Viacom Sues Google

You probably know that the media giant Viacom recently sued the internet giant Google over Viacom content which appears on YouTube.  People who watch big companies like these have been saying that as soon as YouTube got purchased, the lawsuits would come.  Mostly because YouTube didn't have a lot of money, so suing them for damages wouldn't net much.

Now that YouTube is owned by Google, there's money to be had, and so now a company isn't limited to seeking injunctions so their content can't be shown on YouTube, now they can seek damages--quite a bit of damages actually.  Viacom claims Google owes it 1 billion dollars, which is pretty hefty.

Google for its part has been trying to negotiate with Viacom, to work out some sort of deal where Viacom content can be shown on YouTube.  The lawsuit may just be another way that Viacom is choosing to negotiate, so it may never actually go to court.

Viacom seems less interested in allowing YouTube to show Viacom content, and more interested in having all of its content taken off YouTube.  The sticking point, from what I've heard, has been the filtering of any future Viacom content from YouTube.  In order to prevent any more Colbert or South Park or whatever from appearing on YouTube, people would need to actively view every posted video and delete content owned by Viacom (which is a pretty wide variety of stuff).

Google has basically said "when you want something taken down, just send us a list and we'll take it down."  But that isn't good enough for Viacom, and they want Google to actively filter the material.  To which Google has indicated for that kind of service they would need some sort of compensation.  Of course Viacom is not going to pay Google to take down content which belongs to Viacom in the first place!

The complexity of such filtering, while perhaps not immediately appreciated by Viacom, is certainly appreciated now.  MoveOn.org and a number of other groups have sued Viacom for asking Google to remove videos which were not Viacom content, but parodies of Viacom content and therefore protected under fair use.  You see, it's not as simple as searching for "Colbert" and printing a list.  Duh.

All that aside, I think Viacom has a good case against Google.  The content really does belong to Viacom, and it is copyrighted.  The "we can't control what our users do" argument didn't work for Napster and I wouldn't expect it to work here, even though the content here is partial clips instead of entire songs.  The hope therefore is that Viacom will instead work out a deal with Google so that the case doesn't go to court.

In many ways it is good for a company to have clips of it's content appear on YouTube.  For example, I was never a big Family Guy watcher.  But after laughing my ass off to some clips on YouTube, I went out and bought the first season of Family Guy on DVD, and now I own seasons 1-4 on DVD.  The YouTube clips made the owners of Family Guy some money in my case.  It's really a form of free advertising, and some companies have embraced that.

Ultimately if the case goes to court, I expect Viacom will win, and YouTube will have to change dramatically.  I hope that doesn't happen.

Carol Burnett Sues "Family Guy" Creators

In one of the recent seasons of family guy there is an 18-second clip featuring Carol Burnett's famous cleaning-lady character mopping up the floor of a pornography shop.  Ms. Burnett has responded to this parody of her character by suing the creators of Family Guy for copyright infringement, and is seeking 2 million dollars in damages.

When I was a kid, I loved the Carol Burnett show.  I watched it all the time (even in reruns) with my family and laughed myself silly.  What I find odd is that many times the show included parodies of movies, TV shows, or novels.  So clearly, Ms. Burnett understands the use of parody, particularly in comedy.  One would think that to see her trademark character remembered after all these years would be flattering.

Guess not.

There's no way she is going to win.  It's obviously parody and is protected.  I can't see how she would not know this and so I'm assuming she just needs the money and is hoping for some sort of settlement.  It's depressing really, because I've always liked Carol Burnett.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to blog in awhile... there's just been so much going on my life.  I've got a lot of things I'd like to talk about, but any one of them would be a full blog article I don't have time to write.  So here's the "Cliff Notes"...

My Health
I visited the doctor about 2 weeks ago.  My TB test came back negative, as expected.  I woke up with the area around the injection on my arm completely flat and showing no reaction other than a slight redness.  I could tell it was a negative result, but still I had to get to the doctor and have a nurse stare at my arm for two seconds and say "yep, negative."  Did I mention it was snowing?  A lot?  The doc informed me that the plan at that point was to let the antibiotics run out, and then monitor myself very carefully, watching for fevers.  I was to take it easy and not exert myself once off the antibiotics.  I took my last pill the day my Dad had his aneurism.  So I was getting almost no sleep, no regular intake of food, a high amount of exertion and stress, exactly at the time we were hoping my body would be able to cope with the remaining infection.  By March 7th I was having fevers and my doctor extended the antibiotic.  By March 8th the fevers had reached 102, and I was having painful chills in the night.  On March 9th the fevers subsided and I haven't had any since.  I had another visit with the doc today and she began to speak very frankly about having a surgeon go in and "break up" the scar tissue, or using a needle to drain out the infected area so it could heal.  I spoke very frankly about how disturbing those prospects were to me, and if sixty days of antibiotics would solve the problem, I'd rather go that route.  For now, we are on a middle ground.  The doc has given me a script for 10 more days of the antibiotic, but I am to repeat the "wait and see" experiment when the current batch runs out (Sunday).  If the fevers return I can start the next script.  Next week I will have another CAT Scan, and then based on the results we will make a decision.  The doctor said I could come in and speak with the pulmonologist at that time if I liked.  At this point I'm beginning to feel resigned that a surgical solution is going to be necessary.

Mr. Deity
If you haven't seen the "Mr. Deity" videos yet, check them out, they are hilarious.  A warning to my theist readers, these movies are created by humanists, and are therefore pretty irreverent.  Don't check them out if that is going to bug you.

RSS & YouTube
Why doesn't YouTube support RSS in any obvious fashion that I can detect?  Why do I have to go to my subscription page on YouTube to see what is new.  If they are tracking what is new, then they have the information necessary to provide an RSS feed.  Bloglines tries to "fake it" for you, building an RSS feed out of a YouTube search, but that doesn't work well.  Partly because old videos keep popping up on it, and because jerks post movies on YouTube with the usernames of popular YouTubers in their keywords simply to bring in viewers.  The only YouTubers I subscribe to are ImpyTheRap (i.e. Nobody's Watching) and SuttSteve.  Yet my Bloglines is constantly telling me they have new videos when they don't, simply because the RSS feed is built from a keyword search, and some people are not capable of getting viewers on their own talent.  Does anyone have a good way to get a YouTube subscription as an RSS feed?  It's really bugging me.  I had to discontinue my YouTube "feeds" in Bloglines because it was a waste of time.

Texas and the HPV Vaccine
The Republican Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has mandated that all girls entering the sixth grade in Texas schools must receive the HPV vaccine Gardasil, produced by Merck.  HPV, or Human papillomavirus, is a virus that can be carried by both men and women, but some strains of which are shown to cause cervical cancer in some women.  It is primarily transmitted sexually, but can be contracted in other ways (skin on skin contact, or being born from an infected mother).  Under Perry's plan, parents could choose to refuse the vaccine for their child, but it is not clear if the child would then be allowed to enter the public school system (any more than they would be allowed to refuse, say, Mumps and Rubella vaccines and still put their kids in school.)  The Texas legislature voted 118-23 to basically overturn this order.  The primary complaints were that (a) there are questionable connections between Perry and Merck, (b) parents should have the right to choose whether their daughters will be vaccinated, (c) the drug is new and needs to be further tested, and (d) Perry circumvented the legislative process.  On (a) and (d) I can't really comment, on (c)... well the FDA has approved it, so it has to have undergone some testing at this point, and on (b) I'm just mystified.  The mandate clearly has an opt-out clause... so what's the diff?  The thing I can't shake is that the early complaints about the possibility of making this drug mandatory that came out of Fundie USA was that it would encourage young women to have sex.  Which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.  But I can't help feeling that because those who said it are realizing how stupid that sounds, we are now getting other excuses like a through d above.  I find myself wondering if HPV was transmitted in a nonsexual manner, would there be any outcry at all?

These are the Same People Who Said...
Tell me you haven't heard this one before: confronted with the latest news from climate scientists about global warming, a politically motivated skeptic will claim "These are the same people who said the world was headed for another ice age back in the 1970's... why should we believe them now?"  Like so much politically motivated rhetoric, there's little merit in it.  Between the 40's and the 70's a cooling trend was noted in the data available at that time.  Scientific journals noted that although such a trend could be the precursor of the cyclic ice ages that our planet goes through, there was not enough data or understanding of the climate to accurately predict when the next ice age would come.  The popular press on the other hand (i.e. those journals which are not peer reviewed) took the story and made a sensation out of it.  The scientific community never said another ice age was imminent, period.  Needless to say I hate hearing this stupid argument, especially when it is delivered by people who unfortunately are accorded undue credibility... like Michael Crichton for instance.  But if you want details refuting this particular bit of rhetoric, check "The Global Cooling Myth" on Real Climate.

Guess that's all I have for now.  Hope everyone else is well and happy...