Viacom says You Can’t Have Our MTV
- February 2nd, 2007
- Read 1579 times
- 1 Comment
If you’re trying to find that old Jermaine Stewart video of “We don’t have to take our clothes off (to have a good time)” from 1986 on YouTube, you better do it soon. Music videos from MTV, BET and other clips could soon disappear from the video-sharing site. Viacom, parent company of MTV, failed to reach an agreement with Google’s YouTube.
The entertainment giant is now ordering YouTube to remove more than 100,000 video clips from its servers. All hope isn’t lost however if you’re looking to head down memory line. Other companies, including Warner Music Group and CBS have come to terms to allow some content to be uploaded by users. But in the meantime fans of old (and often forgettable) videos might want to play them while they can!
Viacom demands YouTube remove videos [Reuters]
nobody (Who am I?)
1 year ago
I really don’t understand why these media giants wouldn’t reap from this kind of viewer’s enthusiasm, but instead, they want to snuff out a source of income for themselves.
The Youtube users are actually working for free to put these material up for Viacom. Right now NBC and CBS have to hire a staff to upload their video clips to YouTube. Viacom got that for free. All they need to do is to ask Google to pay them a share of the ad revenue resulting from the traffic these clips bring to the table. Honestly, the low quality clips on YouTube will never cannibalize into the higher def copyrighted original’s sales. The low quality, low res, mono audio clips could only bring the audience to pay hard earned cash for the high quality version on DVD or CD. Those YouTube clips are just free commercials.
Google could make this work by paying royalty to the copyright owners regardless of who the uploaders are. They can change the business model around. Then the entire YouTube community can change for the better. The viewers got to see what they like and the copyright owners still collect royalty without lifting a finger, there will be millions of enthusiastic users doing the promoting and uploading for them. And when the material is good, sales of the original will definitely go up too.