http://www.sohh.com/articles/article.php/11149

If it's free to watch on cable TV... why is it so horrible to watch it for the same price in worse quality on the internet?

XD LMFAO! I knew it... Youtube is poking fun at this viacom thing.. Take a lookie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvvXevaZik0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE2IpIwEGmE&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfZzIXfFTJE&mode=related&search=

Copyright is about control of the expression. I am personally for free expression, but what is so "horrible" is that when someone makes a copy of Viacom's intellectual property that is not considered fair use, then Viacom, the legal controller of such property, loses control of their own property. This could cause many problems down the line, but the most significant is that the standing law is being violated (not necessarily by Youtube) but by anyone who makes an illegal copy. Of course, not all this content is "free to watch on cable TV."

I think the laws should change, but until they change, I'm not familiar with any persuasive argument that these laws shouldn't be followed.

sigh.. everyone is sew happy these days.

well it's not like viacom doesn't make money from putting the shows on there. cable itself isn't free, so they get money from cable companies for everyone who signs up to have viacom as an available channel. they probably also get money from the shows to have them played on their channel. now if everyone watches the shows on youtube and doesn't get cable then the shows might take themselves elsewhere and viacom has nothing left to put on it's channel and makes no money. (assuming that viacom is a channel and not a cable company.. i'm not really sure since i don't watch tv period let alone cable. but the money all flows around etc etc. how the world works and all, they gotta be making money for what they're doing from somewhere.)

God, Viacom is like a power hungry empire. It's the Middle Age's all over again.

It's not only about being power hungry, it's about keeping control of THEIR OWN property.

Why not boycott viacom?

Awesome idea, Bo. But, what are we going to do? Just email them: Stop being asses? Well, some people could actually do something, but...

You could stop or reduce your consumption of their products.

That's not a bad idea. I think I'll try that.




(edit: I found another video on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVA2QBR14Fo)

since stopping using their products is what boycotting is. I think you may have been thinking more of pickiting. both forms of protest but one is a little more passive agressive.

We should have a sign on the front page that says Viacom Sucks.

So all of you would feel totally ok if you sold a product, and then someone took your product and put it up for free, and even better THEY made money off of it from advertising? Be perfectly honest with yourself now.

To be fair to YouTube they do have a screening process, but how well that works is certainly debatable. So I think Viacom has a right to want to control access to a product they sell, just like any other business. Also YouTube makes money off of their product, which is not only uncool, but also one of the worst things you can do when you are giving away copyrighted content. You're pretty much guaranteed to get caught at that point.

So while we might want to think that everything can be free, and everyone will live in a land of unicorns and flowers, pretty sure the probability of that working is about 1000000:1 (actually probably worse). So YouTube is responsible for the content they allow through their site to some extent, so while the amount Viacom is suing for might be a bit much, I think they are perfectly justified. With all the money YouTube makes (since Google bought them for like $2 billion or something, and companies don't buy things unless they make money), I think it wouldn't be too hard for them to keep all copyrighted material off of it. YouTube is very simlar to all of those file sharing programs (which by the way all got shut down, except bittorrents, but that's because that's only a protocol, and completely private so they don't have large lists of them somewhere like a file sharing program). Also last I checked internet radio stations and song sharing programs must pay for the songs they get that are copyrighted, so I don't see why YouTube would be immune to this.

All I know is I saw this coming eventually, given around 50% of YouTube is copyrighted material.

So yeah it's nice to get things for free that you should have to pay for, but is it right? YouTube is in the wrong here (and will likely settle). So if YouTube got permission and licenses to have the videos they do (or the people using it) then yeah it would be ok, but as it stands now YouTube is violating copyright by allowing it's users to (having a disclaimer is nice, but if they don't enforce it a little better than best effort, it doesn't really mean much), and not providing an adequate solution to the problem. If YouTube was not making money off of it I would have a little less of an issue, but they do, so.

I dont' really think it's as easy as that for YouTube because it's so huge and they don't really actually know all of everthing that is on there because it all comes from the consumers to go to the consumers. YouTube is just giving consumers the space and part of the means to do it. For them to properly purchase the rights to have copywrited media shown on their site they would first have to sift through every video to figure out who they needed to get in contact with. And if they're going to do that then they might as well just delete all of the copywrited content that they find and not have to pay anyone. This of course would prolly mean a lot less people browsing their site and thus less money for them all the same. But then they would probably have to figure out who they are paying how much to see if that balances out against the number of people who would stop viewing the site to figure out which is worth more as an option, or if it would be better to just fight it out and try to squirm their way through some loophole.

Why is viacom targeting youtube anyway? google video is also popular, so is myspace - why arn't they targeting them as well? *Shrug* viacom probably doesn't really care about it being their intellectual property at all nor would i think they are offended by someone stealing their work. They just stand to make some good money out of it, if they didn't they wouldn't care.

I see them failing at this. Youtube's only getting money because it has people with premium accounts uploading these videos. These people are paying money even if they aren't uploading copywrite videos, and pretty much all videos are free to watch, anyway. Or is there something I'm missing, here?

Well, I think that viacom would have a lot more lawyers then youtube and google right? I mean is not viacom a way bigger company? I think that viacom would win in court. Or at least force youtube to settle out of court.

If they do settle....they're probably going to get millions.....bastards.

Yeah, thats how it normally gos down. Unless they come up with a contract of some kinds. Lets hope no money exchanges hands. The odds don't look very good.

People are making those videos for a reason. I support them 100 percent.