Our business model is to provide content which is trivially easy for people to duplicate and distribute, but to sue anyone who actually does that. You are next on our hit list.

Plan A was to take control of all the hardware in the world away from its rightful owners, but that didn't work out so well. This has left us with no alternative but to sue you and everyone else.

Sincerely,

Viacom

Viacom...

fucking it up for the rest of us since 1971 (or 2005, depending on how you want to judge these things).

Rutube?

If allofmp3 is a guide, maybe we need rutube.ru. Eh, dot com. Eh, dot whatever.

Google vs. Viacom...

...Cagematch to the death! Two shall enter, one will leave!

Who needs YouTube to get The Daily Show

With about 10 lines of perl you can rip down all of The Daily Show clips from the akamai servers

Google usually publishes DMCA complaints

I wonder if the complaint will ever show up in the Chilling Effects [chillingeffects.org] clearinghouse list?

'Dire Precedent' ?

Right, because never before have we confronted a case where one party is looking to make easy money off of another party's work without permission under the guise of being hip rebels. Puh-leeease.

No more lazy man's BitTorrent

This just means that you have to find and download a high quality version of the show that you want to watch. You can still get it for free, but you have to work a very little for it. It will only stop piracy committed by the very lazy or very stupid.

This move helps keep YouTube pure. Only people who take a picture of themselves everyday for years will be permitted to post content. Until the RIAA/MPAA copyrights their faces. You thought that we would only get mandatory full body coverings with a totalitarian Islamic government. Wait until you have to wear a burqa to avoid copyright violations.

They better shape up

or google will buy them and even worse refuse to deploy golden parachutes to the terminated executive team

The takedown is already happening...

Lots of content disappeared yesterday. A lot of it was Viacom stuff. I'm fully expecting more of my favorites to come up with "content removed" notices.

Viacom has been known for its actions in the past. For example: yanking Ren & Stimpy from its creators because Viacom wanted more control. This is par for the course with these folks.

Viacom is being stupid

Short clips of their programs are just free advertising and add to the popularity of the shows. I can understand wanting to eliminate whole episodes, however.

The Essence of YouTube

Is unmanaged user uploads.

Did anyone not see a potential problem with this?

They're going to start revenue sharing

Google mentioned recently that they will start revenue sharing for content providers, ie posters, on youtube.

If all it takes to get paid is to copy clips off of tv and then post them on youtube, don't you see a problem? What viacom needs to do is ban all viacom content and then post it themselves, and get the revenue.

-Joejoejoejoe

The ugly truth

Viacom owns the material and they can do what they want with it. Youtube didn't pay to produce it so they have no right to benefit financially from it. They may not charge to watch the videos but they use them to create value for the company. Viacom may actually want to leave the clips on Youtube but I'm guessing their lawyers advised that it sets a dangerous president. If they allow the clips they may loose control of the shows themselves. In some ways this is up to the court system and where they draw the line. Viacom can provide them with clips but it gets dicey when some one other than Viacom posts the clips without Viacom's permission. Whoever puts the money into producing the material should control it. If you make something it belongs to you unless you give or sell the rights to some one else. That isn't copyright that's been true for roughly twelve thousands years or more.

Re:The ugly truth

it sets a dangerous president

So true. We already have a stupid President, don't want a dangerous one now, do we? Oh wait...

the sad part is

Viacomm is too f*ing stupid to realize they get a massive ratings boost from You Tube. Both Colbert and Stewart not only regularly mention the site, they obviously use it for show content.

The Internet is the problem

Viacom's action could establish a precedent and have serious consequences for YouTube ...

There may be consequences for youtube but perhaps the proverbial cat is out of the figurative bag. The real problem here is that the Internet is such an effective and efficient distribution system. I find myself watching more and more news content on youtube simply because it's there when I want it. I don't have to read a program guide or program a TV. I don't even have to own a TV.

If what happened after Napster [wikipedia.org] (as a file-sharing service) was shut-down is any indication, the forces of supply and demand combined with the ubiquity and amorphous characteristics of the Internet are unstoppable, even if youtube were shut down tomorrow, you could expect to see the Daily Show popping up more prevalently on P2P, BitTorrent, or some obscure Russian site.

And if the failure of all those DMCA P2P lawsuits to stop file-sharing from reaching an all-time high is any indication of the world in which we live, people are going to get the content one way or another, no matter what the copyright holders or the law says. All moral judgments aside, that just a fact based in reality.

