Wired Magazine has another interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt today. They cover everything from Steve Ballmer’s recent attacks on Google (which Eric tactfully declines to coment on directly) to News Corp’s proposed YouTube killer to rumored deals with Apple.
A few highlights from Schmidt:
YouTube Launches CitizenTube
YouTube has created a channel for the politically minded and has launched CitizenTube. Their goal is to attract people to express themselves using video on political topics covering local, state, national and international politics.
Steve Grove, YouTube’s News and Political Editor will edit the channel. The channel will aggregate political videos that currently exist on the site as well as new user generated content. They also request political video links that users think deserve more attention.
YouTube Tossed Out Of Thailand
In September of 2006, the elected government of Thailand was overthrown. In April of 2007, YouTube was shown the door. That’s right – YouTube has (yet again) been banned in an entire country.
YouTube’s Copyright Problems Overblown
Vidmeter has released a study, which examines the issue of copyrighted videos on YouTube. According to the study "Analysis of Copyrighted Videos on YouTube.com", Viacom content had the most views accounting for 2.37 percent of all YouTube views.
YouTube Streams, Lycos Mixes
YouTube has added some new services to their site. They now allow users to organize video clips around categories. A number of online publications are reporting that YouTube has recently launched TestTube on their site.
After doing some research it became clear that TestTube is not a new feature to YouTube and it has been around since December 2006 as reported here. Maybe it is a case of Internet amnesia. I will briefly cover these not so new features anyway.
Oddball YouTube Awards Announced Far, Wide
The winners of the first ever YouTube Video Awards have been announced, and ninjas and treadmill-hopping pop stars, among others, ruled the day. Almost as interesting is the amount of attention the awards have gotten in the mainstream media.
MSNBC, ABC, and FOX. Newsday, the Chicago Sun Times, and the New York Times. Even sources in Australia, Britain, and Italy have reported on the outcome. If anyone still had doubts about how well-known Google’s pet project has become, let those lists erase their misgivings.
YouTube,Viacom Case May Not See Courtroom
The legal battle between YouTube and Viacom comes down to one central issue. Does the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) apply to YouTube or are they guilty of copyright infringement as Viacom alleges?
The DMCA does protect Internet companies from copyright infringement if rights holders request that a company removes copyrighted material. This is something that YouTube has complied with in the past. YouTube believes that since they do comply with take down request that Viacom’s suit against them will not hold up in court.
The Upfront For A Theoretical YouTube Killer
In an recent article on MarketingVox with the headline “Advertisers Line up at YouTube Killer’s Door” they talk about how big advertisers are all getting behind a video site being planned by NBC. Wow, what a great idea, ignore the site that is serving 100 million video clips a day and put your advertising dollars into a site that no one cares about or is likely to care about.
DMCA Harbour Safe for YouTube?
In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, a lawyer for entertainment giant Viacom writes what amounts to a thumbnail summary of the company’s $1-billion lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement. In a nutshell, Michael Fricklas says that the case boils down to whether the video site — now part of the Google empire — is protected by the so-called “safe harbour” provisions of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
YouTube Wars Enter Stage 3
It’s official, we are definitely in the middle of a massive multi-industry war on the level of the RIAA/filesharing and other major technology wars of recent memory. Today, the war entered its third major stage, with many of the opposition joining forces to announce a YouTube competitor, coming this summer.
The chronology: