Google might be mulling over the decision of buying over Youtube com. When the reports came out stating that Google was going to take over Youtube, many pundits felt that the decision might not be a wise one in terms of legality. Google's worst fears were realized when Viacom sued Google over 160,000 unauthorized clips.
There are other players in the video sharing market like Blip, Video Egg and others who may be on their toes by filtering their repository. Of course, websites that let you download YouTube videos without being on YouTube should be careful too. The Viacom suing episode may be the end of the road for all video sharing websites which are gaining popularity. Other video sharing websites would stop encouraging users to upload videos and start censoring all videos that get uploaded. Once the user loses the freedom of uploading his/her choice of video upload, then the enthusiasm to contribute will come down.
It would be interesting in the days ahead to find out which other production companies are lining up to sue video sharing websites. I am still surprised that Viacom took such a long time to sue Youtube. Maybe there is a good reason behind it or maybe not.
