Fill out the form below to email us or request a call back.
Recently, video-sharing website YouTube faced a series of multi-billion-dollar lawsuits from media giant Viacom. The media conglomerate accused YouTube of “massive intentional copyright infringement,” suggesting that more than 160,000 unauthorized clips from one of Viacom’s many subsidiaries – including Showtime, BET Networks, MTV Networks, Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures – have been uploaded onto the site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times. According to Mashable, Viacom immediately pulled more than 100,000 clips from the site and was seeking more than $1 billion in damages.
“There is no question that YouTube and Google are continuing to take the fruit of our efforts without permission and destroying enormous value in the process,” Viacom wrote in a statement. “This is value that rightfully belongs to the writers, directors and talent who create it and companies like Viacom that have invested to make possible this innovation and creativity.”
Despite holding a position as the unquestioned worldwide leader in the video sharing market, YouTube was inevitably bound to face such a lawsuit. Putting a practically limitless amount of unauthorized content in the hands of millions of unchecked users from around the world is a massive liability risk. The chances of one of these users illegally acquiring protected content and sharing it with the rest of the online community were high from the very beginning.
YouTube could have spared itself the massive hassle and headache of a protracted court battle by using Oopgo’s customer data capture capabilities through Oopgo CIR Intelligence Suite. The platform stores every user action with Customer Interaction Recordings™, supplementing traditional web analytics with advanced behavioral metrics. These metrics include raw text inputs, mouse movement patterns, mobile zooming behavior, and more.
Monitoring the day-to-day browsing habits of every YouTube user at all times is a nigh impossible task. However, by using the Oopgo CIR Intelligence Suite, YouTube would have been able to implement a more in-depth system of checks and balances in order to stymie the momentum of unauthorized content being uploaded. The platform provides a full visitor behavior recreation, allowing for actionable insight and analysis. For instance, content from certain companies – such as Viacom – could be flagged, and every time such content was uploaded or viewed, the IT administrators at YouTube could be instantly alerted.
Having this in-depth analysis of every customer’s online experience allows for more targeted and effective tracking of behavior and segmentation. Additionally, the Oopgo CIR Intelligence Suite could have optimized the company’s ability to have live interactions with customers. In this instance, these interactions could have consisted of warnings of possible legal action. Other interactions could be more pleasant or service-oriented, providing YouTube a raft of options for monitoring and dealing with its large pool of users.
Fortunately for the video sharing website, the courts sided with YouTube in the lawsuit brought upon by Viacom. YouTube was determined to be protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) against any claims of copyright infringement. The Act states that online services such as YouTube are protected when working cooperatively with copyright holders to manage their rights online, transferring the onus for lawbreaking onto the user.
While YouTube was able to avoid a consequential judgment in this instance, the hassle and the expense of a long legal battle could have been avoided. Monitoring the actions and behavior of users with Oopgo’s CIR Intelligence Suite could spare companies like YouTube further legal trouble at the unauthorized hands of their subscribers in the future.
