In a story from the Economist ("War is Declared", March 17th-23rd, p. 70, 2007.) and an MSNBC article, one can see that old news still has some fight left in it. Back in March, Viacom (which owns stations such as MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central) sued YouTube for copyright infringement for $1 billion. This was mainly because shows such as "The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show" were available on YouTube. The Economist explains that under America's Digital Millenium Copyright Act, there is a "safe-harbour" which protects any copyrighter if they remove the content as soon as the "owner" requests. The problem with this is that as soon as YouTube pulls copyright material, it is put right back up by users. Viacom claims that, "160,000 of its clips have been illegally viewed 1.5 billion times on the site." ("War is Declared, March 17th-23rd, p. 70, 2007.)
Another interesting fact in the case is that in 2005, google purchased YouTube for $1.65b in shares. So moving higher up the food chain, we really see the battle between the old media giant, Viacom, and the quickly growing new media giant, google with the ever so popular YouTube under its wing. Viacom may win some battles over regulation or copyright laws but is it resilient and ingenuitive enough to move into the new news sphere? Or find some way to capture the new, technologically obsessed generations.
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