Over the past two years, YouTube has taken the country by storm. From playgrounds to water coolers, anyone who owns a computer with an Internet connection has at some point talked about the latest YouTube clip. Videos posted on YouTube range from the bizarre to the gruesome to the downright stolen. Here is where Viacom has encountered a problem — they have found more than 150,000 clips to be illegally posted on YouTube. In a billion dollar lawsuit, the media conglomerate has aimed its crosshairs at Google's newly acquired asset, YouTube.
Not only is Viacom's lawsuit a nuisance, but it is also indicative of the fact that everyone is missing the bigger picture. First, let's explore why Viacom has gotten its golden panties in a bunch.
The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act was spawned by the infamous record industry lawsuit — remember Napster, everyone? — and gives online service providers protection from copyright lawsuits under the condition that they immediately comply with requests to remove unauthorized material. YouTube already demonstrated their compliance in late February 2007 when they promptly removed 100,000 clips at the request of Viacom. Critics of this law point out the unfairness of the DMCA in that those felt infringed upon are responsible for ferreting out the illegally posted material. Yet how can one expect a provider as massive as YouTube to spend its time policing all the material of worldwide contributors?
Aside from the legal jargon outlined in the DMCA, there are several other reasons that Viacom has no place in the courtroom. The main attraction of YouTube is not clips from Viacom television shows but rather YouTube's most viewed videos range from drunken homeless men doing rain dances to a brain-dead teenager doing back flips through burning rings of fire.
Granted, Viacom's lawsuit is clearly a cry for financial safety in today's increasingly post-industrial broadband society. However, Viacom's anxiety about economic stability is ill-founded. While there are unauthorized clips of Viacom's television shows circulating YouTube, these will do nothing to detract from Viacom's profits. In fact, there is a synergetic effect when television companies are able to embrace the Internet hype. Consider, for example, "The Colbert Report," which happens to air on Comedy Central, one of Viacom's many assets.
In February 2006, Stephen Colbert, host of "The Colbert Report," issued what came to be known as the "Green Screen Challenge." The challenge asked audience members to create their own video clips by rearranging footage from a "Colbert Report" episode, originally broadcast on Aug. 10, 2006. The subsequent buzz surrounding "The Colbert Report" and the challenge served only to magnetize more real life viewers via YouTube. How does Viacom fail to see that YouTube will only serve to attract more viewers to the television?
In addition to embracing their loyal YouTube community, Viacom should rest assured that the days of watching television with friends are not over. While people may watch unauthorized clips of Viacom television on YouTube, this will only bolster people's desire to gather around the real television at a set hour and watch the actual show. There is something lackluster about gathering around a small computer screen to watch an even smaller video clip. Instead of wasting even more profit on corporate lawyers, Viacom should work to strike a deal with YouTube in which all Viacom television clips are accompanied by a Viacom advertisement for the show that is being viewed. Now that would be a savvy business deal.
Aside from the frivolous nature of the current lawsuit being leveled at Google by Viacom, there is a deeper, far more compelling issue that is not being addressed. I am far from a neoconservative, and I highly doubt sexual images on television are morally corrupting our society. Yet there is something frightening happening on YouTube. While billion-dollar corporations draw up litigations for copyright infringement, there is a much more pernicious violation taking place. This is the infringement on decency and standards.
While corporate CEOs are constructing billion-dollar lawsuits from their lavish headquarters, nobody has taken a step back to see what the content on YouTube is really all about. I am fully an advocate of freedom of speech and the words "government censorship" make my skin crawl, but there is a shocking lack of self-imposed censorship on YouTube. There are clips of innocent people being beaten without remorse. There are clips of young teenagers doing ridiculously dangerous stunts in an attempt that their YouTube video reaches the revered ranks of "Most Viewed." With the gift of free speech comes the responsibility of propriety; what is sensationalism versus entertainment? In this respect, we all must litigate against ourselves.
Max Schlusselberg ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in journalism.
