Is Viacom Doing To Independent Content Creators In 2010 What It Says YouTube Did To Viacom In 2006?

from the questions,-questions... dept

Igor Zevaka was the first of a few of you to point to John Green's video where he discusses the Viacom/YouTube lawsuit with a bit of a twist, highlighting the fact that Viacom is making money off of amatuer content, without the rights to do so. Viacom owns Spike.com (a subsidiary of MTV), into which it folded iFilm.com, home of all sorts of amateur content, including content such as a Jonathan Coulton video that has a clear Creative Commons license -- but only for non-commercial use. However, on Spike.com... it's covered in ads sold by Viacom. So, Green wants to know, has Viacom paid Coulton? It's a fun video (though, Green is trying too hard to be Zefrank) that does make a good point -- though, I'm a bit disappointed that it (a) does not link to the Spike.com Coulton video he's discussing (I went searching for it, and it looks like it's been taken down) and (b) plays a little fast and loose with the facts of the lawsuit itself (to the point of being inaccurate at times). For example, he keeps saying that Viacom just wants a cut of YouTube's advertising, but that's not really accurate. It's asking for statutory damages for copyright infringement, which has nothing to do with advertising or advertising rates. It's also not clear where he comes up with the numbers he uses for what Viacom owes Coulton.

Either way, it would be interesting to see if anyone has more evidence that Viacom properties are improperly monetizing CC non-commercially-licensed videos. That would seem like a relevant point in the ongoing lawsuit...

Filed Under: copyright, culture, jonathon coulton, spike, user generated videos
Companies: google, spike, viacom, youtube