AfterDawn: News

French company sued Google Video

Google has been sued for copyright infringement in Paris after a user uploaded a documentary made by a French movie maker to the Google Video service. Flach Film claims that Google acted as a fully responsible publisher when a third party posted "Le monde selon Bush" ("The World According to Bush"). The company alleges that it picked up 43,000 views in a short period of time.

In a recent filing with the US SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), Google said it has been the subject of a lawsuit over a video that briefly appeared on its service, but it is unknown if this is the same case the company was referring to or a new one. Many believe that Google could soon face expensive lawsuits over content on its Google Video service and the recently acquired YouTube.



Flach Film said that by enabling access to the documentary for free, Google is clearly violating the country's intellectual property laws. It demands compensation for the unauthorized display of the video, which is distributed to cinemas and is available on DVD. Google claims that the film was removed from the service once the company was aware of the unauthorized copy, adding that uploading "illegal" videos is against the terms and conditions.

Flach Film may believe that it has lost revenue due to the film's brief appearance on Google Video, but one has to wonder just how many of the 43,000 views were actually full views or more importantly, how many of the 43,000 viewers would even know it existed if it wasn't for Google Video?

Source:
PC Advisor

Written by: James Delahunty @ 26 Nov 2006 16:35

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• 11 comments

• 21Q

  Meh, ive seen this so many times its hard to let it bother you.

  26.11.2006 16:50 #1

• DR34MER

  Well the movie wasn't called "The world according to ants" now was it? No it was a documentary that comments on G W Bush and how he portrays himself in the world's view. Being the leader of the USA, he's a popular media subject and to say that a large proportion of the 40odd thousand viewers may not have known about the movie is slightly ridiculous. Flach Film certainly have legal grounds to sue but surely they should've used this situation to their advantage and announced it as a new age way of marketing the film. Who knows? Maybe the whole thing was a stunt.

  26.11.2006 16:51 #2

• Dela

  Quote:Well the movie wasn't called "The world according to ants" now was it? No it was a documentary that comments on G W Bush and how he portrays himself in the world's view. Being the leader of the USA, he's a popular media subject and to say that a large proportion of the 40odd thousand viewers may not have known about the movie is slightly ridiculousMy point is they may have found it by searching the word "Bush" or other terms as I'm sure a lot of people have done - I'm not 100% sure all 43,000 people, or even 5% of them actually searched the term "The world according to Bush".
  
  While the company may have suffered lost revenue, my point is im not sure that all viewers would have sat and waited and watched the entire movie on Google Video or already had knowledge of its existence so they probably would not have bought it, rented it or went to see it in a theater. The great thing about YouTube and Google Video is how you can find things by accident.

  26.11.2006 16:59 #3

• limelight

  I think of it as free advertising.

  26.11.2006 17:39 #4

• DR34MER

  Dela : And my point is that other people know that too, especially those who work in marketing and who choose to stay informed. My guess is that it was a stunt on behalf of the producers to have the film found. In time, they will most probably drop the suit in favour of a Google "marketing" agreement
  

  26.11.2006 22:24 #5

• borhan9

  Interesting little article there. I figure free advertising for a film wont hurt. I have seen snippets of full DVD's on uploaded video sites before. It actually got me to go and rent one of the DVD's and watch it to its full entirety.

  27.11.2006 00:26 #6

• mystic

  the question begs to be asked but couldnt one of their own employees post the video and make it linkable by Google? I mean really a movie About Bush isnt like the new Ghost Rider on pre release or any other blockbuster moviethis is someone with a copy of their movie making it avalible to the web ... Thats who they should be going after the uploader not the host of the links...we have all taken it for granted that thease companies who bring forth thease lawsuites are on the up and up ... maybe thease small film companies need to do is use the web as a delivery system to increase revanue instead of chastising the people who view it or the poor sap whos website thease files are posted on ... if this is the way to get rich why dont we cut out the middle man and post the movies on the riaa's website so we can sue them.......

  27.11.2006 04:29 #7

• Bladework

  thats jaz b**l i havent even heard of that thing, that company jaz want to extort money from gooogle/youtube
  
  coz theres a lot of anime on youtube and i rarely see companies bitching about it as longs its not yet licensed in america

  28.11.2006 08:32 #8

• shadow222

  What jerks. Sueing Google for this is insane. I say we boycout their stupid movie, and keep uploading it just to show them how bad it can be. Kidding aside, I feel like Google did enough by removing the video promptly. I don't think the movie creator lost one cent of revenue from this incident, it was (as another user said) purely publicity!

  28.11.2006 19:50 #9

• frankacne

  At least by entering the word Bush into a Google search one can find the sites which it is sensible to avoid in future.

  1.12.2006 16:41 #10

• rmoorhou

  In the movie industry it doesn't matter whether it's good or bad publicity, just as long as it gets their name in the news. That goes for movies or actors themselves. In this case, Flach probably had someone post it for them to Google, so they could then get their movie in the news when they threaten Google with a lawsuit.
  
  This past election we had a politician whose signs were being defaced. Two weeks in a row the newspaper did a big article on this along with a lot of quotes and promises from that politician, should the offender ever be caught. Now this guy got a lot of free publicity that others were paying the paper to print. Nobody was ever caught doing this, but most people suspected the politician did it himself and he never made it past the primary.

  3.12.2006 04:41 #11