07/10/06

Update on YouTube

In addition to the post I wrote a couple of days ago, Forrster have a couple of new pieces on the rumoured Google / YouTube acquisition. It’s all about the copyright:

Why would YouTube want to be bought by Google? My colleagues, Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, discussed earlier this week in their blogs that earlier this week that YouTube faces substantial risk with lawsuits coming from music and video copyright holders, and how they could potentially address those concerns – namely by developing technologies to identify copyrighted materials against a body of work provided by the copyright holders. But who is in a better position to develop that technology – 60 burnt out people at YouTube or the legendary technical minds at Google?

Moreover, Josh points out that YouTube faces potential “cease and decease” actions from copyright holders, and risks following in the footsteps of Napster where it could its activities can be seriously compromised. But this morning, Josh and I discussed that a copyright holder would be much more likely to negotiate and partner with Google than a start-up like YouTube.

Charlene Li on YouTube [Forrester Blogs]

Josh Bernhoff on YouTube [Forrester]

Posted by Peter Collingridge in Copyright, Web.