Technics: Business: MTV, a Viacom corporation, has effectively wrung a promise from Google to censor all signs of MTV on YouTube

MarketWatch again today carries important tech/biz news, this time about Viacom/MTV's attempt to shut out individual consumers who publish "found art" TV clips from the major entertainment company and its TV subsidiary. The article is about Google-owned YouTube (which latter we haven't covered yet here on refWrite Backpage. MarketWatch's Ben Charny & Russ Britt, "YouTube says it will remove Viacom clips" (Feb2,2k7--click up the article to check for updates).

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc.'s YouTube unit, the free video-sharing Web site, bowed Friday to Viacom Inc.'s sweeping demand that it remove more than 100,000 of its videos from the site.

"It's unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from YouTube's passionate audience, which has helped to promote many of Viacom's shows," a YouTube representative wrote in an email statement.

Technotes, by Owlie Scowlie

Viacom said it issued the demand after months of failed negotiations to strike a content-licensing deal with Google (GOOG: GOOG481.30, -0.45, -0.1% ), which acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion last year.

It remains to be seen just what impact this might have on YouTube's popularity. Clips from MTV and other Viacom properties have been among the most popular on the site; some have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

As of Friday morning, however, clips from shows produced by the MTV network, which Viacom owns, could be easily found on YouTube, which is an indication that YouTube has yet to fully act on Viacom's request. Some of the videos have been viewed more than 500,000 times.

Those interested in techbiz and the whole complex of issues regarding copyr+t, will want to read the whole Charny & Britt piece, as will readers who watch the techbiz stockmarket (as Viacom's and Google's latest standings are quoted). As to the substance of the snippet quoted from MW, we can see vividly deomonstrated just how paleolithic Viacom's business plan is, how unable or unwilling MTV is to cope with the new phenom of popular use of small bits and pieces of the surfeit, the detritus if you will, of advanced technical capitslism in its popular mode. Remember, YouTube references to the engorgement of moving-pictures-as-junk are part of the public's creativity, just as unpredetermined by MTV as is P2P file-sharing where no commercial gain is involved. MTV is sham and disrespectful of its audience who want to make their own uses of the images Viacom's engineering of what images with what sounds by what media may have privileged access to a wholly receptive/captive audience.

The point is that in the advanced tech-image and tech-sound industries, the unfettered short short short quotations and artistic usages by amateur video-clip makers actuall sells MTV products, as well as those of the major sound-recording corporations.