Why Google Wanted a YouTube Lawsuit

An anonymous reader writes "After YouTube was purchased for $1.6 Billion, there was rampant speculation that Google would soon be waist-deep in billion dollar lawsuits. Despite the enormous liability issues, Google purchased YouTube for a mind-numbing sum, leaving many doubters wondering if Google considered all of costs involved. A theory has been put forth explaining what Google may have been thinking when it bought the company." From the article "Letting YouTube fight this battle alone with their own lawyers might have resulted in a very public and unnecessary loss that would have crippled Google's video ambitions and possibly caused collateral damage to a bunch of related industries (especially search)." In short, the author argues that Google had a lot more to lose had it kept away from YouTube and let the old-media companies crush it with lawsuits."

Re:Bad deal

[freedom_india]

You are just a Common Stock Holder and not a preferred one. Remember: common stock holders contain only very little voting power versus preferred stock.
So Page can outvote us anytime.
See ya...

Re:Bad deal

[MindStalker]

Nope, the Napster lawsuit hinged on infringing content being their primary content. Napster has SOME legal content, but it was the minority. Youtubes content is primarily non infringing . Go read the Napster case, really the that was the major breaking point was the fact that the infringing content was most of it.

Re:Bad deal

[Jamil Karim]

What would be interesting is if the courts declare that any ad money made from infringing videos has to be collected and given to the owner.

YouTube doesn't put any ads on the pages where clips are played. Take a look. They only put ads on the search pages, home page, etc. The reason for this is that if they had ads on clip pages, they could potentially lose the protection of the Safe Harbors under the DMCA. YouTube has been very careful to give itself a legal ground to stand on if they ever went to court.

This article [hollywoodreporteresq.com] explains it much better than I can -- and it is well written. =)