Social Cache.
A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

As CNet reports today, Hollywood and YouTube may be edging towards their own version of Pax Romana. Meanwhile, beyond the learned walls of the law courts and Google’s battle with Viacom, we here at Social Cache have been scratching our heads over Viacom’s position.

Obviously Viacom is up in arms over what it argues is copyright infringement whenever one of its artists’ songs are used in a user-generated video. Their lawyers are even arguing that in most cases they want to set aside the notion of fair use. That in itself is ridiculous as in a lot of circumstances Viacom has stepped over the edge of copyright boundaries. In 2007 Viacom sent YouTube 100,000 takedown notices! And as this video from the EFF points out, many of those videos that Viacom had asked YouTube to remove, were not infringing anyone’s copyright.

We ourselves received a takedown notice and had a video removed from YouTube. The video was of one of our numerous snowboarding expeditions to Mt Hood and it included a clip of a song by the group White Zombie. We could have argued that under the law if we had used the music for parody, for comment, for criticism, for news reporting or for non-commercial use then we’d be in the clear. In this instance it was the latter – non-commercial use. We couldn’t be bothered, we weren’t that attached to the video and anyway, like millions of other folks, we put up videos at an alarming rate. Here’s our latest.

So here’s the Nemo and Social Cash POV. By removing our video Viacom denied thousands of people the pleasure of hearing a White Zombie song. One of its own artists! And no money was changing hands. One solution – Viacom should provide YouTube with a license from a roster of its artists who agree that their music can be used in a video for non-commercial use. In return YouTube provides its users with a simple license that allows users to add music from these artists to their amateur videos for non-commercial use for a small fee of, perhaps $3.00. Now Viacom and its artists get a share of this revenue, YouTube users won’t receive takedown notices, and Viacom can go a long way to recouping its, no doubt, millions of dollars it is spending on these lawsuits.

You’re welcome. Let me know why it won’t work….

Meanwhile over at MySpace, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has a business that’s built on the backs of thousands of unsigned musicians. Who is looking out for them?

In an article in the Wall Street Journal today [subscription req.] a report says that YouTube will will fall short of revenue expectations. The twist to this chatter is that Google has found that 80% to 90% of video watchers hate to watch pre-roll advertising and they leave the video the minute they see any hint of a pre-roll. The story goes that Google intends to ignore its own research and go ahead with pre-roll anyway.

And the reason that most pages on YouTube are ad free? Because Google is fearful of showing that it is profiting from copyright infringement. They already in the middle of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Viacom. That apparently leaves Google with only 4% of the videos being legally a-ok to advertise around as they have been approved by the copyright owners.

Bottom line for Google and the lawsuit they face, is that it is very unlikely they will receive a ruling in their favor to make money from copyright-violating content. It also will be a barrier to entry for anyone trying to launch a social media advertising program around these big content sites. Even Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation doesn’t own the copyright to hundreds of thousands of songs on its MySpace site.

As we celebrate Independence Day we can mull this over. Regardless of the facts of the case and Viacom’s complaint it would seem that, as the NYT reports, “the order raised concerns among users and privacy advocates that the online video viewing habits of hundreds of millions of people could be exposed.”

Via the New York Times:
A federal judge in New York has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom a database linking users of YouTube, the Web’s largest video site by far, with every clip they have watched there.

For every video on YouTube, the judge required Google to turn over to Viacom the login name of every user who watched it, and the address of their computer, known as an I.P., or Internet protocol, address. Both companies have argued that such data cannot be used to unmask the identities of individual users with certainty. But in many cases, technology experts and others have been able to link I.P. addresses to individuals using records of their online activities.

Here’s the back story on the lawsuit from FindLaw:

Viacom and its companies filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube and Google seeking at least $1 billion in damages.

The media company charges that “YouTube has harnessed technology to willfully infringe copyrights on a huge scale,” by taking “the value of creative content on a massive scale for YouTube’s benefit without payment or license. The suit alleges that the copyright infringement is on such a large scale that it “identified more than 150,000 unauthorized clips of their copyrighted programming on YouTube that had been viewed an astounding 1.5 billion times.”

Viacom details the “legitimate licensed channels” that it works with to distribute the company’s copyright-protected content. These partners include Apple’s iTunes Music Store and Joost.

The suit also charges that YouTube selectively deploys filtering technology “[b]y limiting copyright protection to business partners who have agreed to grant it licenses,” even though copyright holders are entitled to protection of their works under federal copyright law without such business agreements.