There's not much news to be gleaned from the response to the Viacom lawsuit filed by Google/YouTube in federal district court in New York.
As predicted Google is pinning its defense on the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which was designed to shield ISPs from lawsuits when subscribers used their accounts to trade copied media files.
The response outlines a number of secondary defenses-everything from a claim of fair use to an unexplained claim that Viacom had somehow consented to allow its clips on YouTube because it had other deals with YouTube. The alternative arguments are all weak. But the weakest, and perhaps most revealing, is the "Innocent Intent" defense-in which Google appears to be claiming that YouTube didn't intend to allow copyright infringement. Donna Bogatin has a short reaction at ZDNet that gets to the heart of the matter, pointing to claims Google made to analysts in its latest earnings call.
If the case goes to trial (an event I doubt will occur) the outcome will be based on case law established in the Napster case. To wit: did YouTube deliberately build it's business model around contributory infringement and does it have the ability to identify and remove infringing material. Unfortunately for Google, the answers to those questions appear to be "yes."
ClearChannel Launches Social Nets: Yesterday Billboard's Brian Garrity reported that radio giant ClearChannel Communications is launching social networks centered on a dozen of its largest radio stations.
Five of the branded Nets have already launched in beta, like Wildspace-the social net for San Francisco station KYLD-FM (94.9 FM). Wildspace is certainly a better Web presence than the station's extremely busy Web site. The network already has more than 380 members, and of course the radio signal can be streamed.
At Mashable Kristen Nicole notes that social network white label provider Onesite is powering the ClearChannel nets.
I love this strategy. Radio has always been a local business. By virtue of it's formatted playlist it has been a business that takes advantage of listeners' sense of shared identity. And talk, not music, is the industry's driver. Perfect ingredients for social networking success. The radio industry has gone away from it's core strengths for years-eliminating a sense of personality by jettisoning DJs, centralizing and nationalizing programming. Social networking could help lead the radio business into a new cross platform era in which listeners are deeply tied to stations. Imagine the power of social network tied to an local sports-talks station like WFAN in New York. This is a strategy that is definitely worth watching.
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Link Love:
Pure Digital raises $40M, its camcorders share with YouTube
Fascinating new vidcam with a built-in USB plug and software to help enable direct uploading to YouTube
eBay Launches "ToGo" Widgets For Any Listing
Snocap Partners with Warner Music Group to Sell on MySpace
Veodia Streams Live from Your Blog
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