Wireless Federation

A federal judge overseeing a €637 million (US$1 billion) copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popular online video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clips and when.

An Associated Press report also said US District Judge Louis L. Stanton authorized full access to the YouTube logs after Viacom and other copyright holders argued that they needed the data to show whether their copyright-protected videos are more heavily watched than amateur clips.

The data would not be publicly released but disclosed only to the plaintiffs, and it would include less specific identifiers than a user’s real name or email address, the Associated Press report said.

Lawyers for Google, which owns YouTube, said producing 12 terabytes of data, equivalent to the text of roughly 12 million books, would be expensive, time-consuming and a threat to users’ privacy, the report said.

The database includes information on when each video gets played, which can be used to determine how often a clip is viewed.

Attached to each entry is each viewer’s unique login ID and the internet Protocol, or IP, address for that viewer’s computer.

Stanton ruled this week that the plaintiffs had a legitimate need for the information and that the privacy concerns are speculative.

Stanton rejected a request from the plaintiffs for Google to disclose the source code, the technical secret sauce, powering its market-leading search engine, saying there’s no evidence Google manipulated its search algorithms to treat copyright-infringing videos differently.

Viacom is seeking at least €637 million (US$1 billion) in damages from Google, saying YouTube has built a business by using the internet to “willfully infringe” copyrights on Viacom shows.

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TelecoMasia writes…. Viacom’s earnings fell 36% in the first quarter, weighed down by higher marketing expenses for movies and a restructuring charge at its MTV group, the media company reported, but the results still beat analysts’ estimates.

Viacom, which is controlled by media mogul Sumner Redstone and split up from CBS a year ago, earned $202.9 million in the three months ended March 31, down from $317.2 million a year earlier.

In addition to MTV, Viacom also owns Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, VH1 and BET.

Operating income fell 29% to $442.8 million from $623.5 million a year ago, weighed down by the restructuring charge at MTV Networks, and an increase of $170 million in advertising costs in the United States at Viacom’s movie division.

MTV Networks said in February that it was cutting 250 jobs, or about 6% of its workforce, in an effort to cut costs and build up its businesses online and in new networks.

In addition to MTV, the MTV Networks division also includes VH1, Comedy Central and Country Music Television.

Viacom is currently battling with Google’s YouTube, the No. 1 video site on the Internet, claiming that the site is illegally displaying copyright-protected clips from popular Viacom-owned programs like Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Google says YouTube complies with copyright laws and takes down any material flagged by copyright owners as being unauthorized.

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Among the first such case in U.S., where a show, made for mobile, has made it onto TV: Comedy Central will air a political parody show produced by MVNO Amp’d Mobile. The show, the animated series called �Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States� will be co-produced with Amp’d and the show’s creator Donick Cary, a TV writer who has written for “Late Show with David Letterman� and “The Simpsons.� Comedy Central plans to air the half-hour show weekly beginning next summer during the popular 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. time slot, possibly right after “South Park� and before “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.� MTV Networks, parent of Comedy Central, is a major investor in Amp’d, though it says its decision to air “Lil’ Bush� wasn’t influenced by MTV Networks’ ownership in it.
The show on Amp’d is only about five minutes long. Comedy Central will make future shows into two 11-minute episodes to fill the 30-minute TV show slot, with the rest of the time being filled with commercials.
Amp’d has ramped up its original content production efforts: the company has hired KC Armstrong, a former producer of “Howard Stern Show,� to host a reality-TV program for cellphones. It is also launching a 3D mobile game called “Homeland Security: Kim Jong Il Edition,� in which a U.S. spy will infiltrate North Korea and assassinate the leader in order to stop nuclear-weapons testing.
It has its own TV studios in its West LA office building, where Fox used to shoot “24.� It produces hundreds of short sports, comedy and reality show clips, which make up about 5% of its content but get about 30% of the usage, the story said.
The article also notes that Amp’d now has more than 50,000 subscribers.