Viacom Tells YouTube: Hands Off
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YouTube says it will comply with Viacomâs request that it remove more than 100,000 clips from the Web.
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SUN VALLEY, Idaho  - Google Inc.  took a  swipe at media conglomerate Viacom Inc. , which is  suing the Internet search leader and its video sharing site  YouTube for $1 billion over "massive copyright infringement."
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By Jon Swartz  SAN FRANCISCO -- Days after clashing with Google's YouTube in a public spat over copyright protection, Viacom has found a new partner to air its content online.
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Media conglomerate Viacom Inc.  (VIAb.N) said on Tuesday that it was suing Google Inc.   and its Internet video-sharing site YouTube for more than $1  billion over unauthorized use of its programming online.
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Viacom Inc. has demanded that Google  Inc.'s online video service YouTube pull down all of its video  clips after they failed to reach an agreement, the company  said.
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You won't find clips of comedian Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" and MTV's "Pimp My Ride" on YouTube any more, but Viacom Inc. is laying the groundwork for its videos to be available to hundreds of thousands of other sites.
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SUN VALLEY, Idaho  - Google Inc.  took a  swipe at media conglomerate Viacom Inc. , which is suing  the Internet search leader and its video sharing site YouTube  for $1 billion over "massive copyright infringement."
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Media conglomerate Viacom Inc.   sued Google Inc.  and its Internet  video-sharing site YouTube for more than $1 billion on Tuesday  in the biggest challenge yet to the Web search leader's  strategy to dominate the online video market.
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(InfoWorld) - Google has promised to give content makers control overÂ advertisements overlaid on video clipsÂ they post to its YouTube video sharing Web site. The company is seeking further feedback on the video advertising service as a rising number ofÂ YouTube users threaten to leave the siteÂ if the advertising feature is not improved. Only videos from content creators that have signed up for the advertising scheme, called InVideo, will host ads, leaving the majority of videos on YouTube free of the overlays, a Google spokesman said Friday. Advertisers will still be able to reach a large audience through YouTube videos even if the company only places ads in a small portion of videos. "And our users are not shy about telling us what they like and what they don't, so it behooves us to be careful," said Shashi Seth, YouTube Group Product Manager, in an e-mailed statement. YouTube launched the InVideo adsÂ on Wednesday. They start as an overlay on the bottom 20 percent of a video and people can click to watch the advertisement, or if not, the ad will simply disappear. Clicking on the overlay pauses the video, which resumes after the ad finishes. So far, responses to the new advertising system, posted on YouTube's blog, have been negative. People are passionate about the issue, with many threats to leave YouTube for other sites, such as Myspace.com or Break.com. "As a viewer of videos I don't want to see any of the content of the video covered up. I only had one video posted myself, which I have just removed. Bye!," writes user KPDover, in a comment. As of early Friday, the total number of comments had reached 669, with many repeats, but still a substantial increase to the 132 comments posted Thursday at around the same time. YouTube hopes it can change people's minds about InVideo ads, and sees them as a way to generate revenue for the site without being too intrusive. They are designed to interfere as little as possible with viewing and be relevant to the video. Warner Media, part of Time Warner, is one company that has signed up to allow overlays to be used on its music videos, and some of the ads are for other Warner music. Still, YouTube users complain that 20 percent is a huge amount of space on the small video screens, enough to detract from the viewing experience. YouTube plans to continue on with the InVideo overlays, and hopes "to make the ads an important part of the advertising model for online video," said Aaron Zamost, from Google corporate communications. The InVideo ads users are seeing on YouTube videos are the result of two months of testing. The company tried other methods of video advertising, including pre-roll video, but the in-video ads simply worked better. Videos that started with pre-roll advertisements were shut down 70 percent of the time, according to Google, while only 10 percent of in-video ads were abandoned. In addition, the number of people clicking to play an InVideo ad were 5 percent to 10 percent greater than the number of people clicking on a standard banner ad, the company says. The company uses software to match ads to videos, and can pinpoint an audience closely. For example, an advertiser could place an InVideo ad targeting 18-24 year old soccer fans in Los Angeles, to be played between 6pm to 11pm local time. The ads are placed by genre, demographic, time of day and geographic location. The technology behind YouTube's InVideo was all developed in house, but Zamost points out, the company never said it invented overlay technology. It did not. Time will tell if YouTube figures out a way to ensure its community grows accustomed to InVideo advertisements. Early on, YouTube rivals may have an opportunity to scoop up disaffected users. There are plenty of alternative video sharing Web sites on the Internet. But whether YouTube users like it or not, the company is committed to moving forward with InVideo ads. Â
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Chad and Steve (and their investors) have to be glad they don&#8217;t own YouTube anymore. After failing to reach an agreement (apparently) with Viacom, YouTube said it will comply with the company&#8217;s request and pull the 100k videos. From the WSJ article: YouTube, a unit of Google Inc., said it will comply with the request. &#8220;It&#8217;s [...]
