AOB: Example of Premier League greed #798791245

One of the things I like about being on holiday is that things tend to bother me less: Service a bit slow at a restaurant? Bus or train running a bit late? Who cares, I'm on holiday.

But now I'm back, and stuff is starting to get up my nose again: Drivers who think it's ok not to indicate at roundabouts, a small packet of chewing gum costing 79p (79p!) at Cambridge station, and this story that was all over the news yesterday:

Google must divulge YouTube log

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

For those of you too lazy to click the link, the jist is that American media giant, Viacom, have been given permission to look at list of clips viewed on YouTube to see whether they infringe their copyright. Now I'm no media analyst or anything but I think I can guess what the answer will be to that particular question.

This story offends me on a number of levels. For a start one has to wonder what sort of damage a load of people viewing miniscule, grainy, undownloadable clips is doing to Viacom, a company that owns a string of TV channels and movie production firms. In fact, I imagine you could make a strong case that it actually acts as a good promotional tool.

Secondly, reading a bit further down in the BBC article you'll notice a little paragraph saying:

The UK's Premier League association is also seeking class action status with
Viacom on the issue, alleging YouTube, which was bought by Google in 2006, has
been used to watch football highlights.

Yes, that's right. The Premier League, which earns £900million a year from it's various media deals, wants a piece of the action too, another example of astonishing greed which dominates our game at the top level. I can see no other justification for this, and I hardly think Sky, Setanta, or the rest will be feeling particularly threatened by a few clips on a website.

Moreover I just don't see what either body are trying to achieve. You can't police the internet, and YouTube have to take the 'offending' videos down they'll just appear somewhere else. As well, I expect we all know websites where you can a) stream live matches, or b) download movies, tv shows, or football matches, which have already been broadcast. Not that I condone this of course, and certainly don't have either of the play off semi finals on my computer, oh no.

But my point is that surely these sites represent a bigger threat to the respective copyrights of Viacom and the Premier League than YouTube, yet they chose to pursue the latter in the courts. Why could that possibly be? Could it be because Google, YouTube's owners, make billions of pounds every year and can therefore afford to pay more damages than Joe Bloggs who hosts http://www.premierleaguestreamsareus.com/. I'll let you make up your own minds on that one.