…I can’t wait to download it tonight.

I agree. They have no understanding of the user experience online. Try as they might, there is no way Corporate Suits are ever going to make the internet a passive cookie-cutter experience, which is what they want because it would be easiest for them — no hard thinking involved in adopting a new business model or lowering shareholder expectations.

Well, they will never change my expectations for what I want out of my online experience. It’s like sorry dudes, but this genie is not going back in the bottle.

No one knows what VIACOM is and no one cares. People care about Jon Stewart or Laguna Beach. They want to make their own “editorial” decisions about what clips to share. The very idea of Viacom even thinking they know what parts, be it 10 seconds or 2 minutes, of their shows people want to mashup or share is completely arogant and goes against the zietgiest of what is happening right now in the online video space and social networking.

You can’t fight technology, you can only adapt.

Like hypotethically, how the hell does Viacom know what part of My Super Sweet 16 I think is funny and want to upload to my MySpace?

Media companies: Stop telling me what to do — what to watch, when to watch, it’s over. Bittorent is my DVR and YouTube is way more fun than watching your broadcast TV.

Besides the obvious lack of audience research and usability concerns, there is a self-indulgent nature to that site. I’m all for trying to innovate. But you have to innovate from a place of understanding and respect for the user’s experience. (Think Apple).

Okay, so if you can’t innovate, then copy. (Think Microsoft). But a year after YouTube became a sensation, Viacom still doesn’t understand what’s good about the YouTube experience and why people prefer to go there.

This isn’t just an MTV problem. We’re seeing lots of big media companies trip up on these Web issues as they try to make the Web a copy of Tv with video ghetto players — innertube, vspot, motherload, pipeline.

These companies should look at their internal structure and the abilities of their staff. Then hire some good consultants (Think Adaptive Path) and listen to them. TV executives need to be willling to admit that this is different industry that requires a different set of creative skills, new thinking and more attention to the user experience.

I’ve sat in meetings with TV audience researchers who believe the key to success for Web video is the audience changing to think of the Web as a “lean back” experience.

Viacom needs a unified Web strategy that includes cooperation of the brands, finding talented new media managers who hire experienced Web 2.0 User Experience Designers and Product Developers (then enable them to work quickly and innovate).

I know it sounds simple.This lawsuits might disrupt YouTube, but in the long run companies like Viacom will have to present a better product or people will just go to the next YouTube.

agreed, of course. and if you keep extrapolating the “it’s just going to be free somwhere else,” concept to forthcoming devices and delivery options, it starts to feel like it will become impossible to make a dime off of content, because technology can keep liberating it from the shackles of a business model, like a virus that removes ownership.

sounds like “going with the flow” is going to be a real bitch.

When napster finally shut down, there was no legal download service (like iTunes) to fill the void. So the piracy continued (on Scour, WinMX, Kazaa, etc) until the music industry’s business model changed. TV is now going through the same thing.

Sure it’s not profitable now and there’s no guarantee it will be profitable, but I can guarantee you one thing, you take away the copyrighted content on youtube, it will just migrate somewhere else until something changes.

Jarvis annoys me though… I will say that.

My wife’s grandmother used to loudly find the remote, whenever “Friends” would start and if she was watching something else and an ad were to run, she’d tell whomever was listening; How much she couldn’t stand those “crazy, jumping around guys”. Obviously, she was aware of the “Friends” because they’d always spur a reaction, but Time-Warner derived no revenue from her awareness, whatsoever.

And, I can think of no way they were served by having an 80-something woman being able to recognize the program from a glimpse at the title sequence, much as I don’t think Comedy Central was served because Mr Jarvis’ television-deprived son watched a non-monetized clip of Jon Stewart on YouTube.

As I said before, both situations may be buzzworthy, but neither of them would pay the light bill or offer the stockholders a return on their investment.

Viva la cheapskate!

Legal wrangling makes me die a little.

I mean, something besides the fact that he personally doesn’t like it, he apparently wouldn’t mind if someone mirrors his site and if you follow his link; His kid, who doesn’t watch television found a clip of a television show, while keyword-searching YouTube. (And, how that benefited Viacom, I have no idea. At least if they had been hosting the clip, they could’ve gotten the ad revenue from his son’s viewing. Instead, now his son knows about a show on Comedy Central… oooo… that’s buzzworthy. Unprofitable, but buzzworthy. I’m sure the stockholders would be pleased)

[...] If, in its negotiation with YouTube, Viacom manages to crack that nut - getting revenue plus promotion plus branding plus content while helping the audience do what it wants to do - then that would be wise, indeed. [...]

Agreed, but technically speaking, cracking that magic nut would require Google to recognize a user-submitted Viacom clip as a Viacom clip and tag it with appropriate advertising. That sounds a lot like filtering. In which case, use that filtering technology to weed out copyrighted content in the first place. Problem is, filtering is imperfect and infinitely hackable.

[...] Rather than cutting off new distributors and promoters, I say that producers should be finding the ways to take full advantage of the opportunities they present. [...]

This is all but impossible unless the new distributors or promoters enable the business opportunity. Otherwise, any such distributor or promoter can simply hide behind “Limitations on liability relating to material online,” right? Because it’s not their fault that a hit film or television show can be encoded for the web and posted on their site. Is this what you call going with the flow; submitting to the fact that media will always be hacked, made free, and when one of these sites reaches a critical mass and is bought out by one of the richest companies in the world, it’s incumbent upon the producer to figure out the business model for every instance and permutation of their copyrighted content? Wow.

The fact that YouTube has “not yet” [...] profited handsomely from the presence of the infringing work [...] is no excuse, in my opinion. Just because my friend hasn’t noticed that I stole his Battlestar Galactica Season 1 box set doesn’t mean that it’s not stolen. Hey, it’s not my fault that he made his DVDs so accessible, and just because I watched his DVDs doesn’t mean that I should help him pay for the box set. Besides, he can just watch those episodes on YouTube. It’ll be just like having his DVDs back.

/sarcasm
//comments are farktastic
///slashy

No - this doesn’t cover CBS at all. My brain got stuck in 2005 for a moment.

Attention LR Readers: Ignore comment #2 and possibly many other things I write.

Does this Viacom lawsuit also cover CBS?