In a Manhattan courthouse, Google and Viacom have squared off for three years, corporate media giants fighting over YouTube. Viacom has the money to scream for many more years about the 62,000 plus and counting copyrighted video streams that are posted on YouTube and passed along by Google. Didn’t that nastiness with music file sharing and Napster eventually get resolved? Alas, Google isn’t Napster and is no pushover. Google makes the rules. How millions of folks do their YouTube business and shoot video clips around the internet is at stake here. No more says Viacom.
One thing already is clear. In taking years to process important claims, the law and the courts will fall hopelessly behind technology advances. Judicial decisions will weigh in far too late to control the continuing struggle between the quest for free content, and the need to pay people for their creative work. In Court papers filed this week, Google and Viacom each claim that the case should be decided as a matter of law in its favor. Both have a hard time pretending to represent the common folk
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment