Last Monday, I went to a FT Conference on digital media. Very interesting stuff. In one of the morning panels, Mr Chris Ahearn, President Reuters Media and Mr Patrick Walker, Head of Content Partnerships Google Video UK. The following exchange happened:

From CH (Reuters) to PW (Google): If you guys can filter for porn, why don’t you filter for (c) protected material?

The answer from Patrick Walker was so convoluted (community filtering, resources, difficult to say who has actually put the content online) that it could not convince anyone in the audience, not even himself.

That’s why it was inevitable that Viacom sues Googles YouTube for $1 billion (Google News) (oh the irony! Linking Google News for this :p ) Apparently, Viacom has had enough.

Which suers will follow? Will there be a crackdown on uploaders of (c) protected material? And even more daunting: Will the quality of videos at YouTube ever increase?