Viacom demands YouTube pull down videos
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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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Universal Music Group, the world's   biggest record company, is stepping up pressure against popular   online sites YouTube and MySpace, accusing them of infringing   the copyrights of its artists' music videos.
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BBC Click investigates claims of the internet collapsing under pressure from the YouTube generation.
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(InfoWorld) - A broad group of companies and associations covering most of the Japanese entertainment industry is calling on YouTube to be more proactive in policing its Web site for copyrighted material. In a letter sent Monday to YouTube Chief Executive Officer Chad Hurley and Chief Technology Officer Steve Chen, the group requests YouTube start a system that proactively identifies and removes copyrighted material rather than making rights holders find it and send in complaints. "Taking into account the current status of your service, we believe that your company should not just wait for rights owners to take the 'Notice and Take down' procedures but should bear the responsibility to prevent, in advance, copyright infringements such as illegal uploads and distributions, or to avoid those infringements," said the letter, a copy of which was distributed to media Tuesday by the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC). Monday's letter is signed by JASRAC and 22 other organizations including the Motion Picture Producers' Association of Japan, the Japan Video Software Association, the Association of Japanese Animations, all of the major commercial TV broadcasters, the Japan Satellite Broadcasting Association, the Recording Industry Association of Japan, and Yahoo Japan Corp. It comes a month and a half afterÂ YouTube deleted 29,549 filesÂ based on a complaint filed by JASRAC. The association said the files in question infringed on the rights of 23 Japanese content companies. Neither that complaint or YouTube's action didn't stop users uploading content to the site, and plenty of clips from Japanese TV shows can again be found on YouTube. "We are seriously concerned about the current situation where the Notice and Takedown scheme, aimed [at preventing] copyright infringements, is not functioning well due to the large amount of illegal uploads," the letter said. "While we expect you to promptly take adequate and necessary measures to prevent copyright infringement on the YouTube Web site, until you do so, we request you to take provisional measures ... in order to prevent illegal uploads of audio-visual works, which copyrights are neither owned by the persons posting the works on the Web site themselves nor licensed by the right owners." The preventative measures requested by the group include the posting of a message in Japanese on the YouTube home page warning that posting copyrighted material can be illegal; that users may be liable to civil or criminal prosecution; and a register of names and addresses of users posting content and the termination on-request of user accounts that are used or have been used since June 2006 illegally to upload copyrighted material. The group also requests a reply to the letter by Dec. 15. YouTube could not be immediately reached for comment. Â
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Entertainment conglomerate Viacom Inc. today sued video-sharing site YouTube and corporate parent Google Inc. over what it alleges is massive copyright infringement, escalating a battle over how video content is distributed over the Internet.
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Viacom Inc.  on Friday  demanded that Google Inc.'s  online video service  YouTube remove more than 100,000 video clips after they failed  to reach a distribution agreement.
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The government has agreed to unblock the popular video-sharing site after a flap involving videos mocking its king, saying YouTube has agreed in turn to block videos flagged as illegal.
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(InfoWorld) - Media company Viacom said on Tuesday that it was filing suit against Google Inc. for what it alleges are "massive intentional copyright infringement" of Viacomâs property. Viacom is seeking more than $1 billion in damages and asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to place an injunction on Google and to prevent the company from sharing around 160,000 unauthorized video clips on the company's YouTube video sharing site, Viacom said in a statement. Google was not immediately available for comment. Viacom, which owns popular brands including MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon, said its programming had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times on YouTube, the video sharing site that Google purchased in October, 2006, for $1.6 billion. âYouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to othersâ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google," Viacom said in a statement.Â  "Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws." The suit by Viacom follows a notice from Viacom in February, 2007 under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to remove its videos from YouTube. Viacom alleges that Google does little to police copyright violations on YouTube. "This behavior stands in stark contrast to the actions of other significant distributors, who have recognized the fair value of entertainment content and have concluded agreements to make content legally available to their customers around the world," the company said. Shortly after buying YouTube in October, Google struck deals with Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group to offer music videos on YouTube and share advertising revenue. The company also negotiated with Viacom on a similar deal, but Viacom claims those negotiations were unproductive and that Google is following an "unlawful business model." "Therefore, we must turn to the courts to prevent Google and YouTube from continuing to steal value from artists and to obtain compensation for the significant damage they have caused," Viacom said.