Legal videos were erroniously taken down as well

It looks like Viacom automated their DMCA complaints, and included several videos in their DMCA notifications that they clearly don't hold the copyright to. One of the affected users also writes a Harvard law blog, and posted about it [harvard.edu].

Gone

Looks like YouTube has responded, [sfgate.com] and is taking everything down. Not a big surprise

Thank goodness NBC has good sense

NBC has been using YouTube to their advantage to drum up interest in their shows. Recent clips that come to mind are Lazy Sunday and D*** In a Box from SNL:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=NBC [youtube.com]

Viacom should be taking notes.

PSS (Pretty Simple Solution)

...and it's going to happen, because, well.. we always have.

Find a new, more neutral video transport method.

Could someone make a YT web "site" based on the Bittorrent protocol?

Viacom is the ones with the crappy keyboards

I'm pretty sure it's them I can blame carpel tunnel on.

For whom the bell tolls

Hopefully at some point traditional media catches up with modern technology and the iPod generation.

I for one am disappointed in Viacom's stance and hope the masses show their distaste. At least now I can throw Viacom into the same boat as Clear Channel (Shitty products with repetitive advertising) for alienating their consumers.

I say fuck 'em and I will now tune to something else when I DO have a chance to watch TV. Why would I want to catch-up on something I may have missed when I COULD impact their (Viacom) bottom line and the ever important advertisers (who force feed crappy products made in China down our throats via repetition).

On the other hand...

ComedyCentral's website now seems to be better about uploading new Daily Show and Colbert Report clips quickly, and they've recently started offering embedding and better clip linking capabilities. So it's not like they're telling fans to just go fuck themselves entirely.

Why doesnt Youtube go the licensing route?

I mean, I'm sure that it could reach some sort of agreement with the content owners. Keep the old system but in addition have high quality licensed streaming of various shows (full shows, not clips). Ten dollars a month to watch the material, and those that want freebie watching can do so with commercials spliced into the shows. There are tons of variations that could be implemented, so what's in the way?

Focus please !

Youtube is not a good place for TV episodes (which I think are legitimate to leak on the internet as 99% of the planet cannot get them from the air). Limited resolution, no easy download.

Focus, fellow pirates. Bittorrent is the place to put TV episodes.

The problem is lobbying, not suing

The real problem is not the fact that many companies want their copyrights protected within the bounds of the law. That is okay, and even welcome as long as the goal of copyright -- rewarding creativity and fostering more of it -- is achieved by the law.

Rather, the problem is the abuse of the copyright laws (and legislature in general) that is done by some of the corporate copyright holders. The laws are constantly extended for longer and longer period in many countries, often by pressure from countries like the US, where bribing legislature is a legit business; this happens in violation of the reason for which the said laws exist. This is, of course, only possible because politicians are corrupt and largely unchecked, and succumb to bribes, in this case, from the media and entertainment companies.

The said companies have generated enormous wealth via the copyright monopoly, and have strong interest to use this wealth to do two things -- the first is to extend their monopoly power over existing works, and the second is to create bareers to entry for new players. That unfortunately includes players with new business models and technologies.

So, until there is strong enough pressure on politicos from all of us for fairer laws regarding copyright so that the damned bribed assholes that vote the laws get a clue and take action, the laws will get more draconian, and the abuses more egregious. Just look at Sweden and their pirate party.

Meanwhile on Google-1

Larry Page: Who the fuck is Viacom ?
Sergey Brin: I dunno. Hey, would you pass me the Grey Poupon ?

So what?

Really, so what? It's going to be a pain for YouTube to track down all the offending posts. And I really prefer watching the daily show without commercial interruption. But we somehow managed to get through life before youtube, and even before the internet. We have VCRs and now TiVo, etc. We can already watch this content whenever we want. There are more important things in life anyway.

I used to use tv.yahoo.com to see if there's anything good on TV to watch at the moment. But they screwed that up by switching from a sane HTML table format to a flash-based site and I haven't been able to find a decent replacement. So, on those rare occasions when I want to watch TV, I look at the printed tv guide that comes with the newspaper. Not that hard really, takes the same amount of time as waiting for a website to load.

The more "pirated" content these big corporations get pulled from the mainstream view, the more the mainstream will look to other sources of entertainment. Indie artists and content creators will benefit. Sounds good to me!

