Over the last few weeks I’ve been quietly helping YouTube fight Viacom in their ongoing court battle (along side a dozen other prominent YouTubers). I can’t say much about it, but YouTube has made our recent legal brief public, so I will talk about that.
Viacom recently referred to all registered YouTube users who post original content as a “sideshow”, suggesting the original content posted to YouTube was worthless when compared to the unauthorized copyrighted content that is illegally uploaded. So together with the vlogbrothers, lisanova, whatthebuckshow, smosh, and others, we formed “The Sideshow Coalition”.
We recently all wrote brief statements for the court to read on how we’ve used YouTube to not only reach an audience with our original work, but how we’ve made YouTube a home, a business, or a place for friends and family.
My piece focused on DFTBA Records, and how this little company Hank and I started, run out of my garage, promoted only on YouTube, is now supporting numerous musicians full-time, myself full-time, and making tens of thousands of listeners from every country in the world, happy.
And none of that would be possible were it not for YouTube.
If Viacom wins this lawsuit, YouTube may be forced to manually approve every video uploaded to the website, making it impossible but for a select few to post videos on the site. No longer would YouTube be a place for everyone, it would be a place for Partners who are legally bound not to upload copyrighted content. This is obviously not what YouTube, or any registered YouTube user, wants.
Our testimonials and personal stories will hopefully help the court decide in YouTube’s favor. Viacom doesn’t understand YouTube, or the community. And Viacom wants every registered user to have to pay for the actions of a very small portion of dishonest users.
You can read the full legal brief we wrote by clicking here.
You can help by bringing this case to the attention of others. You can simply tweet a link to this journal entry, or you can read the brief and write your own thoughts on your blogs.
If YouTube loses this case, we will all lose.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
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Wow, I had no idea all this was going on. Viacom's claims are pretty ridiculous though, so I hope it's an easy win for YouTube. I just hope it's as clear to everyone else that Viacom is way wrong! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteOh wow! Youtube cannot lose. I think its really great what you and the others are doing!
ReplyDeleteIf Viacom successfully sues YouTube, I for one will boycott all Viacom "entertainment" programs. No more Paramount movies, no more Nickalodeon, no more MTV (already did that), and (sorry Conan) no Comedy Central.
ReplyDeleteShit. That's about all I've got right now.
ReplyDeleteThanks for fighting the good fight, and I hope YouTube wins.
I've kind of hated Viacom ever since they bought Neopets. Petty/childish reason? Yes, but I am not ashamed.
ReplyDeleteDear goodness, I didn't realise the situation was this terrible. Damn Viacom ruining Neopets and now possibly Youtube. Something must be done!
ReplyDeleteI'm missing something. If YouTube have to manually approve all their videos ... what would be the problem with that? Other than the pain-in-the-arse factor of having to staff people that do that as a job (which seems like an impossible task given the number of videos uploaded to YouTube every second), doesn't it just mean that copyright things wouldn't get put online? As you said, partners already have to abide by those copyright rules, but I also thought that extended to all users. I'm always seeing content that's been removed because Warner made a claim.
ReplyDeleteI'm just trying to understand the full extent of the issue - are you fighting for the right for end-users to use copyrighted content freely? Is that what YouTube's fighting for? Cos that'd be cool, but it strikes me as a battle bigger than Viacom.
Nerimon, I understand your argument why this might not be so bad, but in regard to every video being approved, think about how long it would take for ALL of the videos to be checked. How long do you wait for a video to go public at the moment? Five minutes? Ten? If you have a bad Internet day maybe a few hours, but what if you had to wait days, weeks for a video to go public. If Youtube has to approve every video uploaded then you're going to lose that almost instant connection with your audience. No more current event videos, no more daily vlogging. As you see, I'm sure you personally would suffer as a result of this.
ReplyDeleteAhh, okay. I assumed that YouTube would find a way to approve all the videos quickly, because the idea of having them wait days or weeks for approval is so ludicrous that I didn't even consider it. If that actually happened ... well, it still seems to crazy to even bring up. Viacom are mental if they're suggesting this.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, Alan's post focused specifically on the issue of copyrighted content, so that was the part I was (and still am) interested to hear more about.
@nerimon No, I would never fight for copyrighted content to be illegally uploaded. We're fighting for Viacom to realize that YouTube can't be held responsible for every single video its users upload, and that they do take down copyrighted content when notified of it, and that should be enough. Viacom is claiming that YouTube should be responsible for the actions of all of its users in this public forum and that removing copyrighted content isn't enough. They need to somehow make sure it never goes up in the first place. And as mentioned above there would be an impossible delay, there is 24 hours of video content uploaded every single minute to YouTube. There isn't enough staff in the world for that to all be moderated.
ReplyDeleteAlan I am glad you are helping out youtube on this one. To me what is frustrating about this whole farce of a lawsuit is that it really has nothing to do with copyrighted material being uploaded on the Internet. It has to do with ownership of the portal through which content is viewed. Viacom is not bringing perusing this case because it interested in protecting the rights of content creators but instead because it has the desire to be the medium through which content is made available to the public.
ReplyDeleteWow! I knew that Viacom and YT were battling, but I had no idea how bad it was! This is horrible! YT has to win!