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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 Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - A press advocacy group is "dismayed" about Google's decision to block YouTube videos from viewers in Thailand that are considered inappropriate or illegal by that Asian government. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), calling Google's reported agreement with the Thai government "a censorship deal," said on Wednesday that the move creates "a dangerous precedent, which could have global implications for freedom of expression." "There is a clear potential for abuse of people's right to information, which seems much more likely now [that] Google has demonstrated its willingness to collude with governments to effectively censor information," IFJ Asia-Pacific Director Jacqueline Park said in a statement. The Thailand Embassy in Washington, D.C., didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. On Friday and during the weekend, various news outlets reported from Bangkok that Thailand had lifted a five-month ban on YouTube for its residents after Google agreed to block videos the government finds objectionable. In an article posted Friday, the International Herald Tribune quoted Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, Thailand's minister of information and communications technology, as saying that YouTube had agreed to block clips deemed offensive to Thai culture or that violate Thai law. People accessing YouTube from outside of Thailand will be able to view the videos blocked in that country, the minister told the International Herald Tribune. Thailand blocked all access to Google's YouTube, the world's most popular video-sharing site, in early April after someone posted a video the government considered insulting to the country's king. YouTube is "pleased to hear" that access to its site has been reinstated in Thailand, a YouTube spokesman said via e-mail Wednesday. "We appreciate the constructive dialogue we have had with the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Ministry.Â YouTube remains committed to removing videos when they violate our content policies, and we will continue to work closely with authorities in Thailand," the YouTube spokesman wrote. YouTube has taken steps to make sure that its users in Thailand will not be able to access videos that have been identified as violating the country's laws, he confirmed. Asked if YouTube's parent company had any reaction to the IFJ's criticism, he said the question should answered by a Google official. At press time, no one from Google had responded to this question. Those found guilty of offending the monarchy face serious penalties in Thailand. Days before the YouTube incident, a Swiss national living in Thailand got slapped with a 10-year jail sentence for defacing images of the king. This is the latest incident in which Google and other providers of Internet services, such as Yahoo and Microsoft, find themselves criticized for censorship by human rights organizations, press advocacy groups, U.S. legislators, and shareholders. For example, several Internet companies have been criticized for agreeing to censor content in their China sites and search engines that the Chinese government finds objectionable. Yahoo in particular has been blasted often for cooperating with the Chinese governmentÂ and providing information that has led to the arrest of dissidents and journalists. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others invariably defend themselves saying that they must comply with the local laws of the countries in which they do business and that governments must collaborate to establish international standards of operation. "We always welcome constructive discussions with local governments around the world on similar issues. We are committed to addressing these questions in ways that both respect relevant laws and cultural concerns and are consistent with our global content policies," the YouTube spokesman wrote. When it comes to content that may break local laws, YouTube works with local authorities to resolve the issues. "We think this approach strikes the right balance betweenÂ freedom of expression and respect for local law," he wrote. Thailand recently introduced the Computer Crime Act, which gives authorities the power to seize the computers of people suspected of accessing or creating content deemed insulting or pornographic, according to the IFJ. Activist, social worker and webmaster Sombat Bun-ngam-anong is currently serving a 12-day detention order for alleged defamation for violating the Act, the IFJ said in Wednesday's statement. Also on Wednesday, Reporters Without Borders, another international press watchdog group, reported that a Thai blogger named Pichai has been reportedly detained for the past 12 days, also for violating the Act, which this group says took effect on July 18. The blogger's arrest "confirms our fears about the dangers of a law that is supposed to combat pornography but turns out to be a way of restricting and controlling press freedom," Reporters Without Borders charged.
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'We'll mess with your copyrights. But don't mess with ours' Viacom has slapped an American political candidate for posting his own video to YouTube. With its latest YouTube crackdown, the media behemoth seems to be sending a new message to internet video-sharers across the globe: "You can't mess with our copyrighted content. But we can mess with yours."â¦
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SAN JOSE, Calif. _ In a move that could end up setting the terms for how content is distributed on the Internet, Viacom demanded YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized video clips from its site Friday morning after a months-long negotiation over licensing terms broke down.
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Google Inc. on Friday took a  swipe at media conglomerate Viacom Inc. which is suing for $1  billion over &quot;massive copyright infringement&quot; by its video  sharing Web site YouTube.
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Can homegrown software help Google and YouTube defuse a $1 billion lawsuit from Viacom? That&#39;s the question underlying the announcement that Google is about to test a new system to ferret out unauthorized film and video clips on YouTube.
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In an attempt to challenge Google's YouTube, Viacom announces plans to make its videos available on thousands of sites.
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Music industry icon complains that the onus is on artists and rights' creators to police YouTube at their own expense.
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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.