Wednesday, March 14, 2007

I'm very curious about this. As you should know, Viacom sued YouTube for a Billion dollars. Here's the story:

Viacom sues 'GooTube' for $1 billion
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Viacom
sued Google and its online video subsidiary YouTube for $1 billion Tuesday,
the
first big lawsuit against the online video site and its parent for
copyright
infringement.
Experts predict more lawsuits to come.
YouTube
co-founders
Steven Chen and Chad Hurley have to deal with their first major
lawsuit for
copyright infringement. Viacom is suing YouTube and its parent
company Google
for more than $1 billion.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt defended
his firm's
purchase of YouTube and said it was eager to partner with media
firms at two
investment conferences earlier this month.

In the
lawsuit filed Tuesday
in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District
of New York, Viacom (Charts), owner
of MTV and Comedy Central, said that "almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of
Viacom's programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had
been viewed more than 1.5 billion times."
In addition to damages, Viacom
said it wants an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further
copyright infringement.
Google said that it and YouTube had yet to see
the
lawsuit but added they feel "confident that YouTube has respected the
legal
rights of copyright holders and believe the courts will agree."
Viacom first
demanded that YouTube take down videos from shows on
Viacom-owned networks that
were posted on the site without Viacom's consent. Google (Charts) bought
YouTube for nearly $1.7 billion last year.


There is a poll on cnn.com about this, here are the results:

How do you feel about Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube?
Media companies need to protect their rights 17%
YouTube and media companies should negotiate a deal 29%
YouTube shouldn't be liable at all 49%
Not sure 5%
total responses to this question: 10641

I need your help, how do you feel about this? I think I have a strong position about this, but I would like to see how people feel about this. I'll have another post in a couple of days.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

I guess I'm falling back to my old habits where the posts are not happening as much. I've been having a crazy couple of weeks at work which I hope will be over soon. What's going on in my life:
* Finally is getting warmer here! I'm done with the frigid temperatures, really. Isn't it sad that I get very excited when I hear that today it will be 55!

* Sugar free gum sucks! I got this fancy type of gum that hold the berry flavor for 2.5 seconds. It was 5 f'ing dollars! I've been giving them to whoever comes to my office and the sad news is that everybody hates them. Screw you Dylan's Candy Bar!!!

* I went out on Saturday night. It's been a while since I went clubbing and I have to say, it is not as fun as it used to be. Thank god the company was good! Because of the Daylight Saving Time I got home around 4:30 and kind of drunk-texted somebody.... a very asshole thing to do, specially since I woke her up.... Apparently she didn't mind much at the end, it has to be my sexy accent! haha

* I spent $400 on an Xbox360. I'm not much of a gamer, but I find it a good way to release stress. Anyway, this thing is way more than a game console, you can hook it up to your PC, play with other people, download movies, play movies, music and pictures from your PC on your TV, really cool stuff. Obviously playing online doesn't do much for my ego, since a 10 year old can easily kick my ass on anything.

* Yesterday I got on the elevator when this girl came in with some flowers. Clearly she just came from the mail room and she had this huge smile on her face. As she looked at me she couldn't stop smiling. I told her that this was the part that we missed whenever we send flowers. We know (or at least hope) that the flowers will make you happy, however we usually are not there to see that face, so it was nice to see what a "I just got flowers" face looks like.

* I bought one of those thingies that clean your shower by pushing a button. I just started today, so I'm not sure how good this thing will be, I have to say I was hoping for something more "exciting", it just goes around once for about 20 seconds... that's it! I guess as long as it cleans I shouldn't care about the operational part, but I was hoping for something more.. damn expectations!

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

I heard this on the news this morning, and I just couldn't believe it:

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070307/NEWS02/703070378/1018

I understand the Principal's decision regarding the insubordination, everything else couldn't be more wrong. Why the hell did they censor the word vagina? Randomly they could censor the word nose or arm! What is so scary about that word? Why cannot a child hear about it?

Are we that afraid of everything related to sex? When are we going to realize that sex cannot and should not be demonized?