I smell money, lots and lots of money....

I guess I better start taking my video camera with me everywhere I go.

Oh, and just for the record, I'm coining "Webinar Arbitrage"...

OMG!!!

Honestly. This comes from some one who fights the battle for your rights (over those of huge global corps who increasingly side with governments in truly fascistic arrangements (NSA + AT&T / GOOG + China, etc), specifically in the area of maintaining uncensorable, largely non-traceable, distributed client/server peer to peer technology.

This is the WORST thing that could POSSIBLY be done and let me tell you, when you have as much money as GOOG you can afford to pass the buck wrt copyright lawsuits.

Picture this: You publish for whatever inane reason a clip from your 3 year-old's birthday party. In it, a group is singing Happy Birthday (c). Did you catch that? The (c)? Yes, the Happy Birthday song is *COPYRIGHTED*. YOU CAN BE SUED IF YOU USE IT WITHOUT PAYING ROYALTIES AND HAVING PERMISSION *IF YOU PROFIT FROM IT BEING USED IN ANY WAY*.

So, even if you own the video, if you still use the song and the Birthday Song owner wants to press charges, they would probably subpoena GOOG for all the songs on both GOOG Video and YouTube that have the words "happy birthday" in them, which for a few thousand dollars a month, they could hire thousands of 3rd world screeners to search the vids for. And just wait till Voice Recognition in a few more years.

But worse! Evre seen those movies with fake product names or even fake search engines? GUESSWHAT?! Using a *trademarked* product without permission and paying royalities is illegal as well *WHEN PROFIT IS GENERATED*. And even if profit is not generated, you can still be sued by the holders for slander if you depict something bad happening because of hte product. NBC is being sued 10 million for a mangled hand in a non-identified garbage disposal on the show Heroes last Friday.

At 250,000 dollars a pop, do not believe for a second that a desperate or even politically-motivated copyright/trademark holder would not blanket subpoena GOOG for all records of any one that has uploaded a video containing trademarked things, and woe be to them if they ever were sent a check.

Question 17: We’re having a party for our corporate executive at Big Monster Soda Company, and we wanted to stream it to all our locations worldwide. It’s his birthday, will there be a problem if we sing "Happy Birthday?"

Yes. The traditional melody (not the words) of "Happy Birthday" is copyrighted, and may not be transmitted, recorded, or performed publicly without a royalty paid. This is why you hear all the unique versions of the song performed at restaurants. And from past history, the folks that own the song will come after you for performing the traditional melody in a recorded or broadcast work. Make up your own version just for him that avoids the traditional melody.

And even if profit is not generated, you can still be sued by the holders for slander if you depict something bad happening because of hte product. NBC is being sued 10 million for a mangled hand in a non-identified garbage disposal on the show Heroes last Friday.

So? If you didn't do business because someone sued/is suing someone else, you couldn't even get out of bed in the morning, and even then you would probably be worried about being sued for infringing on john and yoko. your post is hysterical and not based in reality.

See, before, GOOG was the *only* entity profitting off Google Video, as YouTube was the only profiter on its network. Let's forget the fact that YouTube costs $400 million a year and makes less than 5 million in ads. Before, if you were an IP holder, you could *only* sue GOOG/YouTube for stepping outside the bounds of Fair Use. Now, if some user accepts $1, they have stepped out of the bounds.

Now, sue GOOG for 150 million and spend millions in legal expenses going against a 150 billion dollar market cap company or... send 20,000 people plea bargains, threatening 250,000 dolllars if convicted and *only* $10,000 to settle. 20,000 * 10,000 = 200 million dollars, and virtually no legal expenses.

The RIAA already did this in 2003-2004, and that was against people who had not made a single cent in the sharing. The taverns shut down in 2005-2006 for not paying royalties for bands that play copyrighted songs... those you probably didn't know of either.

after you've nicely ripped off all the small players, go and milk the platform provider bigtime for complicity, conspiracy, etc. etc. and make them bleed for your licenses ...