They supposedly don’t care about each individual. What they want to do is compare the viewing habits of all the individuals. They want to be able to show how many times their stuff was viewed, and also compare the relative number of views for their stuff vs other stuff.
What they want to show is how many people google allowed to view their copyrighted material, probably so they can claim a per-view fee. And they want to show that a substantial number of views were for copyrighted material, to suggest that 30% of google’s business (for example) was directly derived from Viacom’s property.
The purpose there I presume is to claim that percentage of Googles total ad revenue, plus damages.
They want to show that Google is personally benefitting from allowing the Viacom copyrighted material.
One thing is pretty much undisputed — there was a LOT of copyrighted material put on YouTube.
There is already a display of the number of times the clip has been viewed. Viacom does not need the records to obtain that information.
Of course. Viacom is looking for a RIAA type payday. Like the previous poster said, they’re fishing. If they want to know how often a particular clip is viewed, there’s a view counter on each clip.
I seriously doubt any of their properties are viewed more than the private poster nonsense. The YouTube junkies I know are not looking for clips of M*A*S*H or What’s Happening. There’s a whole slew of independent director/editor types these viewers subscribe to.
“One thing is pretty much undisputed — there was a LOT of copyrighted material put on YouTube.”
Certainly is. And a diligent property holder will get YouTubes complete cooperation in removing that material, once brought to their attention.