YouTube Wants BayTSP’s Viacom Records

on October 27, 2008

YouTube, in its ongoing attempt to defend itself against Viacom’s billion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit, on Oct. 17 asked a court to help it obtain documents from Viacom’s hired copyright enforcers at BayTSP.
We heard about the court filing through a news story on MarketWatch and were able to pull it up for your perusing here (PDF). YouTube alleges that examining BayTSP records will show that YouTube acted promptly and properly on all copyright takedown notices and that Viacom wasn’t as innocent as its lawsuit would suggest. It’s all a little whiny and perhaps even nit-picky, but I guess if you were being sued for that much money you’d be mired in the details, too.
YouTube says it’s been after BayTSP for nine months to get it to turn over these documents, but after many calls, letters and excuses it wants the court to get involved. The documents, according to YouTube, will ultimately help prove its case, that the copyright holder, rather than the video host, is best equipped to figure out whether a video infringes copyright.
Some of the main points YouTube makes are listed below: Read More about YouTube Wants BayTSP’s Viacom Records

On Facebook, VoIP Has a Sore Throat

Om Malik on November 20, 2007

[qi:090] The VoIP community, like so many others, got swept up in the Facebook platform euphoria. Not a day passed without some startup or another unveiling their Facebook application amid much fanfare. Well, the party is over, and it has become clear that VoIP apps have lost their voice on Facebook.
This was first noted by one of my readers on his blog; now Stuart Henshall, Alec Saunders and other VoIP bloggers have joined in pointing out the sorry state of VoIP on Facebook.
“The majority of Facebook users are students — mobile phone users — as well. In fact, 27% of Facebook users are users of Facebook mobile,” writes Saunders.
Given how easy mobile is, he wonders, who is going to take the trouble to fire up a PC and log onto Facebook just to make a call? Let’s extend this argument to all VoIP widget offerings — they don’t offer a vastly improved user experience when compared with the simplicity of the phone. Sure they save pennies per minute on international long distance calls, but even those costs are coming down quite sharply.
Actually the situation for VoIP apps on Facebook is pretty bleak.
Read More about On Facebook, VoIP Has a Sore Throat