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10.13.06
Time Warner Grumbling Over YouTube
 By
David Utter
The billion-dollar deal Time Warner wrangled from Google for AOL in December 2005 looks like a distant memory, as CEO Dick Parsons wants Google's latest acquisition YouTube to pay up for copyright infringement.
Complaints about YouTube hosting uploaded videos that contain copyrighted material led many to speculate that the company would face a multitude of lawsuits. The potential parade of lawyers and litigation did not deter Google from making the all-stock, $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube happen.
Now that some of the giddiness of the transaction has subsided into chatter about "how do we monetize this massive audience," Parsons has asked how YouTube plans to monetize Time Warner for all of its content showing up in videos on the site.
There has been no open declaration of legal hostilities, no calls for fountain pens and briefcases at dawn to settle the matter. Just as he did when Google charged into the AOL negotiations against what looked like a done deal between his company and Microsoft, Parsons has recognized he holds all the cards.
Although he didn't phrase the question 'How much are you prepared to lose?', he did make Time Warner's position on the potential issues with YouTube known as one that can be sorted out by negotiations, according to a report in The Guardian UK:
Mr Parsons told the Guardian: "You can assume we're in negotiations with YouTube and that those negotiations will be kicked up to the Google level in the hope that we can get to some acceptable position."
He denied the decision to pursue any potential infringement had been prompted by this week's acquisition.
"We were going to pursue it anyway," he said. "If you let one thing ignore your rights as an owner it makes it much more difficult to defend those rights when the next guy comes along."
Part of the reason for Parsons' reticence to send in the subpoenas is that YouTube also represents a destination where he wants his company's content to appear. YouTube and Google both know this.
It will be up to Google to work out an arrangement with Time Warner, probably involving some compensation for the media company's complaints. That leads to the much more intensive task of detecting copyright violations when videos are uploaded.
Google probably would like to leave that chore to copyright holders, and have them do the work of finding those violations and asking YouTube to take down the content. Time Warner likely has the position that it should not have to do this work when it is YouTube benefiting from that content.
"We'd like to have our content displayed on these platforms, but on a basis that it respects our rights as the owner of that content," Parsons said in the interview.
Consider the celebration party for YouTube's acquisition officially over now.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews, WebProNews, and InternetFinancialNews.
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