Bang: Viacom Demands YouTube Remove 100,000+ Infringing Videos

After they couldn't come to terms about payments or advertising to be provided to Viacom.

I think this is just a negotiating strategy, and that they'll now settle. But Google is going to to have to start paying entertainment companies an awful lot to keep YouTube going. And they can't cut a deal with everyone like they cut with NBC -- you can't give everyone high-profile advertising. Or else none of it is high-profile, right?

Napster? Entertainment companies put Napster out of business. They could do the same to YouTube. Most of them seem to view YouTube as a useful vehicle for promotion and so don't want to kill it, but let's face it, YouTube exists primarily as a vehicle for copyright infringement. Any sort of genuine clampdown on copyright infringement will kill the site, making it useless for promotion.

After all, even those ten bazillion teenage lipsync videos are infringing on copyrights, given the music playing in background. Take away the infringement, and you're just left with "Loverboy" telling you "I LOVE THE GAME!" and, of course, this (content warning) solid citizen.

I like being able to post videos and all, but seriously, how sweet would it be if Google ended up outright eating a billion-dollar-plus investment?

posted by Ace at 02:37 PM

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