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Who is America's most notorious scofflaw?

The outrage over Google-Youtube's complicity in rampant content theft and piracy continues to spread around the world.

    • "A coalition of Japanese television, music and film companies slammed YouTube Thursday, saying the online video sharing service was not doing enough to rid the site of cartoons and other clips that infringe copyright." ...
    • "There is no middle ground," Matsutake said. "We demand that all copyrighted material be removed immediately."

Let's focus on the corporate scofflaw pattern here: American, Japanese, and European content owners accross a wide swath of content industries are all outraged and suing Google for theft.

Why is this?

  • As Viacom accused in its $1b copyright infringement suit, Google has an illegal business model that depends on theft of others' content in order to succeed.
  • In my white paper Googleopoly: the Google-DoubleClick Anti-competitive case , found at www.googleopoly.net, I explain this business dynamic in much greater detail.
    • Searching, finding and delivering other people's content (with or without permission) is how Google makes money.
    • Google brokers the world's largest aggregated Internet audience (demand) together with the world's largest advertising client base (supply)  -- with the "currency' of other people's content -- currency that Google often does not own or pay for. 
    • Most people don't appreciate that much of Google's business model depends on search, which at the most basic level is the delivery of other people's content to roughly 600 million people around the world -- without payment to the ultimate content owners.
    • Google is trying to hide behind the "fig leaf"  of "fair use" -- the legal exception for consumers' personal use. 
      • There is just one teeny weeny problem with Google's justification, no other "consumer" gets paid $10+ billion a year for its "fair use." 

Bottomline: Google may enjoy the ignominious distinction of being the most notorious corporate scoflaw in America today.

  • Can anybody name another American company that is a bigger more systematic scofflaw than Google?