Growth of advertising raises video-sharing stakes

At stake are hundreds of thousands of clips, which have been posted on video sharing sites around the world. E-Brief News reports that MTV owner Viacom last week announced that it had sued YouTube and its corporate parent Google for alleged copyright infringement. Viacom is claiming that the more than 160 000 unauthorised video clips from its cable networks have been available on the popular video-sharing Web site. The Mercury reports that Viacom is angry that the Web wunderkind is attracting hundreds of millions of viewers by posting snippets of Viacom shows for free. The New York Times reports that the dramatic growth of video advertising has complicated the issue further. While making up less than 5% of online spending, video advertising is the fastest-growing advertising category online, generating $410m last year. While all television networks have seized upon online video, few invested more aggressively than Viacom. MTV Networks – the division of Viacom that oversees 28 networks in the US including MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Spike and Country Music Television – manages 44 domestic Web sites and was among the first to put video from its TV shows online. Viacom has been adamant about maintaining its own relationship with advertisers, in part because it is trying to sell ads across platforms, using the popularity of its Web properties to bolster its television ad revenue. That is leverage the company would lose if it cannot draw enough viewers to its own Web properties. Full report in The Mercury Full report in The New York Times

Staying with video sharing copyright issues: A Brazilian judge last week ordered the withdrawal of footage from a documentary about football legend Pele from the YouTube site. Die Burger reports that the order followed a complaint by the company Anima Producciones Culturales, which holds the rights to distribute the film Pele Eterno (Pele Forever). If YouTube continues to show footage – including a large number of Pele\'s 1 200 goals – it would have to pay just under $50 000. Full report in Die Burger

Meanwhile, a cricket Web site has found what it hopes is an inventive way to bypass copyright laws to show users action from the Cricket World Cup. Despite the fact that Sky Television has the exclusive rights to broadcast the live action from the West Indies, Cricinfo.com is using computer animation to provide ball-by-ball coverage to non-Sky viewers. Out-Law.com reports that a leading media law expert believes that Cricinfo is likely to have stayed on the right side of the law, but says that a similarly inventive trick by BBC news programme Newsnight did not manage to avoid a copyright breach. Cricinfo, which is owned by Wisden, the company behind the Wisden Cricketing Almanac, uses data gathered by employees to simulate the action. ‘Sky clearly own the copyright in the broadcast and that is what they have paid millions of pounds for and the question really is whether what cricinfo.com are doing is copying that broadcast – copying that copyright work,\' said Kim Walker, Head of Intellectual Property with Pinsent Masons. Full Out-Law.com report