Since Google’s big acquisition of YouTube on October 9, it seems that the video site has become a big-time target for angry content owners. Almost two weeks ago, the Google-owned YouTube complied with the requests of the Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers to take down about 29,549 videos because of copyright infringement.
Last week, YouTube complied with another big request to take down a large number of videos courtesy of Viacom, which owns Comedy Central. The video site was asked to take down clips containing content from its Comedy Central shows, which include “South Park,” “The Daily Show,” and “The Colbert Report.” Over the course of last weekend YouTube met these terms by taking down thousands of the Comedy Central clips.
YouTube users who were responsible for uploading the Comedy Central content were warned that if they posted another video clip with content originating from Viacom, their account would be immediately terminated.
There are still numerous Comedy Central clips up on the site, and one user posted a video last Saturday that brings up the possibility that only Comedy Central clips exceeding five minutes in length were the targets of takedowns. However, there are still clips from Comedy Central shows that exceed five minutes and were posted well before the recent Viacom request that are still up and running on YouTube. It could be possible that the removal of these videos is taking place in phases.
A large reason why Viacom pursued this route instead of partnering with YouTube in an advertising revenue-sharing deal is probably due to their jealous eyes focusing on advertising dollars. Now that Google is at the helm of YouTube, it seems that Viacom turned sour on the idea that Google would be raking in advertising revenues from its own content, which Viacom streams on its own ad-supported “MotherLoad,” an online outlet for Comedy Central clips.
Although YouTube has notched deals with the likes of CBS, which now posts various video clips from its shows, it has always been feared that big media companies like NBC and now Viacom would not hop onto the ad revenue-sharing bandwagon. The worst-case scenario is easy to imagine, especially if other big content owners decide to demand similar takedowns.
If popular content deemed to be infringing copyright laws continues to be taken down because of strong demands by media companies, the overall quality of YouTube will hinge more and more on its users’ original videos. This would cause an inevitable decline in the overall quality of the site, which will likely lead to a drop in the number of eyeballs viewing the site, and this would not fare well for Google’s high advertising aspirations inherent in its expensive purchase of YouTube.
This is not to mention that Mark Cuban’s strong disapproval of a YouTube purchase would find strong substantiation.
Sources:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10302006/tv/no_more_daily_
youtube_tv_.htm
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/30/business/youtube.php
http://news.com.com/YouTube+takes+down+Comedy+Central+clips/
2100-1030_3-6130868.html?tag=nefd.top
http://news.com.com/YouTube+erases+clips+per+Japan+media+
demand/2100-1030_3-6127857.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z1n033pK04
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