When Colbert & Stewart Take The Stand
YouTube is asking for Jon Stewart of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report, to come as witnesses for the much awaited Viacom v Google battle. Sadly, this by no means guarantees they’ll ever take the stand. But that can’t stop me from wondering, “What if?” NewTeeVee’s Jackson West cooks up a testimony the two comics could actually offer.
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lol. I would love to see those two on the stand…Though I saw Stewart on with O’Reilly, and he actually was somewhat serious.
It would definitely be interesting to see them testify and even more interesting if they do and someone manages to get a video copy of the testimonies up on YouTube…, but it begs the question:
What the hell does Stewart’s and Oreilly’s opinion on YouTube, copyright, etc issues have to do with anything. The only real validity would be if, as producers of their own shows.., actually owned the rights to them and licensed them to Viacom to broadcast and had some say in other uses of said content.., similar to the way some musicians have their contracts setup with record labels.
They might say its great if that their clips are up there for free to be viewed any time of day and shared with people around the world.., the fact remains if material is protected and someone violates the protection they are liable, especially Google continuing to say that measures are being put in place to protect copyright holders the fact remains to date except for the PR attempt to license technology from others they have done nothing except say they abide by the wishes of if you send them a take down request.
So they are basically saying..,
“Hey copyright holders.., its up to you to police our system and make sure we are not ripping you off.., and if you cant do the job yourself, you should hire a team of people to do it for you, else just deal with it.., we got the DMCA to back us up”
Now I dont know if $1 billion dollars (doing my best Dr. Evil impression right now) is a realistic sum for damages, but it gets everyones attention on the subject and will maybe make companies think twice before doing as they wish with peoples content and dealing with the ramifications later.
Rant Over