I have been down in the trenches working business stuff today, and when I came up to breath I saw the headline that Viacom is suing YouTube for a Billion Plus for copyright infringement. My initial reaction was who are they kidding. The second reaction was well this sounds like a positioning move. By the response in the net I think some others also agree.
Basically though it’s all YouTube fault. YouTube like a lot of other companies in the new media space have left the new media people hanging out to dry. It is pretty sad really. I never watched clips from some TV show on YouTube. But I did quit using the site because of a technical issue in that they were destroying my video quality when I uploaded media.
None of these services minus maybe Blip.TV has figured out how to really connect and automate submission of new media for those of use syndicating that content, anyway thats a story for another day.
This may be a mini victory for New Media producers in the short run as YouTube and other site get active in pulling the mainstream copyrighted media from their systems. We do not want all that commercial stuff on those sites anyway, if I wanted to watch mainstream media content I would turn on the TV.
I tend to agree with Mark Cuban though it’s YouTube’s fault but I don’t think the amount being litigated is legitimate.