Hi all,

You certainly you already hear about the sue that Viacom a media company made to Youtube. Viacom is asking 1 billion dollars. The issue is that Viacom sees Internet as a way of broadcasting content and Google see it as a form of communication. You can say that’s a philosophical issue however in the eyes of DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) it’s not. DMCA says that the medium isn’t responsible but the broadcaster is. Hence, if Youtube is consider a broadcasting content company it has to pay 1 billion dollars to Viacom and I guess that all media companies will do the same, sue Youtube.

Google, is saying that Viacom is “trying to break Internet” because if Viacom wins all websites will be seeing in the light of DMCA as a broadcasting company and them all website have to pay the copyrights. I agree with Google in this point because the life of Internet is contents. However, Youtube it’s developing a new way of publicity called “buzz targeting”.

Youtube “buzz targeting” is:

YouTube’s product and engineering team tapped into this core ethos by creating an algorithm that determines which YouTube partner videos are quickly becoming popular on the site and about to go viral. The algorithm looks at several factors, such as acceleration of views, favorites, and ratings activity, and then allows advertisers to target their ads specifically to these videos on YouTube.

In the end of this press release Youtube writes:

“Buzz Targeting was an amazing opportunity for us to capitalize on the most popular videos on the site,” said DePalma.

So in this point of view Youtube is a Broadcast Content and not a medium.

In the true meaning of the word Internet is a communication system that connects computers. You can think in a website as a medium to display content however when you take profit of the content you are displaying you are not a medium but a media company. This is my opinion about the subject however American courts will have to balance if these arguments are strong enough to break Internet.