The market's love affair with Google notwithstanding, Google is a publicly traded company and its actions are answerable to shareholders. We're reminded of that by Chris Castle, who along with Mark Cuban has been skeptical of the Google-YouTube pairing from Day One. In his latest post, Chris notes the media is now doing the due diligence on the merger that one would expect Google management to have performed before the acquisition. He also notes the problems go far beyond what we're hearing:

However, the most interesting thing about the GooTube is not the copyright issues--Google would like to keep everyone focused on that, and their belief that somehow the DMCA "safe harbor" protects massive infringers. How about right of publicity? Trademark infringement? Palming off or reverse palming off? No safe harbors on those, kiddies. No notice and takedown--that's just for copyright, and copyright is just one of the claims. And it's a bit late in the day to try to clean your hands.

I'm particularly pleased, however, that Chris points out that, yes, obtaining rights isn't always easy.

We are starting to hear the same old whine from the Slacker 2.0 crowd: Waaaah, it's too hard, Mommy! There're record companies and artists and publishers and writers and unions and producers and samples and they all want money, Mommy!! Mommy, my head hurts!

My favorite newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, had a story last week expressing such sympathy for YouTube in tracking down rights. Yes, I thought, it's a terrible thing, these greedy people who want to be compensated for use of their work, or at a minimum simply want to be asked first. A YouTube official told the Journal that government might be the solution. Yes, when the market requires actual work, better to get the government do the work for you. Obviously the folks at YouTube need to read my paper on the vibrant rights market. God forbid if we end up with a statutory license for online video sites.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:50 PM | Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation, Media: Video, Music...

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