April 19th, 2007
Google CEO upholds YouTube copyright infringing business model
Google CEO Eric Schmidt and company must have been holding their "massive copyright infringement breath" during the 55 minute Q1 2007 report to Wall Street that just finished, and it worked!
The Mountain View executive team cheerfully discussed a $3.1 billion announced prospective impact to its financial performance that occured NOT in Q1, but in Q2, but did not make a peep about the $1 billion dollar prospective impact to its financial performance that WAS announced in Q1.
While Schmidt's reticence is understandable, but not commendable, why were financial anyalysts such as Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley and Mark Mahaney of Citbank negligent in querying Goolge about the most important occurence in the quarter not only in terms of Google financial performance, but in terms of the future viability of the entire Google business model: Viacom v. Google, YouTube!
Schmidt WAS asked about the supposed "Claim Your Content" filtering tool that was heralded by many earlier this week to mean Google WOULD seek to not infringe on copyright by blocking unauthorized uploads of video content owned by others.
But no, the media misunderstod, Schmidt underscored, business continues as usual at YouTube.
What business is that? The no need to pay for the commercial use of others' content business model of Google and YouTube, the DMCA, fair-use fueled multi-billion dollar GOOG business.
Schmidt on what "Claim Your Content" will really be: A tool to allow publishers to automate the takedown process, the DMCA process.
SEE: YouTube: Why Google is running scared and Google paints $3.7 billion pretty picture
