The acquisition of YouTube by Google has prompted more than a few negative articles. Using Google News I linked to a few of them below. Most of the articles tend to focus on Google taking the risk of billions in exposure to legal damages from major media companies. If this happens in any serious way it would be the biggest blunder of the Internet decade … and there have been quite a few blunders!
Of course it is likely that Google has analyzed their copyright liability and found it minimal … at least in the U.S. After all, Google has fought many copyright infringement lawsuits over Google News summaries, Google Image Search and its Book Search and has won most of them based on fair use principals. It is likely that Google’s lawyers believe that YouTube (and Google Video) are on solid legal ground because they limit video clips to only 10 minutes each. Is ten minutes fair use? Google must think so.
There are other arguments they can use as well such as a claim that the individual uploader is the copyright violator, not Google. I doubt we will see that kind of legal defense however considering it didn’t work to well for Napster and MP3.com.
Google YouTube success ‘not a given’ VNUNet.com
Google YouTube: Holding content owners hostage? ZDNet
Google YouTube kingdom: Benevolent or despotic? ZDNet
Will Google Take the Internet Over the Cliff? AlterNet
Google love waning: Has Google peaked? ZDNet
Google YouTube Wrap-up: Legal and Competitive Fallout eWeek, NY
Dick Parsons Says Talk to Us or Else GigaOm
Does YouTube Make Google a Big Target Wall Street Journal
Rich Ord
Publisher, Murdok
