Google’s Content Thieving Portals Gain Legitimacy as Youtube Rallies
Remember all that doom and gloom about Youtube, and how it was going to be sued out of existence? Well, it looks like Youtube is fighting back somewhat. On Monday it was announced they had brokered a deal with MGM to host full length TV shows and feature films, and yesterday the Google owned video portal followed through with another deal with Freemantle Productions (creators of American Idol) to release all of its existing shows. These deals follow a similar October tie up with CBS to air episodes of Star Trek and Beverly Hills, 90210, and a September deal with Lionsgate.
Don’t expect the latest and greatest content for free though, as CNNMoney reports:
“The first MGM movie to go up on YouTube will be a Lone Wolf McQuade, a Chuck Norris vehicle, “Bulletproof Monk,” starring Chow Yun-Fat.”
A five year old C-list action flick… can’t wait.
In the same article Jim Packer, MGM’s co-president, described the incentives of working with Youtube: “It’s no different from being in Wal-Mart. You want to be in a store that has a lot of traffic.”
Many of the deals brokered rely on embedded advertising, and links to DVD and video-on-demand sites as ways to create revenue.
Youtube’s latest successes follows the $125 million October settlement of copyright infringement lawsuits relating to the Google Library Project, another Google project accused of unlawfully distributing others content. Does this mean the tensions between Google and traditional content providers, including the whopping $1 billion Viacom/Youtube lawsuit, are set to quietly wind down? Possibly. Google have already started complicating the Viacom lawsuit with its own counterclaims, and as the Detroit Free Press reports, Viacom has also changed its tune lately:
“Although a $1-billion lawsuit filed against YouTube by Viacom, owner of Paramount Pictures and MTV Networks, is still pending, alleging copyright-infringement over clips of its programs shown on YouTube, it seems the studios are conceding the obvious. Viacom has recently been experimenting with the popular MySpace social networking site in releasing clips of some of its shows like “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”"
Posted by Becky North in Creative Economy | November 12, 2008 11:55AM |
November 12th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
And what about Google streetview? Do we get to make a content deal with Lord Brin for the right to send evil cars around photographing our houses?
November 12th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Those Google chaps will be running their own dystopian republic by 2020, mark my words…
November 12th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Count me in as first citizen if they do – the G boys are future fantastic.
November 12th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
@straw boater
by 2020 we will clearly be in the web9.0 universe, and google? google will be just another atari on the digital scrap heap. nothing this megalomaniacal can last forever, we’ll remember the days of googling like people look back on pong et al. and sigh.