Reuters is reporting that NBC Universal and Viacom have filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of Robert Tur, who sued Youtube in July for hosting and actively propagating his famous footage of trucker Reginald Denny being beaten during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. NBC Universal and Viacom are claiming that:
Many of NBCU’s most valuable copyrighted works have been copied, performed, and disseminated without authorization by YouTube and other similarly operated Websites. NBCU has a strong interest in preserving the strength and viability of all of its legal rights and remedies in response to such conduct.
Viacom has already filed its own $1 billion lawsuit against Google and dumped Google once again when it partnered with Yahoo for Search Ads, betting on the relatively new and untested Panama technology. NBC however surprised a few by filing the brief because they also have a content partnership with Youtube. NBC has also announced that they will partner with News Corp to launch their own video sharing platform which makes it clear that they want to want to go together with both parties in order to “eat the pie and have it too”. English Premier League has also sued Youtube last week. It seems that Youtube’s copyright nightmare is starting to materialize.
Part of the problem lies in Youtube’s inability to compensate Media Corps for their content. Youtube is incapable of this because it does not have pre-roll advertisement technology and traditional banner and CPC ads are not enough to generate sizable revenues from videos that gets large number of views as a result of being embedded on other sites. To make things look uglier Revver, Metacafe and Joost already offer pre-roll advertisement and Joost as a result of this has managed to cut content licensing deals with a number of Media companies.
On related news Youtube has announced revenue sharing with its popular users and is also claiming that their anti-copyright technology called “Claim Your Content” will ship any day now. Our previous coverage of Youtube is here.
- YouTube Starts Revenue Sharing With Power Users
Bilal Hameed - May 4, 2007 - Youtube Gets Sued By English Premier League
Bilal Hameed - May 4, 2007 - Yahoo Signs Online Advertisement Deal With Comcast
Bilal Hameed - May 1, 2007 - Youtube Soon To Launch “Claim Your Content” Filtering Technology
Bilal Hameed - April 17, 2007 - Viacom Partners With Yahoo, Dumps Google In Search Advertising
Bilal Hameed - April 10, 2007
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