IP Democracy: Time Warner Rattles GoogleTube's Copyright Chains

In what is likely a case of sour grapes, or fear of a potentially potent competitor, Time Warner Chairman Dick Parsons is talking tough when it comes to YouTube’s potential copyright infringement of the media giant’s video content. He’s gone public to put pressure on Google, YouTube’s new prospective owner, to cut some kind of deal and he’s pegged it to what he claims were copyright-related talks the company had been having with YouTube even before the $1.65 billion deal was announced.

Mr Parsons told the Guardian: “You can assume we’re in negotiations with YouTube and that those negotiations will be kicked up to the Google level in the hope that we can get to some acceptable position.”

Time Warner looked at buying YouTube, but balked at the price, Parsons said. But it’s not sour grapes at having passed on a deal that Wall Street and the press adores, he maintains. “We were going to pursue it anyway,” he said. “If you let one thing ignore your rights as an owner it makes it much more difficult to defend those rights when the next guy comes along.”

There may in fact be no connection between the Google deal and the surfacing of Time Warner’s complaints, but why didn’t we hear anything about the world’s biggest media company defending its rights on YouTube until now?

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on October 13, 2006 10:16 AM to IP Democracy