Viacom's Digital Dilemma
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Philippe Dauman knows he needs to bump up Internet revenue, but he can't do it via a purchase.
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During a seminar at the Digital Hollywood conference in Los Angeles this morning, AT&T Senior Vice President James Cicconi disclosed that his company began meeting with Viacom last week to discuss the deployment of technology that somehow will combat the spread of piracy over its digital networks.
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One Wired News correspondent cuts his connection to the cable company and doesn't look back. Can the internet supply enough video programming to entertain a family of five? By Robert Lemos.
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The file-sharing company swallows up one of its rivals in a bid to ease distribution of video and movies to cable boxes and mobile devices. Can the digital dream of peer-to-peer television become a reality? Analysis by Scott Gilbertson.
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The chief executive of media giant Viacom expressed reservations Thursday about Google's plan to enter YouTube content into a database and give owners the chance to take down the material.Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion over content being used on Google's YouTube Web property without permission. Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit event San Francisco, Viacom President/CEO Phillipe Dauman expressed a willingness to work with online media properties but was skeptical of the Google plan, called Video Identification.Dauman said he had an open mind about reaching an agreement and that the announcement of Video Identification was a positive evolution. But it is not enough."I don't think we're quite there" said Dauman. Google, he said, can do things quickly if it wants to, he added. "I guess they haven't wanted to at this point," Dauman said.Google wants a proprietary system that benefits just one company, but the solution has to be a cooperative effort, said Dauman. He added he suspects Viacom at some point in the future will work with Google. The company does have a good relationship with Facebook, he said.Viacom has had its defenders, according to Dauman. "A lot of the technology companies out there welcome what we do," he said. Companies have said it was about time somebody took a stand, Dauman added.Like Google, Viacom has to protect its intellectual property. "I don't see their algorithms being shared openly with competitors," said Dauman."We took a step reluctantly because we had to," he said.Content producers need to be rewarded for what they do, Dauman said. "That nurtures creativity," he said.Viacom was part of a group of media and technology companies, along with vendors like CBS and Microsoft, that detailed Thursday principles intended to enable growth and development of user-generated content online while respecting intellectual property rights.Featured in these principles is implementation of filtering technology to eliminate infringing content; upgrading of technology and cooperation in technology implementation, and development of procedures to address claims that content was blocked in error. Removal of content also is addressed.Google was not a party to Thursday's announcement.
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Blog: As the ground shifts underneath, why is it taking the media industry so long to get out ahead of a game-changing technology curve?
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Business & money: How independent producers are putting their movies straight on the internet.
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Is CBS adequately addressing digital distribution?
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DigitalAdvisor takes on the big fish in the consumer electronics pond.
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Contrary to Sumner Redstone&#39;s earlier suggestions, Viacom (VIAB:NYSE - news - research) might have an interest in acquiring Midway Games (MWY:NYSE - news - research) after all.
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Howard Stern&#39;s planned defection is a tremendous coup for the emerging satellite radio industry and a setback for the already slumping field of traditional radio -- especially Viacom, which
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What could eventually resolve the value proposition for mainstream consumers to accept an incoming ultra-high-bandwidth pipeline into their homes is the ability of high-definition, on-demand video. But that will require a level of cooperation that competitors thus far have been unable to muster.
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Viacom buying Sirius makes sense, but it doesn't make dollars.
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NEW YORK, Sept. 8 -- Viacom Inc., the media company that owns CBS and MTV, offered investors a financial incentive to buy shares of the Blockbuster Inc.
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Viacom, whose properties include MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures, ran out of patience after months of discussions with Google and YouTube, the company said in a statement.
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Viacom is making videos available on five online video services, plus Comcast's broadband site.
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(InfoWorld) - On Friday, media conglomerate Viacom upbraided YouTube for continuing to host throngs of Viacom videos without permission and demanded that over 100,000 of its clips be removed from the popular video-sharing site owned by Google. Viacom, whose properties include MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, and Paramount Pictures, ran out of patience after months of discussions with Google and YouTube, the company said in a statement. "It has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users," the statement reads. YouTube and Google have failed to deliver efficient filtering tools, allowingÂ "vast amounts" of unauthorized Viacom video to exist on the video-sharing site, the company said. YouTube acknowledged receiving a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) request from Viacom to remove the videos. "It's unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from YouTube's passionate audience, which has helped to promote many of Viacom's shows," YouTube said in a statement, adding that it will comply with the request. Viacom's move is the latest from copyright owners who are upset over the unauthorized uploading and streaming of their videos on YouTube, which is one of the most popular Web sites in the world. The copyright issue has long been a known liability for YouTube. Founded in early 2005, YouTube quickly became the world's most popular video-sharing site, beating established players including Yahoo, Microsoft's Internet unit, AOL, and Google. Impressed with that popularity, Google bought YouTube last November for $1.65 billion in an all-stock transaction, but it put 12.5 percent of the amount in an escrow account for one year to "secure certain indemnification obligations," it said. Since the acquisition, Google and YouTube have been busy negotiating with video content owners and developing technology to detect and remove copyrighted videos uploaded by users without permission. Beyond its attempts to strike deals with corporations, Google has recently also indicated its intent to share revenue with individual content owners. It has also begun integrating YouTube with the similar Google Video service. "We're pushing very, very hard for the success of YouTube as a brand. It has tremendous traction with the demographic that we care about. An awful lot of people are now using YouTube every day in their daily lives," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said this week duringÂ the company's quarterly earnings conference call. Schmidt said Google's primary focus with YouTube is user adoption, while it also experiments with advertising models. YouTube is growing its user base and advertising very fast, to the point that it's now clear to Google that the price it paid for YouTube is clearly justified, Schmidt said. In its statement, Viacom precisely complained that Google is benefitting from its content without providing Viacom with adequate compensation. "YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create it," Viacom said.