The New York Times says Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google’s site YouTube.com “is the clearest sign yet of the tension between Google and major media companies.” I’d say it’s probably bigger than that. It’s the clearest sign yet of the tension between the social, media-sharing Web and the media industry. It’s a story that affects teenagers especially because they love to share media – their own homemade videos (some with background music sold by huge media companies) and everybody else’s, including clips from favorite TV shows, music videos, etc. This lawsuit could change the Web’s media-sharing landscape and, the San Jose Mercury News reports, “could end up rewriting one of the key laws of the Internet age: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” A search of Google news turned up 1,200+ news articles from news outlets around the world.
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