YouTube’s Financial Situation & Saucy Details from Viacom Suit
The New York Times “DealBook” blog revealed some saucy stuff based on the thousands of pages of court filings made as part of Viacom’s copyright infringement suit against YouTube.
- Viacom employees had secretly uploaded videos from the company’s movies and shows even as they were complaining about copyright violations, as The New York Times reported. Zoing!
- USAToday’s “Juicy Details piece” puts it like this: “Google cites a marketing executive at Viacom’s Paramount studio who said that clips posted to YouTube “should definitely not be associated with the studio — should appear as if a fan created and posted it.” To accomplish that, Google says that “Viacom employees have made special trips away from the company’s premises (to places like Kinko’s) to upload videos to YouTube from computers not traceable to Viacom.” Kinkos FTW.
Payouts earned from the YouTube sale, as detailed by All Things D. Chaching! That’s a whole lotta sheep.
- $516 million to Sequoia Capital
- $334 million to co-founder Chad Hurley
- $301 million to co-founder Steve Chen
All Things D also pulls some revenue figures from YouTube’s inception in January 2005 through August 2006, the last month before the company sold itself.
- It wasn’t until December 2005 that YouTube started pulling in revenue, and it wasn’t until August 2006 that the company turned a profit. (The company showed a 186 percent jump between July and August of 2006, to $2.5 million.)
Wired Magazine also had a lengthy story documenting YouTube’s past 5 years, but it’s not online… which I find really annoying. Basically YouTube isn’t bleeding anymore, but it’s not exactly a “cash cow,” as Wired states (clearly someone didn’t read the Wikipedia on cash cow before filing their piece). I’m so over Wired.
I want to know why Larry and Serg decided to sell just enough stock in order to lose majority control of Google?
Yeah. Me too.
I put a little something together – click for the poop.
The irony is that the cnn clip is probably in violation (sh!), but I have no idea how copyright works anyhow anywhere anymore anyway.
There isn’t a word or phrase uttered that can’t be attributed to someone else. How those things are expressed across different mediums is the concern.
How can I take what you do and make it my own? Like Microsoft does; okay, bad example, they have many more lawyers than I do.
I was told once in school that we are breathing the same air, containing the exact same molecules that Julius Caesar himself once breathed. However, I’m concerned now that his descendants may descend on me someday and decide to sue for non-payment of the honor.
Breathe deep and experience the greatness inside your chest. Let it circulate through your blood and envelop your heart. It’s like crossing the Rubicon all over again – Hail Caesar! (only $19.95 per month).
I’m pretty sure if Google-YouTube did the job Viacom expects we’d find out just how much of our lives Google is really tracking – Invaluable Information, no doubt, for both corporations and governments.
In the immortal words of Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
Like searching Google to find out exactly what genital herpes is? – You do know that every keystroke, even if you change your mind and backspace in Google Chrome is recorded and stored, right?
If Viacom has their way they may be doing us all a favor and Google-YouTube won’t look or seem so googaly anymore.
If we knew what Google was collecting and how they were collating that knowledge it would probably upset a whole lot of apple carts. Like aliens from another planet landing on earth, everything would change.
Say, what was the topic here again?
But seriously folks, I can’t wait for the Star Trek world to kick in. A world where money no longer matters and people pursue their hearts desire rather than working dull or trying jobs in order to survive.
By this logic, I’ve breathed Caeser’s farts.
I think Kinkos was renamed FedEx Office or something like that recently.
@4 That’s considered a Roman Delicacy, it’ll cost you extra