Old media bites back

Or….Sumner Whine.

Today old man Sumner Redstone’s Viacom announced it was suing Google for $1billion for copyright infringement because of the 160,000 video clips posted “illegally” on YouTube, including shows from Viacom’s VH1, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. According to Viacom’s legal claim, in the last six weeks since they asked YouTube to remove the more than 100,000 illegal clips of Viacom shows, over 50,000 more have popped up. Oops.

If this ever goes to court - Redstone is a grumpy old man with a big ego money to burn, so it just might - Google will be using the “safe harbor” defense from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 that basically says if users stick up content illegally and the company takes them down when asked, all is sweet. One commentator has likened the current law to “head shops” getting away with selling weird-shaped smoking pipes because, they say, they didn’t realize that the pipes might be used for smoking illicit substances (”Oh, that’s why the kids with funny beards bought them!”)

Of course it’s really about the fight of Old versus New. Old media conglomerates like Vicaom have been losing the battle for the teen and young adult audience, while those pesky upstarts like MySpace (Redstone is still bitter he missed out on buying that one to his much more tech-savvy rival Rupert Murdoch) and YouTube. Print publishers and authors have also been upset at Google’s quest to put all the information up on the web for free when it’s their content that is being put up there. And who can blame them. TV networks and writers (hell, I’m one!) spend time and money creating content and then Google lets people put it up there for all to see without paying for it.

The question that companies including Viacom have been wrestling with is whether it’s better to let YouTube show bits of its content for free and hope they benefit from the potential increase in viewers to the show it came from on the box; or, whether they the should retain complete control and make people come to the their own sites if they want to see stuff like South Park. There’s no easy answer. In fact since Viacom told youTube to pull all its content from YouTube a few weeks ago indications are that traffic to its own websites, showing clips of Jon Stewart’s show on Comedy Central for instance, have increased.

Not that Google’s made any money from having the illegal clips up on YouTube. But every one of the big media companies know that that will soon change. Google paid such a hefty price for YT last November ($1.65billion) because they saw where the eyeballs were going - to short online video clips - and know they should be able to monetize that interest through sponsored searches, the method that has made them the giant they now are.

There’s no telling how the battle will pan out. For sure Google will tighten up its technology so it’s easier for them and the media companies to track illegally posted content and pull it down. Meanwhile the big G will be scrambling to do some big deals with content owners before they, seeing Viacom’s move today, build their own sites to compete with YouTube.

But the end result will not be determined by big media deals and court cases, but by the consumers. They will seek out the content they want, and turn on companies - Google, Viacom or whoever - who don’t give it to them in the form they want it. The winners will be those that work out how to do this in the least bullshit way.

Meanwhile, I bet Chad Hurley and Steve Chen - the founders of YouTube - are glad they sold when they did, before the law suits started flooding in. Here’s to ya, boys!

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