Archive for YouTube
Google vs. Viacom: The Summary Judgment Chronicles
Posted by: | CommentsI’d like to welcome my friend Jonathan Bailey as today’s guest poster. Jonathan is a copyright and plagiarism consultant. He is the CEO of CopyByte, a copyright and plagiarism consulting firm, and writes the copyright blog Plagiarism Today, where he helps content creators license, track and protect their works.
Though we all know that the ‘Colbert Report’ is a great show, what is less known is that it is also playing a key role in shaping the future of the Internet, especially for sites like YouTube.
It was in March 2007, almost exactly three years ago today, that Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central and the ‘Colbert Report’, sued Google over its then-recently-acquired site YouTube. According to Viacom at the time, users had uploaded more than 160,000 clips of their content and those clips had received some 1.5 billion views.
Since the ‘Colbert Report’, along with ‘The Daily Show’, are among Viacom’s most popular shows with YouTube uploaders, it’s easy to imagine that the ‘Colbert Report’ was at the forefront of Viacom’s executives’ minds then they filed suit and remains there today.
However, yesterday this lawsuit took another major step forward as both sides moved for summary judgment and, as part of that, much of the submitted evidence was made available to the public for the first time. This has shed new light on the case and has also revealed some very embarrassing information about both sides.
With a case that is this potentially important to the future of the Internet, it is worthwhile to take a moment and understand how it got to where it is today and what it could mean. So here is a brief rundown of the case so far, what was revealed yesterday and where we go from here.
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Klassic Kolbert: Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello and Cagney in old WTTW Channel 11 video
Posted by: | CommentsThanks to Zoner Conner who tipped me off to a video just recently posted on YouTube, featuring a VERY young Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello and Paul’s dog Cagney in the park on a beautiful sunny day. This originally aired on WTTW Channel 11 Chicago in 1990. Stephen and Paul show up at the 0:46 mark. You’ll never guess what they’re thinking about while they sunbathe.
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Same Song Second Verse … or not – YouTube muting fanvids
Posted by: | CommentsRemember the Great YouTube Purge of 2006? (And YouTube Purge II – Electric Boogaloo)? Well, kids, we’re about to hit YouTube Purge III – This Time, It’s Personal.
According to Mashable, YouTube is “muting videos that use unauthorized copyrighted music (and that pretty much means all user-created videos.)” What this means is that if you have a fanvid that has survived the endless purging due to the Viacom lawsuit, you may lose audio and see this rather ominous message below the video:
“This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled.”
Mashable even has examples. *shiver* So if you need to back up your favorite YouTube fanvids, for God’s sake do it NOW! Until then, let’s enjoy this totally unlicensed version of “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing.”
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According to YouTube’s official blog, it looks as if the information that will be going to Viacom will not be containing user names to go along with the viewed information. However, according to CNet.com, it looks like Google is still going to attempt to depose both Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.
We’ll keep you posted.
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Viacom issues a statement on the YouTube controversy
Posted by: | CommentsI was slightly (but only slightly) relieved to see a statement from Viacom on its request for YouTube user data. From the Electronic Frontier Federation:
Viacom’s Statement on YouTube User Data Controversy
July 3rd, 2008
Posted by Kurt OpsahlViacom released the following statement today in response to the YouTube user data controversy (first reported on this blog):
“It is unfortunate that we have been compelled to go to court to protect Viacom’s rights and the rights of the artists who work with and depend on us. YouTube and Google have put us in this position by continuing to defend their illegal and irresponsible conduct and profiting from copyright infringement, when they could be implementing the safe and legal user generated content experience they promise.
The Court’s recent decision has triggered concern about what information will be disclosed and how it will be used. Viacom has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any user. Any information that we or our outside advisors obtain — which will not include personally identifiable information — will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against You Tube and Google, will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner.
. . .
Additional helpful articles have also been posted at Salon (gives a nice overview of some of the history surrounding viewer privacy), The New York Times (includes Google’s request to redact information that would potentially identify individual users) and Forbes (clarifies some of the safeguards Viacom states it will be using).
This is all well and good, but I’ve gotta tell you, I’m pretty irate about all the assaults on my privacy lately. Between the judge’s evident unconcern for the potential privacy rights of YouTube users, Viacom’s sweeping request (why not just request the statistical analysis in the first place, instead of asking for all the user data?), and Google’s/YouTube’s storage of all of that user data (stop trying to “target” me for marketers!), I feel like I’m trapped in an Orwellian world that does NOT resemble the one more poetically described as the “land of the free”. (And don’t even get me started on the mass of … poop that is the upcoming Senate FISA vote.) It may seem a little strange to hear from someone who blogs here, but I’m actually a pretty private person, and I do NOT enjoy this feeling that my every move is being accounted for by some corporate (or governmental) entity. Please, at least honor the minimal privacy safeguards that still exist in today’s society. At least let me have that.
