History repeats itself. The battle between media companies and Silicon Valley cutting-edge technology entrepreneurs continued. First is Sony Betamax, second as several generations of p2p file sharing websites, now as the user-generated sites, such as YouTube.
In Sony Betamax case, the media companies worried about the recording technology would destroy the content industry. Although the media companies lost the litigation, the history approved that they gained huge profits through selling and renting video tapes. That is, the controversy finds its way out of the business models rather than copyright infringement lawsuits. Regarding Viacom v. YouTube, it seems that the media companies might probably achieve initial success based on secondary liabilities of copyright infringement.
However, are Viacom and other media companies still on the right road? In my opinion, media companies should learn from history. The development of modern copyright protection witnessed the confrontation of “content” and “technology” developers. Ironically, the content providers often turn out to be the beneficiaries of technology once they learn how to embrace them. Therefore, I believe content and technology should not be on a collision course. It is the market, not the courts or governments, which will ultimately decide what will be for our future.
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