Viacom vs. YouTube (i.e., Google)

Viacom fires. Google responds.

I still think Google is boned. There is no fundamental difference between the Napster case and the YouTube case. Both were centrally controlled services hosting arbitrary content. Neither one themselves posted infringing content, but both derived their business model from pirated content. If Google's argument rests on the DMCA's safe harbor provisions alone, that should have been enough to save Napster, and it wasn't. I think the argument is going to rest much more on the Betamax-ish question of "significant non-infringing use." In other words, the only hope Google has is to argue that there's sufficient non-pirated content on YouTube to justify the site's existence independent of all the tv shows. Which, actually, is not beyond the realm of possibility, but it's not at all clear cut.

Incidentally, it's not that I want Google to lose, per se. Every argument by the media conglomerates about the civic importance of intellectual property is horse-shit. If the RIAA and the MPAA went away tomorrow, artistic development would do just fine thank you, and our economy would be just dandy too (by the way). They're just hoarding, and they don't like the idea of someone muscling in on their territory. At the same time though, Google these days seems to define the term "hubris," and I would love to see them dragged back to reality. You know, the place where the rest of us live where there are actual laws and companies are actually responsible for making money (instead of being paid by starry-eyed fucktard bankers to dick around all day)?