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TOKYO -- A Japanese entertainment group has asked the popular video-sharing site YouTube Inc. to implement a system to prevent users from uploading videos that would infringe copyrights, a group spokesman said yesterday.
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NEW YORK -- MTV owner Viacom Inc. said Tuesday it has sued YouTube and its corporate parent Google Inc. in federal court for alleged copyright infringement and is seeking more than $1 billion in damages.
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Company that played a pivotal part in YouTube's rapid rise is pulling out of a promotional deal so it can boost prospects of own video site, Hulu.com.
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Lane Hartwell got Google to take down a YouTube video that used her photo without permission. Expect more such copyright tussles in the Flickr era.
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By Seth Sutel THE ASSOCIATED PRESS  NEW YORK -- Media company Viacom Inc., which owns the cable networks MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and the Paramount Pictures movie studio, asked YouTube on Friday to remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips from its popular video-sharing site.
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(InfoWorld) - ViacomÂ has sued Google, alleging copyright infringement from video-sharing site YouTube and seeking $1 billion in damages. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, follows a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) requestÂ Viacom sent to Google last monthÂ related to the unauthorized posting of Viacom videos to YouTube. At the time,Â Viacom demanded that GoogleÂ remove more than 100,000 of its clipsÂ from YouTube, which Google acquired last year for $1.65 billion. Google said it would comply with the request. In escalating its battle with YouTube with this lawsuit, Viacom reiterates that YouTube has allowed and benefitted from "massive intentional" copyright violations of Viacom videos. In addition to $1 billion inÂ damages, Viacom is asking the court for an injunction barring Google and YouTube from continuing the alleged infringement, Viacom said Tuesday in a statement. Google stands ready to fight the allegations and is confident that "YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders," a Google spokesman said via e-mail. "We will certainly not let this suit become a distraction to the continuing growth and strong performance of YouTube and its ability to attract more users, more traffic, and build a stronger community," he wrote. Almost 160,000 Viacom video clips have been uploaded to YouTube without permission and have been viewed over 1.5 billion times, Viacom alleges. "YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google," Viacom charged in the statement. Google and YouTube illegally profit from the traffic that the unauthorized videos draw to their sites by selling advertising, according to Viacom, which added that YouTube has been lax in its attempts to stop its users from uploading copyrighted videos without permission. Viacom decided to sue Google after negotiations and other measures failed to halt the alleged copyright infringement in YouTube, Viacom said. Viacom is a media conglomerate whose properties include MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, and Paramount Pictures. The case is unlikely to result in a total shutdown of YouTube because legitimate uses of the site exist beyond the potentially illegal activities Viacom is objecting to, said Sheldon Klein, an attorney specializing in intellectual-property matters and a partner at Arent Fox LLP in Washington, D.C. However, Google may find itself liable to the infringement claims if Viacom proves that Google and YouTube didn't do all that was possible to prevent users from uploading copyrighted videos without permission, especially after being served with the DMCA notice last month, Klein said. Specifically, if YouTube and Google haven't implemented available technology that would allow them to do a better job of filtering out infringing videos, Viacom could have a legitimate argument in saying they're not trying hard enough, he said. A check of YouTube at noon Eastern time showed multiple instances of Viacom-owned videos, including clips from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and from Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants." One of the "SpongeBob" clips found, for example, has been on YouTube since Feb. 5 of this year, while one of "The Daily Show" clips was uploaded in October of last year. Google executives have said the company is developing technology to address the issue of infringing downloads on YouTube and have promised to deliver it in the near future. Google didn't immediately provide an explanation of what, if any, filtering and detection technology exists in YouTube today. In the meantime, competitorsÂ such asÂ News Corp.'s MySpace, which also lets users upload videos to its site, have licensed third-party systems for detecting infringing videos. There are a number of companies that make this type of software, including Audible Magic, the one chosen by MySpace.
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Mickey Mouse rollout? YouTube says it's now really close to trialling the video fingerprinting technology it has reckons will put an end to its status as a copyright renegade, which won it a $1bn lawsuit from Viacom.â¦