More from ZDNet.com as the media industry begins to digest the significance of Viacom's legal action.

This new chapter is like when the gold miners start doing the real tests on the promising ore bodies.  This is now where the legal framework for the digital era will really start being tested and having to adapt, or not.

It's still basically about money, IMO.  Viacom will move along after some form of settlement is reached (I agree with Henry Blodgett's take on things, here).

Digital culturus interruptus: Right here, right now, the almighty copyright finally comes home to roost
David Berlind

 
Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. Like teenagers biologically programmed to step across every boundary put in place by their parents, the digerati, equipped with the constantly evolving tools of their trade (everything from YouTube-like video sharing sites to widely available hacks of anti-piracy systems), have been been running a full-court press, brazenly subjecting the limits of the analog world to the most extreme of tests.

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Thanks to today's news regarding Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google (more coverage on Techmeme), we now have three watershed events in one quarter that couldn't better exemplify (and quantify in dollars) the gravity of digital evolution, the futile attempts to resist that nature, why legacies hurt so badly, and the extinction that will result.

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In fact, if you go to YouTube, you'll find that ordinary people are making illegal copies of ZDNet's videos including one featuring me talking about digital rights management.

On YouTube, that video has been viewed more than 9700 times. When we at CNET first saw this, we weren't quite sure what to do about it. Call Google? Attempt to track down the user who posted it? For now. None of the above. Instead, our first response is to leverage the opportunity. For example, today, there are no pointers (often called "slates") in our videos that say something like "For more great ZDNet video, go to videos.zdnet.com." In other words, we missed 9700 opportunities to invite new users — users who collectively appeared to like the video since they gave it a four-star rating — to ZDNet. Long-term, is that a viable model? Could we continue to produce our videos against the backdrop of massive piracy (on the order of what Viacom has endured)? Or what if the pirates edited out our slates or any other commercial messaging (easily done)? While we don't have the answers yet, Viacom apparently does. Of course, with no print or broadcast legacy, we represent the new culture. Them? Old.

Right in front of you. Right now. The copyrights have come home to roost and it's casualty-time.

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