More on Viacom and the the YouTube user tug of war

Photo credit: Mark Lennihan / AP

Viacom's big daddy lawsuit aims to prove that YouTube is little more than a beehive of copyright infringement, where users copy and distribute proprietary content with no regard for the rights of creators (or conglomerates). And now it's going to find out just how many YouTubers are watching pirated versions of its clips.

Viacom has said that since early 2007, it has removed 340,000 infringing clips. It bears noting, though, that just because a clip gets removed, doesn't mean it was actually infringing, or even Viacom's own content.  It's easier to take stuff down than to get it put back up--and most people don't bother.

In the latest development, YouTube must turn over 12 terabytes of user history logs, a massive trove of demographic and behavioral data around the size of the entire printed works of the Library of Congress. You could make the case that this information is so potent that YouTube shouldn't even be storing it -- just as people worry that Google shouldn't be storing all of our searches. Do we really want some for-profit business to have a permanent record of everything we watch online -- a record we can't even access ourselves?

On the other hand, you could argue that this trove of information is so big, it's bigger than YouTube. A data set that contains the viewing patterns of millions, in  20 countries, over a several-year period is an anthropological gold mine so rich that maybe scientists should be able to examine it.

But there's no one arguing that Viacom should be able to. Except Viacom.

 After the public got wind of the ruling and remembered the Recording Industry Assn.  of America's crusade against file-sharing college students, Viacom rushed to explain "unequivocally" that it would not go after individual YouTube users for violating copyright, and that they'd keep user information confidential.

Which means we're being asked to trust Viacom not to misuse the information.

For the record, CBS isn't suing YouTube. Nor is Universal Music Group, Fox, HBO, Showtime, Oxygen or Scripps. In fact, all of those companies have deals with the site under which they can share in any advertising revenue generated by their content.

YouTube has also spent millions of dollars paying a team of computer scientists to develop an ingenious video identification system to help owners like Viacom quickly identify and, if they like, remove infringing content. All Viacom has to do is upload a sample of the shows and movies they want to protect, and YouTube automatically matches every unauthorized copy in its database. Then Viacom clicks a button and poof! The pirated version disappears.

"It's really too early to say whether it's effective," a Viacom spokesman said of the system in an e-mail. "It's very new and still being tested by the large content owners."

But that's not exactly true. The system is now  9 months old, and has been embraced by multiple rights holders as a way to keep tabs on unauthorized copies of their material. The truth is that by allowing content owners the power to efficiently track unauthorized copies, YouTube's system is giving more control to major media companies than they've ever had online.

All of which is to say, it's no longer clear what Viacom is trying to do with this lawsuit. Some of it is no doubt the momentum and sunken costs of a giant legal effort -- and there are probably others who have come to see YouTube as a virtual Moby-Dick, and can't stop hunting.

Which is a shame, because we all know how that story ended.

Comments

[Jeremy Zweig]

David - Viacom's lawsuit is - and always has been - an effort to compensate the company for the massive copyright infringement that occurs on YouTube. Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws. We're certainly not alone. Many major media companies around the world have joined a class action lawsuit against YouTube and Google that seeks compensation for their own infringed copyrights. Yes, it's satisfying that through the course of this process, they've talked more seriously about joining the rest of the legitimate UGC video community by moving towards filtering. However, that doesn't change the massive destruction of value that has occurred to this point.

As has been reported in the LA Times and other publications, the YouTube tracking information that will be provided under discovery will be supplied under a highly confidential court order that prevents even Viacom from seeing the raw data. Nonetheless, we are currently working with Google to develop a method whereby user names and IP addresses are redacted from the logs they are providing.

[Liz on the net]

Jeremy, do you work for Viacom? Are you kidding with this?

The most famous and most watched clips on Youtube are user-generated. The kid with the lighsaber. Leave Britney Alone. the chocolate rain guy. the Miley cyrus spoof. a millions sexy girl videos, and how to build a rocket ship.

Viacom, by getting discovery on the content usage on youtube is getting access to proprietary marketing knowledge about viewer behavior that no amount of Nielsen ratings can provide. this is not about protecting copyrighted content. this is about Viacom getting the courts help to steal user information for their own broadcasing purposes. Please read this article. it may help you understand (unless of course, you do work for viacom).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25590739/

[David Sarno]

Liz and others, just to be clear, Jeremy Zweig is indeed a spokesman for Viacom.