ReplyDeleteI'm hopeful that YouTube would win. They're clearly doing everything reasonable within their power to prevent the upload of copyrighted content. I mean, the government hasn't shut down many other venues through which people share illegal content, with the exception of those which are actively involved in its spread, such as Napster. Viacom may get a huge settlement, but I don't think that this will end the existence of YouTube.
ReplyDeleteThese comments make for interesting reading, but Abe's comment makes a lot of sense to me. It would seem that Viacom is not suing YouTube because they care for the rights of their content producers, but instead because technology is moving on quicker than they would like. They're not happy with the fact that they cannot control this public forum which anyone can use freely. If your company cannot keep up with advancements, then it will be deemed useless in one way or another, very quickly.
ReplyDeleteI must say though, with the rise of the Digital Economy Bill in the UK, I am worried that Viacom may win this case, due to YouTube hosting a forum which infringement is extremely likely possibly being heavily looked down upon by the judge.
I do support the cause, Alan, but so far as I can tell, this is a close call, legally. The court cases and the law does seem to support Viacom's claims (part of why they're pushing this case so vehemently, I imagine.)
ReplyDeleteHowever you are right in (at least) one respect: the expectation that YouTube could manually approve every video that comes in is ridiculous. Not, however, because of the time and manpower it would take to do it (because that is of no concern to the law); instead, tangentially, because of how having to do that would cut into the profit and ability to run the businesses of--not only YouTube, but--all of those legitimately earning money there. The law does support a company's right to make money.
Good luck, and here's to hoping for an agreeable end to all this.
I agree with abc and samcaplat.
ReplyDeleteThe old media, be they music, films, TV or the printed word divide into two camps. There are those who see the internet as a golden opportunity to expand their horizons and customers (such as the BBC or the Economist) and have imaginatively grasped the opportunity with both hands. The other camp (such as Viacom and most of the recorded music industry) are permanently on the back foot, flailing around without a clue how to use the internet and whose first instinct is to call their lawyers.
I am glad there is slideshow Coalition going against Viacom.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Samcaplat that Viacom is only suing due to not keeping up with changing times.
Lets get at Viacom before its too late.
Oh! And I meant to say:
ReplyDeletePlease don't take the side show comment too far out of context. The original context is as follows: "These authorized uses are a side show. Viacom takes no issue with YouTube when it displays videos with proper authorization."
I'll grant you, though it seems to come off more harshly in text than it was probably intended, it wasn't the best choice of words. It seems to me that he was simply indicating that, in number of uploads (and thus advertising opportunities), original content is far overshadowed by illegal copyrighted material. Simply, I think he meant original content is a "side" show to the "main" show of copyrighted material.
Again, Alan, I completely support the cause, but it's important that people with an audience or influence to be fair about the things they say, especially when it comes to things other people said.
Thank you for helping out, Alan. I really hope the court rules in YouTube's/our favour.
ReplyDeleteA great article, but I wish to take issue with one point.
ReplyDeleteI disagree when you say that Viacom doesn't get YouTube. I think they do get it and they see it ax a threat. If we're all making and watching YouTube videos then we are spending less time in front of the tv and, therefore, watching less of Viacoms output and the adverts that come with it.
This surely would lead to a drop in their profits and they seem to be using any means at their disposal to neutralize the 'threat' that they consider YouTube to be.
Although the copywrite issue is important, I think is is just a smokescreen that they use to disguise the fact that they are scared of competition.
I read the brief you wrote, and I love it, but I am not sure how important it ultimately is in the lawsuit... I'll admit, I don't know anything about this sort of stuff, but the brief just shows that you love youtube for your various reasons. Why would these 'feelings' matter to a court, which is supposed to be led by reason? This won't disprove the fact that you're not a side show, nor will it prove Viacom's claim that a side show exists because I think that's very difficult if not impossible to prove?
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should consider the fact that the community that we built, is actually less important income wise than the illegal content on YouTube. We think the YouTube community is important because we're in it, we follow each others lives every day, it makes our lives a little bigger. But I don't know anyone else irl who does this. All the other people I know stumble upon a Charlie video every once in a while, laugh, and move on. They use YouTube for music and cat videos the rest of the time. (My sister proves this. She sometimes visits Charlie's channel, drewls over his good looks, doesn't pay attention to words as nerdfighter and moves on to watch some cute kitties.) I'm just trying to say that while the community might be big for us, it's small for the rest of the world.
Maybe I missed the whole point, who knows. (If anyone wants to reply, I'll be checking up on the comments here periodically... Just sayin cause of Alans blog post yesterday.)
PS: I do hope YouTube wins this thing. And I personally find the community the most interesting part of YouTube, don't get me wrong. I just think it's worth exploring the other side.
Just posted about this on my own blog.
ReplyDeleteViacom came after me three years ago over YouTube: they took MY video without permission, ran it on VH1 and then said I was violating THEIR copyright when I put the clip of *that* on YouTube. Still bugs me that it happened.
wow i really wish you alan, youtube and the rest of the community the best of luck in winning this court case,
ReplyDeleteviacom winning would be a catastrophy for us and future youtube users