Is Viacom Doing To Independent Content Creators In 2010 What It Says YouTube Did To Viacom In 2006?
from the questions,-questions... dept
Igor Zevaka was the first of a few of you to point to John Green’s video where he discusses the Viacom/YouTube lawsuit with a bit of a twist, highlighting the fact that Viacom is making money off of amatuer content, without the rights to do so. Viacom owns Spike.com (a subsidiary of MTV), into which it folded iFilm.com, home of all sorts of amateur content, including content such as a Jonathan Coulton video that has a clear Creative Commons license — but only for non-commercial use. However, on Spike.com… it’s covered in ads sold by Viacom. So, Green wants to know, has Viacom paid Coulton?
Either way, it would be interesting to see if anyone has more evidence that Viacom properties are improperly monetizing CC non-commercially-licensed videos. That would seem like a relevant point in the ongoing lawsuit…
Filed Under: copyright, culture, jonathon coulton, spike, user generated videos
Companies: google, spike, viacom, youtube
Comments on “Is Viacom Doing To Independent Content Creators In 2010 What It Says YouTube Did To Viacom In 2006?”
Creative Commons? That’s not in the constitution.
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That’s right, it’s not. Neither are the current laws for copyright.
In this case, Viacom has written permission from Coulton to use his copyrighted works, as long as they don’t use it commercially. They used it commercially, thus violating his copyright and their agreement.
They should pay up, just like they want all other infringers to do.
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Neither is copyright!
Shouldn’t Viacom also owe money to each of the original photographers (assuming the CC licenses under which they released their photos were also non-commercial)?
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yup
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Yes they should, you have to love the second edge of the sword sometimes. The big media companies are setting themselves up for a huge failure in the future. They are pushing for laws to allow them to maintain a monopoly on content, without adapting to the current trends, without optimizing their business models, and violating all the rules themselves.
Its slowly coming back to bite them on the behind. Its really fun to watch, knowing full well what the trends are and from that what the future holds for them.
copyright gives the rights holder the right to set forth terms for the use of their work, for example a contract. creative commons is a contract that is drawn up to give both the rights holder and user of the work clear guidelines on what can be done.
whilst creative commons may not be in the constitution but copyright, which is what creative commons needs to work, is in the constitution.
“I’m a bit disappointed that it (a) does not link to the Spike.com Coulton video he’s discussing (I went searching for it, and it looks like it’s been taken down)”
There’s a caption in the vid at around 2:25 that says it’s been taken down.
actually, there is a problem here: if the video is submitted to ifilm under their terms, which includes granting them a license, then there may be a ‘conflict of rights’. in theory, the submitter had granted rights that they may not be allowed to grant.
you have to track how the videos were obtained, and if ifilm has any way to know who submitted them.
Re: o rly
And exactly the same argument back at you, seeing Viacom is suing YouTube for user-uploaded content. How is YouTube supposed to know if the submitter had the rights or not?
Re: Re: o rly
without knowing who their submitters are, you tube should (and mostly does) assume no rights. ifilm, if i understand correctly, was a “producer submits” site. i think that iflim likely has better track of their contributors.
Re: Re: o rly
Magic!
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“you have to track how the videos were obtained, and if ifilm has any way to know who submitted them.”
Why does ifilm not have super natural powers which would enable them to know who submitted the content and whether the subby did indeed own the copyright? It is their responsibility to ensure this is the case and futhermore ifilm should be held accountable for their indiscretion. Seems they just steal stuff from others with the sole purpose of tirning a profit from it.
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sarcasm wins you few points here. If ifilm required people to sign up with accounts that disclosed full name, and information, and required disclosure, then they would know who submitted the clips.
remember, ifilm was a short movie and video production site created by a movie producer type, not a slash and burn copyright violationhaus.
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So you’re saying that Viacom steals content? It all makes sense now!
viacom and cc
here are some examples:
http://www.spike.com/video/viacom-stole-from/3383086
Re: viacom and cc
That’s brilliant. 😀
Re: viacom and cc
very good!
(would have been better 2-3 mins shorter 🙂 )
Re: viacom and cc
That’s the most delicious irony I’ve seen in a long, long time.
It would be fun if Google blocked them for violation of TOS.
Um…he doesn’t say that Viacom wants a cut of YouTube’s advertising. He says that Viacom DESERVES a cut of the ad revenue for their videos, but that Viacom is instead asking for a portion of YT’s overall value (hence the $1bn lawsuit). As for how he came up with what Viacom owes Coulton, as a YouTube partner John Green knows how much online advertising is worth, so he’d know how much Coulton should be getting for the 18,000+ views his video received on Spike.com. Similarly, the discrepancy between the true value of online advertising and $1bn Viacom is asking for in their lawsuit is probably how he came up with the second, much larger figure that Viacom should pay Coulton if they don’t want to come across as big, fat hypocrites.
Oops
JoCo remembered something from a while back.