Viacom

MTV & MySpace place ads on pirated content

Pete Wylie — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:35:28 -0500

MySpace and MTV Networks announced a unique solution to online video piracy Monday that the companies say will allow monetization of pirated videos uploaded to MySpace. German firm Auditude will power a solution to analyze MySpace video uploads for unauthorized MTV Networks clips. If the platform finds a video that matches the MTV metadata in the Auditude database, an overlay ad will be placed along with the video.

So instead of fighting to remove copyrighted content posted to sites like MySpace without permission, the agreement will attempt simply to monetize the video. Clips of popular MTV Networks properties like "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" now will run with ads when posted illegally.

"Up until now, if you uploaded a clip, you couldn't do it in a legitimate way. It either was blocked or taken down," said Jeff Berman, president of marketing and sales at MySpace, in a release. "This allows us to go from a world of no to a world of yes."

The program reportedly can recognize clips that are only a few seconds long, and place advertising with the content posted to MySpace user pages. The MySpace MTV arrangement is similar to a YouTube program that gives the content owner the option of placing revenue-generating advertising with their clip or just removing it from the site.

"This is a step to let consumers upload videos and let us make money on it," said Mika Salmi, president Global Digital Media, MTV Networks. Both MTV and MySpace are confident that the technology will be the solution to the legal battles between copyright owners and online video sites.

For more:
- see the efluxmedia story here

Related articles
MySpaceTV launches user-gen video uploads
Viacom Suit against Veoh dismissed

SPOTLIGHT: YouTube increases market share

Pete Wylie — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:46:44 -0400

YouTube continued to widen its enormous lead in the online video space, claiming 49 percent of all online video views in July. Its eight closest competitors, like Yahoo!, AOL and Veoh, all lost fractions of their market shares to YouTube.

YouTube's share increased 1.8 percent from May and 8.1 percent from the same month last year.

The online video sharing site, purchased by Google last year, also increased its unique monthly visitor count. Looks like smooth sailing ahead for YouTube, especially after last week's favorable Veoh and Paramount court cases.

For more:
- see the metrics at seekingalpha.com

Suit against Veoh dismissed

Pete Wylie — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:38:16 -0400

Less than a week after another important online video court decision out of California, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed copyright infringement charges against Veoh. The charges, brought against the online video site by adult entertainment company IO, claimed Veoh infringed on IO's copyrights when some of IO's videos were posted to Veoh.

Veoh removed the videos in question, which was a major part of the judge's finding that Veoh was in compliance with safe harbor regulations included in the DMCA.

"Veoh has a strong DMCA policy, takes active steps to limit incidents of infringement on its website and works diligently to keep unauthorized works off its site," Judge Howard Lloyd wrote in his decision.

Google and YouTube are already trumpeting the findings as a precursor to a favorable result in their suit with Viacom over similar alleged violations.

YouTube's chief counsel Zahavah Levine said in a statement, "It is great to see the Court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights."

For more:
- read the full blog post from The New York Times here
- Tech Crunch offers the full ruling and tech-centric analysis of the victory for the "good guys"

Google Protects YouTube User Viewing Data; Employee Viewing Looms

Doug Mohney — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:03:17 -0400

Google has cut a deal with Viacom and the other parties suing it for copyright infringement to protect private information of YouTube users. Now, about scouring that 12 TB or so of data.

Viacom sought all YouTube viewing data, as well as YouTube's source code, business models, and its kitchen sink as a part of its discovery process for the court suit. Earlier this month, a judge ordered Google to hand over video-viewing data. Google and Viacom have been in negotiations as to how to do so. Viacom wanted everything, including IP addresses, but Google argued that providing such data would violate user privacy.

Under the terms of the deal, specific YouTube user data such as user IDs and IP addresses will be replaced by a substitute "unique value" so Viacom can correlate the data to what it wants.

Still looming over Google's head is what YouTube employees have viewed and uploaded and in what context. If employees were consistently uploading copyrighted materials, Viacom could make a clear case that YouTube was intentionally violating copyright.

For more:
- MarketWatch reports on YouTube data privacy deal

Related articles:
Google and Viacom fight over YouTube employee records
Preliminaries in Viacom v. YouTube

Google and Viacom fight over YouTube employee records

Doug Mohney — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:01:40 -0400

In the latest fight over who knew what when over at YouTube, Viacom wants to know which videos YouTube employees have watched and uploaded to the site. Google is just saying no.

According to sources cited by News.com, the dispute over what YouTube employees may or may not have done is holding up a final agreement to anonymize personal information belonging to YouTube users. Knowing what YouTube employees did gets down to the nitty-gritty if YouTube (the company) either knew about copyrighted materials being on the site (Interesting question, since an employee would have to view a copyright work to confirm it was not supposed to be there before deleting it) and/or uploaded copyrighted materials. The latter means big bucks to all parties.

Google has been accused of encouraging massive copyright violations through YouTube, so if employees were intentionally "salting" YouTube content with copyright material, it means the company could be liable for billions.

For more:
- News.com reports Viacom wants YouTube employee records

Related articles:
Preliminaries in Viacom v. YouTube
Hulu CEO Calls Out YouTube at NAB

Preliminaries in Viacom v. YouTube

Doug Mohney — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:24:11 -0400

A judge has put down some ground rules for Viacom's suit against YouTube. The media giant can look at user viewing data, but source code is off limits.

In its copyright infringement suit, Viacom had sought to review a whole bunch of YouTube's source code and other intellectual property. It doesn't get that, but Google has to turn over all removed videos--a number in the millions--as well as the 12 terabytes of video logging data YouTube has collecting (And good luck with processing that, Viacom).

Viacom doesn't get access to Google's advertising and video content schemas or data on private videos uploaded to YouTube, so there is some protection for YouTube users. But Viacom will get access to the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address and video clip details.

Some fear Viacom will use the data to go after individual copyright violators, but the company says it won't do so. Google wants to be able to anonymize the data before it hands it over to Viacom. To borrow the cliche, stay tuned.

For more:
- ZDNet's coverage of the YouTube v. Viacom case
- CNet notes protective order on YouTube data

Related articles:
U.S. Online Video Up 13 Percent, YouTube Still Top
Viacom Launches Spike.com

Viacom Launches Spike.com

Doug Mohney — Thu, 29 May 2008 23:38:52 -0400

Viacom has officially launched Spike.com, a merger of SpikeTV.com and iFilm.com. The new channel includes full-length episodes from Spike TV and more than 300,000 clips and viral videos from iFilm's library.

Spike.com is aimed solidly at the male 18-34 demographic; new content includes a new partnership with Playboy.com and a web series from the creator of "Angry Video Game Nerd." Spike has its sights on recapturing some of the 3 million unique visitors iFilm had before it folded; Spike has around 1.6 million viewers.

Media buyers like Spike for aggressively offering up full-length, ad-supported episodes of their shows online. Executives intend to pursue an aggressive syndication model for Spike.com, a philosophy that runs counter to parent Viacom's keep-it-in-house strategy.

A Spike.com Facebook application is in the works and the company already has partnerships with a number of streaming video sites, including Daily Motion and Veoh.

For more:
- Ad Age Scoops on Spike.com Upgrades

Related articles:
The Olympics, Car Porn, and Online Syndication
MySpaceTV goes international and traditional