No doubt the high priced attorneys working for Viacom will have to prove CEO Philippe’s Dauman’s words in court—or at least sell them well enough to convince those that matter.
The rhetoric reporters recorded last night was far from clouded: Eric Schmidt and Google had no intention of fighting copyright violations on YouTube so long as it helped them get to the top of the online video market.
Cnet’s Greg Sandoval paraphrases Dauman’s remarks, all of which seem to fall into the I-think-this-is-how-it-went-down category. Dauman said Viacom was actually relieved when Google bought YouTube, then a “rogue company,” because they figured could do something about the piracy problem there.
That same problem, though, helped propel YouTube to a command of 70 million eyeball sets, making a billion-dollar battle, basically, worth it.
He could be right. It wasn’t too long ago Schmidt, while in Japan, told reporters lawsuits were just a part of modern day business—you know, product, financing, marketing, revenues, infrastructure, management, IT, properties, taxes, and lawsuits. Just how it is these days.
Then again, if you’re ever skeptical about anything your life, be skeptical about what a CEO says about his own company in times of controversy, or when there’s money on the line. And there’s always money on the line. That, and anything a politician says.
Google did at least feign interest in fighting piracy on YouTube with late-introduced filters that don’t apparently work. Go ahead, see if you can still find anything you want there. You think if it wasn’t there Google would have half the traffic it does? A third? A quarter?
There are teenagers frequently in my house. YouTube is this generation’s MTV. Only problem is Viacom owns the original MTV, which in the 80’s was the previous generation’s VH1 (Hint: M stands for “music”).
Hmmm. Maybe MTV should go back to playing music videos?
