Google's YouTube, Viacom: Better off divorced!
The Google-YouTube-Viacom $1 billion copyright infringement tussle is sounding more and more like the prelude to a divorce settlement!
I dissect Google in-house counsel Michael Kwun’s “he-said, she-said” legal “defense” preview in “YouTube: Why Google is running scared” AND provide my claim by claim counter argument to him for why his Google position presented is NOT supported by a DMCA analysis.
Kwun's boss, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is supremely confident that Viacom needs YouTube’s “community” more than YouTube needs Viacom’s copyright content, and he is being reinforced by the self-published data of Internet “measurement companies.”
Hitwise asserts that not only did YouTube traffic not suffer after Viacom submitted 100,000 DMCA takedown notices to Google for unauthorized Viacom copyright videos uploaded to YouTube, it thrived, trumping all of the television network sites, combined.
Hitwise claims an “extensive sample size of network data,” but is no mere numbers cruncher; LeeAnn Prescott proclaimed “landmark” transformations in:
Web traffic and entertainment consumption, now that entertainment seekers are now more likely to go to YouTube than any other television network or gaming website.
Vidmeter, self-described as “the leading online video viewership metrics service,” distributed its own study of a small sample of 6,725 videos at YouTube to conclude “unauthorized copyright videos make up a relatively small portion of YouTube’s most popular videos and an even smaller portion of views to YouTube’s most popular videos.”
Viacom vigorously disputes Vidmeter’s widely published commentary.
What’s more, Viacom claims IT is the one that is better off without Google’s YouTube!
In Google vs Old Media: Who needs YouTube? I cite Philippe Daumon, Viacom CEO, on how HIS traffic is up since the 100,000 video YouTube take down party!
Both Google’s YouTube and Viacom say they are better off without each other.
They still need a judge though to mediate the $1 billion divorce settlement!
ALSO: YouTube: Why Google fears $1 billion Unsafe Harbor and
YouTube: What Google CEO Eric Schmidt really thinks and
Why Google WILL pay for content and
Google vs. Viacom: Will Michael Kwun eat his DMCA words?