Stephen, I know you deserve the break, but please come back refreshed and ready to make me laugh again, because I’m going to need it after this week’s frustrations!
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Viacom won’t sue ‘Colbert Report’ fans, according to CNet
Posted by: | CommentsMsInterpreted tipped me off to this article, released today from CNet, which hopefully will put a few of the Stephen Colbert fans out there at ease:
Google to Viacom: ‘Respect YouTube users’ privacy’
July 3, 2008 9:35 AM PDT…
“We are pleased the court put some limits on discovery,” Google said in the statement, “including refusing to allow Viacom to access users’ private videos and our search technology. We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history. We are asking Viacom to respect users’ privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court’s order.”
CNET News.com reported that Viacom is under strict instructions from the court not to use the data for anything other than proving the prevalence of infringement on YouTube.
Viacom, therefore, is forbidden from targeting individual users in the manner of the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuits against individuals found to be downloading illegal music.
…
What might prove interesting in the meantime is that among the people Google has asked to depose are Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert of the The Colbert Report.
Here’s hoping that Viacom chooses to listen to the courts.
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Viacom to sue viewers of YouTube videos?
Posted by: | CommentsIn addition to reading a lot of sites on Colbert, I also read a lot of sites about blogging and new media. So when I read this post today on Mashable, I have to admit, I found it interesting in a very nervous kind of way:
Again, One Clueless Person Destroys the Privacy Of Millions
July 3, 2008 — 05:15 AM PDT — by Stan Schroeder —When you first read about the Google-Viacom lawsuit, you never thought that it would affect you directly, did you? Think again.
Judge Louis L. Stanton, presiding over the federal court for the Southern District of New York, has ordered Google to give Viacom the IP addresses and other data about the users who watched YouTube videos, either on YouTube itself or embedded on a third party website. If you want to get depressed further, read the entire document here.
Let me tell you, in the shortest possible terms, what this means. It means you. Unless you’ve been extra careful to only watch non-copyrighted videos on YouTube (yeah, right), Viacom could sue you. No, it’s even worse: they could actually win.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an analysis which shows that this decision is in violation of the VPPA (Video Privacy Protection Act). However, and interestingly enough, the court denied Viacom’s request of YouTube’s source code, which means that the big company – Google – got protected, but the little guy – us – got screwed.
Surely they can’t mean what I think they mean. I can’t imagine Viacom trying to take out fans who were watching videos that, up until a few months ago, weren’t available on the Comedy Central site. And, as a webmaster who has featured YouTube videos on multiple occasions, I would feel horrible if someone who watched a video on this site was contacted by Viacom due to this legal maneuver.
Also, if they decide to pull up IP and do a search by videos viewed? I don’t know about you guys, but I’m screwed. I will freely admit, I watched hours and hours of video when I first started the show. It was like a compulsion that first month or two, to absorb every bit of Colbert Report footage that I could find. There were videos on YouTube that still are not available to this day on Comedy Central. I was able to watch shows like the Filliam H. Muffman episode, and “I Have A Dreamsicle,” and classic interviews from when the show first started, like the Gravitas-Off (I and II). I really felt like I was up to speed with the history of the show after watching the vids on YouTube for a few weeks, which is something that is very hard for fans to do right now because videos only go back to late 2006 on the official site.
And let’s be honest here, no one who watches videos on YouTube worries about the copyright. Obviously I am more aware of it now, and because of that, I am very careful about putting up the official clips almost exclusively. I’m grateful to Viacom for providing high-resolution, easily embeddable clips. I pretty much am guaranteed to watch a few on a daily basis, and I embed Viacom-approved clips on the site almost every day as well.
But to punish the fans who watched YouTube when these clips were not available from Viacom? That’s just not nice.
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By Popular Demand
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Psst … come here … I got something for ya. It’s the good stuff, the REALLY good stuff. But it’s totally on the black market, so we’re going to have to keep it on the down low. Just past the curtain, you can’t miss it.
P.S.
If you like this post, I do have a Twitter feed that features all the updates from this blog as well as the Colbert University update blog.
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