Public Relations Nightmare: Getting Stuff off of YouTube

Here's a great article from CNet about the hell that Viacom is getting for protecting their intellectual property from YouTube, which ultimately means Google. Because here's the problem - people want to watch stuff for free. You can tell them it's stealling all day long, and they'll essentially just shrug their shoulders and say, "yeah," then load up last week's Daily Show anyway. The article suggests that Google has been playing up the part of Viacom as Internet bully, but I don't know that that's entirely fair. The mention of Eric Schmidt saying Viacom was over litigious isn't surprising - Viacom was suing him! Similarly, Rodney King found all those police men to be overly violent, even though he didn't know them terribly well. I don' t think Viacom doesn't look like the big bad bully because of anything Google says. They look that way because we have gotten used to a certain expectation from the Internet. We believe it is to be expected that things you normally have to pay for on cable or satellite should be viewable online. We don't think of it as stealing - hell, most people who pay for cable even look for this stuff. It's really all aboutbeing easy to find and use. Maybe I already have HBO, but I'm in the airport and I want to watch Rome now. Of course, I personally don't have cable, so when I watch Rome on YouTube I really am stealling. You have to feel bad for these media companies in a way, as they're going to be bleeding off content for some time to come. No matter what sto-gaps are put on television shows and movies, the technology allows for easy sharing, and so it will continue into the forseeable future. Frankly, I think any amount of suing because someone is playing your episode of South Park is spitting in the wind. Even if you do manage to get that 7th grader into court, and win a suit against his parents for $30 million dollars, everyone else will keep on sharing content, and keep on shrugging their shoulders over your rights. Why? Because you've let youself come off like such a jerk. Just look at this story about the RIAA's war on file swapping from 2003 - after reading this, frankly, I want to go out and steal some music right now. It all goes back to something I've been saying quite a bit lately: You catch more flies with honey than you do vinegar.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)

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