Google Demands NBC Universal Spread YouTube Fair Use Gospel
Google CEO Eric Schmidt IS worried about the sanctity of his $160 billion market cap no need to pay for the content of others business model!
First, he instructed his lawyers last Friday to do an about face on his NO proactive filtering for unauthorized video uploads at YouTube stance in the Viacom $1 billion lawsuit for “massive copyright infingement.”
Now, a lobbyist trade group Google funds is soliciting the FTC to demand that entertainment and media companies be stymied from warning consumers about copyright infringement.
NBC Universal, a YouTube partner, is a prime Google target.
On behalf of Google and other member companies, the Computer & Communications Industry Association ( CCIA) has written the Federal Trade Commission to decry a “misrepresentation of fair use” by NBC Universal, calling out “deceptive trade practices.”
Google is determined for consumers to be able to follow in its Googley tradition of “fair use”; i.e., all the world’s copyright content is fair game to be used by all the world! (especially if Google is selling advertising against it)
Below is the type of copyright content disclaimer used by media companies that Google objects to:
All material is protected by copyright laws of the United States and all countries throughout the world. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized exhibition, distribution, or copying of this film or any part thereof (including soundtrack) is an infringement of the relevant copyright and will subject the infringer to severe civil and criminal penalties.
In the (in)famous words of Bill Clinton: “It depends what the meaning of “is” IS?”
Google will not be deterred: The “contstitution” is at stake, and the Google balance sheet. Among the remedies sought by Google:
Educational awareness programs from an objective, qualified, non-governmental third-party institution, designed to increase the public’s recognition of its fair use rights and thereby remediate misconceptions created by the Rights-holder Corporations’ prior misrepresentations.
In other Google words, let the Google “fair use” free content business model flourish. In the Google view of the world, all is fair in its unfair profiteering off of the copyright material of others, including NBC Universal.
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