TV Moguls Blast Web Rivals

How do the boys keep YouTube from turning into Napster?

(NEWSER) - With Viacom incubating "the biggest copyright lawsuit in history" against YouTube, the video-sharing site is beginning to smell a bit like Napster. Which leads Clive Thompson to ponder in New York why the Google boys decided to acquire YouTube—and its looming crisis—last year. And why, once they had, they decided to stare down Sumner Redstone instead of sharing revenue. More»

Copyright-protected content will be available for free online in new NBC-News Corp. partnernship

(NEWSER) - TV biggies NBC Universal and News Corp. are teaming up to hit YouTube with the full force of their their combined TV content, offered online for free. Starting this summer, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and News Corp. subsidiary MySpace will hope to win over internet users (and the advertising that goes with them) with shows like 24 and Heroes. More»

(NEWSER) - Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google yesterday for what it says is gross copyright infringement on YouTube, the company's newest acquisition. Google has promised to work with companies to remove copyrighted material, but Viacom complains that illegally posted clips of its programs like "The Daily Show" have been watched on YouTube “an astounding 1.5 billion times.” More»

Economist argues online viewers more likely to tune in the old fashioned way

(NEWSER) - With Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube, and widespread speculation that the dearth of material created by a long TV writers' strike will send more viewers online, there are still some economists who think Internet video could stimulate rather than stifle TV viewing. The key is not to think of the online/on-air conflict as a zero sum game, Melissa Lafsky writes on the Freakonomics blog at the New York Times. More»

Join sports leagues and other aggrieved parties in class-action suit

(NEWSER) - Apparently YouTube forgot to make a deal for the music and lyrics played on its website, or so claims a music publishers’ association that has joined a growing copyright lawsuit aimed at Google, the site's owner, ars technica reports. YouTube, which did agree to share ad revenue with four major music labels, continues to remove copyright-violating videos when asked and plans to install a new filtering system by fall. More»