http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080526/ap_ ... be_lawsuit

Holy shit Viacom can suck a dick. Youtube have been progressively more nazi-like for the past 2 years and you still think they aren't doing enough? Fuck off and die.

Your well crafted argument against the dangers of overreaching intellectual property regulation has me convinced. Down with Viacomm! Long live the interwebs!

Why the fuck do these companies care if some shit quality video is available online?

omgz! someone is watching spongebob and the top 200 80's music videos online, they're losing SOOO much money.

Ha! So says the ignorant hipster doofus who is not losing any money.

Dear Viacom,

I'm still not paying for cable, no matter what you do!!!

Thanks,
B

I'd say if you're Viacom's corporate lawyer and you're not filing suit against people who post Viacom's material online, you're not doing your job.

No. You're wrong. Viacom's property exists for Jammer's amusement, not so they can generate a profit.

Ha! So says the ignorant carefag doofus who just figured out how to read titles.

Nah, I'm all messing with you lw.

You know I really respect the way you stoop up for Viacom there man. good job.

You're a real humanitarian compared to these liberal douchebags who can't think five minutes in the future.

Sure, there's no problem if jammer is watching a spongebob video. Except it doesn't end there. Then you have B watching spongebob yell at his neighbor, sun devil is watching spongebob get gay with his starfish lover, simple schoolboy watching spongebob trying to decide what to do with his life, and peoplemyage watching as spongebob shoots himself. By then all the moneys have been stolen from Viacom and they have to lay off the little guys cause the big executives couldn't possibly find a way to make up for such a loss.

Fuck you Jammer, for being such a thoughtless liberal douche.

I am not stooping for Viacom, I am stooping for common sense. What makes it okay to steal from Viacom, but not okay to steal from some poor old lady? Do you not have the faintest clue as to how this ends up hurting the hundreds of people who develop and produce Spongebob? What did you think about the writers strike just out of curiousity?

That is awesome

whoa

I meant to say "stood"
my bad.

What makes it okay to slaughter cows for food, but not people?

Because I am an Avid Spongebob fan who will watch the shitty quality video online and promptly go buy every box set and piece of merchandise related to the show!!!!


Oh wait the vast majority of people who steal art online arent in it for exposure, ideals, or use it to sample new "art".... they are in it so they dont have to pay for it.

The thing is that youtube is so ridiculously inconvenient to people who are trying to pirate videos.

Videos can't be longer than 10 minutes so even most cartoons have to be split up. Then you have the low quality which doesn't really make a suitable replacement for DVD. You have to download a third party program to even download the videos (beyond, what I'm guessing, the average person is going to do).

Then most of the videos aren't even full episodes. Most of them are just excerpts from a certain part and are shorter than a minute. Should those be taken down?

If so, where is the boundary? Are animated gifs going too far?



On another note just what is youtube supposed to be doing? Are they supposed to check every single submission to ensure there is not the slightest hint of copyrighted material?


And to LW, and any one else that has argued in favor of Viacom. Just how many people do you think refrained from purchasing Viacom box sets, movies, etc only because of youtube? I for one would like to seem some investigation showing just how much money they've lost. I somehow doubt that it is actually worth the effort they're going through.



Also we can admit that we've all seen youtube videos before, or downloaded music, or even a picture from the internet. Do you all feel intense pangs of guilt from that? What terrible human beings.

Fair use is the boundary. It's debatable what fair use actually is, but I think generally a full sketch isn't considered fair use. But I think a one or two minute clip should be allowed.



No, but they should respond every time their is a complaint.




I'm pretty sure they employ statisticians who figure this stuff out. Maybe it's not conclusive, but obviously they've evaluated the situation and feel it's worth the effort. That doesn't mean it's guaranteed that they've lost because of it, but they seem to feel it's likely, and they probably have more data than you do.



Ethicality and legality are not the same. I haven't downloaded anything for probably about a year now, but at one point I did regularly, and while I recognize that it wasn't legal, I don't feel any guilt, by reason that I've bought many of the CDs I've downloaded and intend to buy several more of them. But that's not true of the majority of the people who download, and the copyright holder still deserves the legal right over distribution, even if it's not in their best interest to prevent it.

Nopw thats a 180... didnt you and I have lenghty discussions about downloading music?

I don't believe I said that I did. Call it a hunch, intuition, or whatever but I don't think YOUTUBE is doing a lot to hinder DVD sales. Pirate sites and torrents are probably having some kind of impact but they're not really known or used by the mainsteam so they don't get the kind of attention Youtube does.



I also never said made any comment of ethicality and legality. I'm not trying to argue that hosting full streaming episodes should be legal. I just don't believe that having a few episodes up on youtube is having a significant impact on DVD sales. This isn't really the equivalent to napster and music. Youtube isn't really organized in a way that makes it convenient to find whole episodes, much less a full season of a show.

I dunno. But I am not naive enough to pretend like it begins and ends with sponge bob. You have news with no commercials, sporting events, sitcoms, you name it.

I would imagine that at some point Viacom will release its numbers. Just like the record industry did.