The Pot Calling The Kettle Viacom

Posted by Keith Hahn, Aug 30, 2007, 1:44pm

No one is safe from infringing on Viacom's copyrights. Take this latest example, from BoingBoing:

Christopher Knight made three commercials as part of his campaign to run for a seat on the Rockingham County Board of Education. He posted them on YouTube. Viacom's VH1 ran one of the commercials on its show Web Junk 2.0, without seeking Knight's permission. Knight then posted the Web Junk 2.0 segment on YouTube. Yesterday, YouTube pulled the clip, at the request of Viacom, which said Knight was infringing on its copyright.

Infringing Viacom claims copyright infringement [BoingBoing]

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Comments

Posted by Anal_yst, Aug 30, 2007 2:21PM

Can we file a class action law suit against Viacom on behalf of, uh, everyone?

In the realm of reality one has to wonder how much filing and proceding with all these infringment lawsuits is costing the company vs. the "lost revenues" suffered as a result of said "infringement". I'd imagine their legal team books out somewhere around a few grand/hour for what is probably already in the hundreds (if not thousands) of hours range. Clearly cost/benefit analysis is not Sumner Redstone's strong suit.

Posted by , Aug 30, 2007 3:04PM

where do you work? i want to make sure im not using any of your "analyses"

Posted by Anal_yst, Aug 30, 2007 5:13PM

Whats wrong (besides the "few grand/hour" for the legal team) there? How many viewers checking out something on youtube while dicking around at work or otherwise would have watched the original broadcast? Content creators/license holders need to learn a lesson from the record industry. Either you can fight hand and tooth to sue everyone who violates your copyrights, or you can embrace technology and the change in distribution and viewer habits.

What does Viacom (etc) think they're going to accomplish? They shut down Napster and kazaa, Klite, Limewire, BitTorrent, etc sprung up in its place, even stronger and broader than the original thing which they sought to block.

Posted by , Aug 30, 2007 11:40PM

Agreed (mostly) with the Anal_yst, but the 1st post was suspect, the rebuttal does actually make sense. On the whole, neither of you are right, the correct response is 'media is a huge clusterfuck' and no one knows fuck about shit. Any other "analysis" is irrelevant.

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