14 DAY TRIAL // The anti-YouTube coalition strengthens and flexes its muscles to show off the new Viacom additions: Comedy Central, MTV Networks, Nickelodeon and Atom Films, to name a few sources of videos that the Network has started sharing with an array of video-sharing websites that enlist Dailymotion, Veoh (which already has Hulu and CBS videos), imeem, GoFish, and MeeVee.
The reason for this is pretty obvious if you've been reading news about the writers' strike that's still going on. No, that's not it, but it has been mentioned time and time again: Viacom has a 1 billion dollars lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement. It's on the roll for quite a while and, judging from the sum of money involved, can you blame somebody for not rushing to judgement? I mean I don't know, 1 billion bucks might be pocket change for you (in case you're Bill Gates), but unnamed sources have confirmed that they're talking about a lot of cash. That was a joke. Just as Viacom's Jon Stewart has made one, regarding his patent suit that I've mentioned: "A billion dollars? What are they four-year olds?" In order to understand the joke, I've embedded the video containing it below (Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch.com spotted it first). You'll have to wait a little for it, but it's there.
The new sites that have just been granted Viacom video content join AOL, Bebo, Joost, MSN and Comcast's Fancast. Judging by the names, YouTube has it made, but I'm sure it'll somehow manage to survive this act of war, if I may call it that. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure it'll even be seriously touched by it, but of course I might be wrong.
I wonder, though, whether Viacom's strategy will finally prove to be worth it, or it would have been better to just strike a deal with YouTube.