My video was removed unfairly

One of my posted videos, "Cheap Beer in Montréal" was removed based on a Viacom complaint yesterday. The problem with the situation is that I shot the video myself and the only people in it are my friends. There is no Viacom content in it whatsoever. In effect, they have stifled my right to have others access material which holds my own copyright.

What method did Viacom use to specify which videos violate their copyright? Is there no penalty for false accusation? Is it possible that Viacom targetted videos that are not their own in order to harass and intimidate YouTube? Is it possible that they did this in order to overwhelm he copyright complaints department of YouTube?

Perplexing

While I suppose they may be concerned about people using this instead of subscribing to pay networks, I am skeptical about viacom losing money over having material on youtube that is avialable over its networks. Are they trying to censor this materual from the internet instead? Perhaps Viacom was really concerned about money, they would, it seems instead demand that the videos remained avialable on youtube, but instead the advertising remain intact. Although, I can see why they would want to keep the material from pay networks off Google, for fear it may keep people from subscribing to the pay networks, but I am skeptical this is happening, perhaps them calling so much attention to it perhaps is making it worse by putting the idea into peoples minds that they can use youtube for this purpose. Part of the problem, I think is the reluctance for them to provide their materials available online from viacom services legitimately through a pay download service (perhaps included at no additional cost with a subscription to the cable networks). Obviously the demand is there, and if viacom isnt going to fill the need, people will find other ways to do it. I think one solution for Viacom on this would be to provide a subscription service including with the cable network subscription, or as an option seperately, whereby all of its videos are avialable online for download.

How does the DMCA apply?

YouTube has acknowledged receiving a DMCA request from Viacom

Does the DMCA apply here, as opposed to good old copyright law? The only part of the DMCA that I've been told about is the part prohibiting the circumention of encryption on copyrighted works... is youtube allegedly guilty of such, or is there another part of the DMCA that I haven't picked up on?

A chain of dominoes

1. YouTube removes all of Viacom's copyrighted content. 2. Ratings for all of Viacom's programming "mysteriously" drop. 3. Viacom does research to determine why; ratings continue to drop. 4. Viacom attempts to create an Internet portal. Everything is pay-per-view and non-embeddable. 5. Viacom's ratings continue to drop "inexplicably"; Viacom sues Tivo....

It's all about Greed.

Remember when AOL was the biggist portal - and Viacom thought they could monetize that by refusing to let AOL customers visit MTV.com? Viacom threatened to block all AOL customers, unless AOL paid Viacom an "access fee" to allow AOL customers in. Viacom just wants all of the money. They want all of thier content to be "pay per view". They know it would be stupid to keep thier content off YouTube. They're just framing the negotions.

Viacom?

Viacom? Who do they think they are, anyway? They should just stick to making erectal disfunction medication.

Viacom and YouTube

I belive this is wrong that viacom is going after youtube. Since youtube doesn't influence what is posted on there site I belive viacom should be going after the users that post it. Since it's them who ripped the show(s) from the tv and posted it on the site.

Good Riddance

I don't watch TV anymore. I haven't done that for at least 6 months now. All I watch for entertainment is Youtube, and the linked clips on Digg.

If Viacom doesn't want me to watch their shows, good riddance. There's lots of other companies that appreciate the free publicity for their shows.

Yeah, Colbert may be funny, but I think I'll live on without him.

and so

Google finally begins to question the decision to buy youtube.

Actually, is this problem even a concern to google? Wouldn't it be the responsibility of Viacom to contact the users who are uploading Viacom videos?

Not so fast...

CBS has streamed large segments of their programs (like Late Late show and Comedy Central) on their own websites, and with a Real Player plugin on the Mac or PC, I can watch a large segment of Craig Fergeson or others on CBS. So, they don't want to have distribution through Youtube but rather have people go to their website. But maybe it's also the fact that others have been posting their clips with Gawker ads and they're not sure YouTube will long-term be in their best interest.

Licenses

Since videos are like the ability to share the imagination of memories of an event, licensing videos violates free speech and is the same as licensing history itself. On the same note, are driver's licenses a license of a car or the driver? Therefore, licensing should be outlawed.

YouTube is pulling innocent videos

Viacom has every right to protect and enforce its copyright. But I think some of the videos caught by the broadly-cast net are NOT violations at all. Case in point? Mine. Check this out: http://pjperez.livejournal.com/118964.html [livejournal.com]