Goo Tube - Google buys Youtube for $1.6 billion

afaik;

- youtube is in some very serious debt. they have almost no revenue, and very high server and bandwidth costs.
- they're trying to sell the business, but no one wants to buy, because music companies are waiting for someone big to buy youtube, so that they can sue them for copyright infringements. that is also the only reason why we are still seeing music videos, etc. on youtube.
- if google wants to buy youtube, they certainly will. imagine what happens if google kicks youtube from adsense because of "uncopyrighted material, blah blah".

 

would be interesting!

 

Wowzer, $1.6 billion is some serious dough!!

 

That is the most idiotic strategy a copyright holder could ever come up with. The longer you wait to enforce a copyright the more likely you are to lose it. Most lawsuits like this are not money making ventures; they're expensive and take years to complete. It's usually a desperate company that resorts to lawsuits for money.

The reason YouTube isn't swamped with lawsuits is because they haven't done anything wrong. They're not the ones who posted the videos in the first place and remove them when requested. The main reason music companies are not making a huge fuss is because of the promotional value YouTube has on the videos being shown. YouTube today is what MTV was in the 80's and early 90's. Last I heard YouTube and the music industry were negotiating a deal sorta like what yahoo has with their streaming music service. Which is a lot smarter then sitting around waiting for a buyout that may or may not happen, in the hopes that you can sue the new owner, and then get a big cash settlement five years down the road.

 

Nobody could sue youtube and get any money. The only winners would be the lawyers.

 

ok, tell me how abc will get advantage of "promotional value" from long waited lost s03e01 episode with no commercials which can be found easily on youtube. are fans going to buy dvds and watch other episodes on tv? no, they are going to watch all episodes on youtube.

and not being responsible for the content just because members posted them is pure bs. everyone is responsible for the content they have, whether it is uploaded by members or came from outer space.

 

Well, $1.5billion for Youtube might be a sniff considering some experts claiming the value of Myspace could exceed $15 billion in the next few years. One of the founders of Myspace is considering taking News Corporation (Murdoch's holding company) to court because he feels analysts working on the sale acted to dampen the perceived value of Myspace at the time of the sale. I am sure Google will extract huge ad revenues off Youtube. No company is better at extracting the ad dollar than google.

 

A 10 minute, low compression, and stereo sound video of Lost is not going to compete very well with the DVD boxset. If ABC was worried about this they'd have YouTube host their own high quality videos with commercials embedded. Which by the way it won't be long before you see full length episodes hosted this way.

YouTube's only responsibility is to remove content when requested, and or hand over the IP of the user who uploaded it, if subpoenaed. It's the same as if I posted copyrighted info onto this message board. If the copyright holder contacted Shawn about it and he responded by removing the content, then there would be no valid case for the copyright holder to sue Digitalpoint. I'm responsible for what I post here. Someone can't decide to take Shawn to court instead, simply because he has more money than me. Well, technically they could, but their chances of success would be slim.

In order for a case against YouTube to succeed someone would have to prove that YouTube was designed for the infringement of copyrighted data. Since the majority of the content on YouTube is freely submitted by its creators; this makes for a hard argument for someone to claim that YouTube only exists to infringe on someones copyright.

 

I don't think you can just lose a copyright. If you don't enforce your Trademark, you can lose that. But I've never heard of anyone losing their copyright to material they produced. How would that even work?

 

seems a smart deal by google, m sure they will capitalize on it quickly !!

 

I probably could have worded that better. I was referring to a lawsuit rather than the copyright itself. Legally you hold a copyright until it expires or you surrender your rights. Most companies are quick to enforce their rights because they're afraid that if they don't it could fall into public domain. Imagine if someone created something twenty years ago, but didn't do anything to stop people from copying it and using it as they please. What if they suddenly tried to enforce it today and make everyone pay up? I'm not sure what would happen, but I do know it will be much harder for them because they waited twenty years.

 

well well... Rich... Richer

 

Love people talk about this news,but I dont care as long as you tube is not mine

 

My father called me a you tube when I was a kid...I removed all the tubes from his big old Zenith television... OH wait that was you boob he called me not you tube.. 1.6 Billion WOW

 

Not that much money. It is worth it though. Some of You guys seem to be missing the bigger picture of all of this.

 

Yeh, I think they'll do it

 

My new video blog will be more popular

 

Looks like Google has a lot of of spare money to spend out!

 

Intresting rumor will wait and see

 

I think the deal will be close today, everyone is talking about it.