Viacom’s Control of Content–Slip Slidin’ Away

Russell Shaw provides a good portion of the text of the $1 billion USD lawsuit between Viacom and Google. It seems to boil down to one point: who should be responsible for policing the uploading of copyrighted content?

I don’t think either party can effectively police this. People will find creative ways around whatever mechanisms that Google or Viacom might come up with. Users will just use other services to do the same thing that they’re doing with YouTube.

In a digital age, nobody has control of their content. It’s only a matter of time before it shows up online. As much as Viacom and others would like to think they can control it, they can’t. If they can’t do it on YouTube, they’ll do it somewhere else. How many copyright battles can Viacom afford to battle? And what if the content is uploaded outside of the jurisdiction of the US?

The smart companies will figure out how to use this free distribution of content to their advantage. The question is: will Viacom figure this out before it’s too late?