Viacom vs Google
The big news on YouTube at the moment is the Viacom and Google debacle. We all knew this was coming at some point and several geekazoids predicted it over a year ago, but Viacom sued Google for copyright infringement on the YT site.
$1 BILLION dollars. And Viacom won. What is interesting is that this is a similar situation to what Napster went thru years ago with people's copyrighted music downloads being free and all that. Napster said they couldn't be held responsible for what people did and the courts disagreed. So why Google thought they could pull a fast one and do the same thing, I don't know.
The $1 Billion is chump change for them, so that isn't even a biggie. They should be policing their website more frequently and ensuring that people aren't copying other peoples' videos and music and stuff. The bitch is that very often those types of videos will get Featured on YT's front page! And they get millions of views. Maybe now they will act more responsibly towards peoples' copy rights.
The bad news is that because of this and the court ruling, YT now has to turn over the private information of all of the YT users. This has people up in arms since it's a complete violation of our privacy. People are boycotting Viacom's tv channels and such and raising a huge ruckus on YT.
But from my viewpoint, we have long ago given up our privacy rights when online. It's very simple apparently, for people to capture your info and hack your computer and do whatever they want to do with that information. A friend of mine was at his computer the other day and noticed that the cursor on his computer was moving when he didn't even have his hand on the mouse. And it clicked on something! So he emptied out his computer and had to redownload all of his programs and stuff again.
I think this happened to him once before, if I remember correctly. And supposedly I had a trojan in my computer in the past, too. there is always going to be a risk involved in these activities and you just can't escape it. I have a router and other gizmos hooked up to shut down my computer should anyone try to enter, but nothing is foolproof.
Heck, eBay had a huge scandal last year and videos were showing up on YT proving that hackers had busted their system.
Besides, I just don't get too worked up over these political situations anymore. I'm too tired to care most of the time! LOL
$1 BILLION dollars. And Viacom won. What is interesting is that this is a similar situation to what Napster went thru years ago with people's copyrighted music downloads being free and all that. Napster said they couldn't be held responsible for what people did and the courts disagreed. So why Google thought they could pull a fast one and do the same thing, I don't know.
The $1 Billion is chump change for them, so that isn't even a biggie. They should be policing their website more frequently and ensuring that people aren't copying other peoples' videos and music and stuff. The bitch is that very often those types of videos will get Featured on YT's front page! And they get millions of views. Maybe now they will act more responsibly towards peoples' copy rights.
The bad news is that because of this and the court ruling, YT now has to turn over the private information of all of the YT users. This has people up in arms since it's a complete violation of our privacy. People are boycotting Viacom's tv channels and such and raising a huge ruckus on YT.
But from my viewpoint, we have long ago given up our privacy rights when online. It's very simple apparently, for people to capture your info and hack your computer and do whatever they want to do with that information. A friend of mine was at his computer the other day and noticed that the cursor on his computer was moving when he didn't even have his hand on the mouse. And it clicked on something! So he emptied out his computer and had to redownload all of his programs and stuff again.
I think this happened to him once before, if I remember correctly. And supposedly I had a trojan in my computer in the past, too. there is always going to be a risk involved in these activities and you just can't escape it. I have a router and other gizmos hooked up to shut down my computer should anyone try to enter, but nothing is foolproof.
Heck, eBay had a huge scandal last year and videos were showing up on YT proving that hackers had busted their system.
Besides, I just don't get too worked up over these political situations anymore. I'm too tired to care most of the time! LOL
posted by Deborah at
2:23 PM
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