The copyright war just isn’t dramatic enough to warrant a good novel, let alone a big movie deal.
Consider a few recent stories from the on-going battle between content owners and consumers:
* In October, sources reported to CNET’s Greg Sandoval that part of the document exchange between Viacom and YouTube in the on-going $1.1 billion infringement case revealed evidence that YouTube management knew about rampant uploading of copyrighted film and TV clips. Worse, the source indicated that there was also evidence that YouTube employees were among those uploading unauthorized material. (A YouTube spokesman responded that Sandoval’s characterizations were “wrong, misleading, or lack important context.”)
* A few weeks ago, the FBI made an arrest in the case involving a pre-release version of the “Wolverine” movie that made it online back in April, a version that was watched over 4 million times. A Bronx man is alleged to have used file-sharing network Megaupload.com under one of his online aliases, which include ‘theSkilled1’ and ‘SkillyGilly.’
Sounds pretty exciting, doesn’t it?
Wrong.
In the Wolverine case, Sandoval reported a few days later that the man accused of uploading the stolen film, Gilberto Sanchez, had purchased a DVD “from a Korean guy on the street for five bucks. Then I uploaded it.” In other words, Sanchez apparently has nothing to do with the real crime—that is, whoever inside the industry managed to steal the pre-release version of the film and put it in circulation in the first place. The real case may have gone cold.
And Viacom’s potential smoking gun was greatly undermined yesterday when it was revealed the company asked the judge in the case for permission to remove 250 of its claims of infringement. Why? Well, at least 100 of the removed claims involved clips that had been intentionally uploaded to YouTube by Viacom employees. It turns out that Viacom and other content owners regularly used and continue to use YouTube to promote their programming by uploading clips and hoping they go viral. (According to a YouTube lawyer who attended last month’s Supernova conference in San Francisco, those uploads are often done anonymously to mask the fact that the clip is a marketing effort.)
Media companies needn’t be so apocalyptic in their rhetoric if not their strategy when it comes to unauthorized uses, especially those (like clips and short excerpts) that inherently promote their products.
For more, see "Two Smoking Guns and a Cold Case."