Back in 1974, Bertrand Tavernier shot a beautiful movie with fantastic actors about a 18e c. conspiracy. The story is not what I'm refering to today, but the title remains as one of the best movie titles ever: "que la Fête Commence" = let the party begin.
6 months ago I wrote in a post, that the acquisition of Youtube by Google showed that audience had won the battle over copyright. And that the collective fantasy these days was about audience (not witstanding copyright infringement) and not about creating going concerns on a strong legal basis.
The empire strikes back today with Act 1: Viacom sues GooTube for $1b. This should be only the beginning in a case where :
* content right holders strike deals with new "legit" distribution partners (see Viacom's deal with Joost only weeks ago)
* content right holders dance tango with non "legit" distribution players, playing both to their large audience and to their pockets for rights agreements.
In the end, it is my understanding that each player will converge with views from the other party, and start cleaning up their content, pay some rev-share fees and protect IP. It's in the interest of everyone.
The bad news ? The small guys trying to enter the market late will go belly up, the elder guys who played foul at the beginning will reap the reward for operating under the radar for a while. Still a case for some moral lessons in here.
and as it says in this comment on CNN Money:
"One lawyer suggested that Viacom's suit is just a tough negotiating tactic and that ultimately, Viacom, Google and YouTube would resolve their issues out of court."
Techcrunch adds:
"John Murrell calls this a “knife fight
” and I think he’s dead on. There’s no way this gets settled with Google paying any actual damages. Google will be furiously working to sign a deal with Viacom to get this lawsuit to go away and a licensing deal in place. They’re on a very slippery slope right now, with the Napster carcass lying limp at the bottom."
Don has commented yet.
