Viacom and Google

A new law created in 1998 called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was designed to adapt copyright protection for use over the Internet. Viacom recently sued Google for its YouTube website claiming that it violates copyright issues for the posting of copyrighted clips such as the Jon Stewart Daily Show. Google's lawyers plead the case that its website falls under the protection of the Copyright Act because it has the power to take down any clip that is requested to be taken down off of YouTube. Viacom argues that these and many other clips that are posted on YouTube are property of Viacom and not Google.
One striking thing that is quite interesting about this case is that these are two relatively large companies that are standing their ground over this copyright issue. The outcome of this case will definitely be interesting for the evolution of the Internet from here on out such that if Viacom wins, posting anything on a personal website without written consent from the owner will cause a lot of lawsuits flying around about copyright. If I were to post a picture of myself at Walt Disney World standing next to Mickey on my own personal website or on this blog for that matter, do I need written consent from Disney saying that it is ok for me to post a picture of myself and Mickey on my personal website that I pay for? Hard to say, but the outcome of this suit will be interesting needless to say.
Also, just because YouTube has the right to take down any clip, picture, etc. as per a request, how can Google monitor its 50 million user-based postings to YouTube a day. Again, the outcome of this case will be very interesting.

Verizon and Vonage

Vonage recently lost a patent dispute with Verizon this past week for infringing on Verizon's patents. The ruling was in favor of Verizon for Vonage infringing on 3 out of 5 Verizon's patents. Vonage is required to pay 5.5% of its future earnings for any further patent infringements for a grand settlement amount of $58 million. From our discussion earlier this week about how patents are used to encourage innovations and to protect innovations, then what has Vonage done wrong in creating a competing product for customers to pay a cheaper price than the telecommunication giant Verizon can offer. An important patent that Vonage was found infringing on concerns the use of the Wi-Fi network for Internet phone service. Through a partnership with Earthlink, Vonage is able to offer such a product. The ruling has created further problems with other competing Internet phone service providers also. Will Verizon try and come after those companies? Another pressing question has not been answered however. If patents are used to create innovations, how can Vonage, or any other company, not be allowed to provide such services if Verizon can slap an infringement suit on any company taking too much of the market share away from their pockets. Competition is supposed to be good for the world in lieu of offering lower prices for everyone creating a larger market and creating market efficiency for everyone involved, but how can we achieve this, or other innovations, with such cases being ruled in favor the bigger players involved? The only conclusion that I can come to is that creativity is only allowed if it is in a completely different industry. How is this good for competition then?

Domain Names

This weeks discussion with ICANN's ombudsman has inspired me to mention a recent case about domain names. An article that I read in the Wall Street Journal has much prevalence to this topic. Another issue that comes to mind from this article is about changing pornographic websites to end with the .xxx tag.
Goldman Sachs wants to take the porn website goldmansex.com off the Internet because they believe that the website would cause confusion and the financial company does not want any confusion with an adult website being that similar to the large firm. If the financial company is this concerned about this one website having too much affiliation with the company, then what if my last name was Goldman and I play the saxophone and I wanted to promote lessons over the Internet at goldmansax.com? Does Goldman Sachs have jurisdiction over the domain name? I think noy. There is no similarity over the intent of my website but strictly a phonetic similarity when saying the name. Or, if I had experience with the financial company and it turned out to be a bad experience, am I entitled to create a website called golmansuchs.com?
This leads to my second issue with the article. If the pornographic website was changed to have the .xxx tag at the end, then Goldman Sachs wins and does not have to do anything outside of the realm of the company to maintain the integrity of the company. However, should the pornographic site be sold to the financial company? Whatever one's views are about the issue are important, but the way domain names are set up over the Internet it is a first come first serve basis. So who really wins?