Lawyers working on a $1 billion copyright lawsuit, filed by Viacom against Google’s YouTube, may have found evidence that YouTube employees uploaded pirated videos to the site, in order to bump up traffic. According to a CNET News article: Internal YouTube e-mails indicate that YouTube managers knew and discussed the existence of unauthorized content on […]

Internet traffic measurement company comScore today released data from their December 2008 “comScore Video Metrix” service, indicating a huge jump in Internet video-viewing among US Internet users. A record 14.3 billion online videos were viewed during the month, representing an increase of 13 percent over November’s viewing stats. YouTube led the Internet video portals, accounting […]

Google’s YouTube troubles just got kicked up a notch. Italian media company Mediaset SpA is suing YouTube and its owner, Google, for at least 500 million euros ($779 million). Mediaset claims that Google and YouTube carried out the “illegal distribution and commercial use of audio and video files,” according to a Bloomberg report: According to […]

Free video hosting service Vimeo has announced that it’s banning gaming videos, becuase they’re space hogs that don’t meet the goals of the site: The Vimeo staff has decided that we are no longer going to allow gaming videos on Vimeo. Specifically, we are no longer going to allow game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions […]

Google announced today that it had reached an agreement with Viacom that will avoid a media debacle over YouTube users privacy: As we let you know on July 4, YouTube received a court order to produce viewing history data. We are pleased to report that Viacom, MTV and other litigants have backed off their original […]

Google’s got a big problem with YouTube – the melting-pot nature of user-generated media.

This, along with a billion-dollar lawsuit, courtesy of Viacom, is keeping Google from making money on 96% of its content.

It’s time for Google to settle with Viacom, and get on with building a business based on what makes YouTube unique – user-generated media.

A few days ago, we suggested that YouTube Needs To Grow A Spine, arguing that YouTube needs to “unequivocally state that they will defend your right to privacy, even if that means taking this all the way to the Supreme Court”.

Now others are starting to weigh in, and it looks like we are not alone in thinking that YouTube needs to grow a spine, if not more….

YouTube has responded to a federal court order requiring the company, as part of Viacom’s billion dollar lawsuit, to give Viacom copies of YouTube’s server log files. These log files are needed by Viacom to help it determine the extent to which YouTube has been used to distribute copyrighted content without permission. However, Viacom doesn’t […]

Viacom’s billion dollar lawsuit against Google is getting ugly. The federal court hearing the case has ordered (pdf) Google to provide Viacom with “all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website”. The ruling brings a new twist […]

Remember Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google over copyright infringement?

Viacom sued Google, arguing that “YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization….based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content.”

Google is fighting back, claiming that the Viacom lawsuit threatens the future of the Internet as we know it!