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Viacom Wins Reversal in Landmark YouTube Case (Reuters)
A U.S. appeals court dealt Google Inc a major defeat by reviving lawsuits by Viacom Inc, the English Premier League and various other media companies over the use of copyrighted videos on Google’s YouTube service without permission. Bloomberg Viacom sued in 2007, seeking $1 billion in damages and claiming that YouTube users were illegally uploading thousands of videos of Viacom television programs, such as South Park and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and movies from its Paramount Pictures studio. ZDNet The case translates to putting the burden of responsibility back on the website owner, rather than the uploader, which could send massive ripples through the online community from search engines to social networks, like Facebook and Google+. Gizmodo The outcome of the case will hinge entirely on whether YouTube “knew” that all of this copyrighted material was out there and what “knowing” actually means. Read more
Google announced this morning that YouTube’s rental service will now offer movies from Paramount — one of Viacom’s premier studios. The deal will have YouTube offering movies such as the Huge, the Godfather trilogy and Transformers to the slate, and will certainly make YouTube a more powerful video service in the future. This certainly shows that Google is pushing hard to create a complete library of entertainment, perhaps to sweeten the Google TV offer for prospective buyers — imagine your Google TV came with these movies free for a month.
