Altra pistola fumante nel caso Viacom-Google

Viacom dice che Google Video stava lavorando bene, ma erdeva terreno nei confronti di YouTube che faceva leva sulla pirateria (e Google lo sapeva); a un certo punto Google ha deciso di fregarsene e beneficiare dalle violazioni del copyright.

Viacom pubblica presentazioni e mail interne di Google che dicono, tra l’altro

  • YouTube’s business model is completely sustained by pirated content.
  • YouTube’s content is all free, and much of it is highly sought after pirated clips.
  • [W]e should beat YouTube by improving features and user experience, not being a ‘rogue enabler’ of content theft.

Poi Google decide, ciononostante, di comprare Youtube e poi ..

Google nonetheless went ahead with the acquisition and explicitly embraced infringement as a business model. Indeed, not long before the acquisition, the executive in charge of managing Google’s core product offerings, including search, sent Google’s co-founders and CEO an internal presentation explicitly advocating that Google use the threat of copyright theft to advance its business interests:
  • “We may be able to coax or force access to viral premium content… Threaten a change in copyright policy… use threat to get standard deal sign-up”

Viacom – YouTube Litigation | Viacom Statements | Viacom Releases Additional Documents.

Google made a deliberate, calculated business decision not only to profit from copyright infringement, but also to use the threat of copyright infringement to try to coerce rights owners like Viacom into licensing their content on Google’s terms….

YouTube and Google made a calculated business decision to use other people’s copyrighted content as their start-up capital. To add insult to injury, Google then implemented fingerprinting and other copyright protection services but only extended those services to companies willing to license content on Google’s terms.

…Google’s public relations machine has been trying to shift the blame to us, because some Viacom employees did in fact use YouTube for promotional purposes. But this is a problem YouTube and Google created, not Viacom. We asked for the ability to identify to YouTube which clips were promotional, but YouTube and Google did nothing because they didn’t want to know. In the law this is called “willful blindness.” Just last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York noted that “willful blindness” is just another form of intentional infringement.

If you like this post, please consider sharing it.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *