Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Billion-dollar battle: Viacom vs. YouTube | Chicago Tribune

Billion-dollar battle: Viacom vs. YouTube Chicago Tribune

"But what is clear is that many YouTube users who often post clips from TV shows, movies and sporting events have few reservations about violating a copyright."Kids don't really care about copyrights," said Parry Aftab, an Internet privacy attorney. "To them, the Internet is another TiVo or on-demand video channel."A lot of kids think if you really weren't allowed to [upload protected content to YouTube], you wouldn't be able to. If everyone else is putting this stuff up on YouTube, it must be OK."Aftab helped Amanda Cimini, a 16-year-old in New York, survey about 100 classmates about copyright issues. The survey, which focused on music downloads, found that 73 percent of students used a file-sharing site to illegally download music, even though 86 percent knew it was illegal.The students were so willing to download illegally because only 3 percent said they knew someone who had been caught, the survey found.Asked about YouTube, Cimini said her classmates "are probably not aware that uploading a video could" violate a copyright."

Amanda is one of our teenangels (teenangels.org) and as her independent research project, with another one of our teenangels, surveyed young people and their attitudes about downloading music.

The one surprise was that they were not aware of the consequences, having forgotten the number of young people who were sued by the music and motion picture industry.

Perhaps we need to tell that story more...

but I also suspect that the best move for Viacom and for Google is to look for a special approach, something innovative, something that will help promote the legal use of content and still allow the posting of some content to promote it.

I stand, as always, along with my volunteers and teenangels, willing to help.

You can view our anti-piracy video at youtube.com.

Parry

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