Thursday, November 09, 2006

YouTube and Copyright Violations

The acquisition of YouTube by Google, which is the most expensive acquisition to date in Google´s history (Google had to pay 1.65 billion US dollars for the most popular online video portal), seems not without its problems. As I mentioned in yesterday´s post, many voices pointed to the problem "Who profits from user-created content?". Additionally, onother critical problem has been recently raised namely copyright violations on the Internet and the protection of proprietary rights. Heise online has recently published 2 news, dealing with that problem: "Bundesliga shows YouTube the red card", and "Bayern Munich takes on YouTube". As stated in the heise online news, "the DFL (Deutsche Fußball Liga GmbH) has been keeping a close eye on copyright violations on the Internet. The DFL's communications director Tom Bender told said: We have discovered that the dimensions are shocking. Apparently, even live broadcasts of Bundesliga games are being offered, some even for a fee. And downloads of game recaps are all over the place...YouTube is the main problem... The DFL says it will take all of these illegally shared videos seriously." and "The soccer club Bayern Munich club was not prepared to countenance any violations of its exclusive marketing rights by online platforms, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the chairman of the board of management of Bayern Munich, said".

The questions now are ...

  1. Why those issues (though I do agree that they are very crucial problems) have only been raised after Google paid the 1.65 billion US dollars to YouTube?
  2. And the more important question: Is this going to be the Web 2.0 problem?

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