Viacom, Google, and Intellectual Property

Viacom's WP editorial on the YouTube lawsuit. Michael Fricklas puts out the standard argument that copyright holders cannot be burdened with policing sites for violations of their property. What piqued my interest in the piece was a section at the end which says "Google and YouTube wouldn't be here if not for investment in software and technologies spurred by patent and copyright laws." This is a dubious claim at best because Google's success is a successful confluence of ideation(the pagerank algorithm), scaling (the massive decentralized infrastructure), and a disruptive business model (free advertiser funded software). Note that Google did not file a patent for their technology and sit back and sue competitors, but rather built an infrastructure and business model that has such tremendous scale that it becomes virtually impossible for others to replicate it. The way that copyright holders and patent trolls are wielding IP and patent laws recently, it is holding back innovation and growth - not fostering them. And I have already blogged about the NYT article on how IP laws unfairly tax the developing nations. And here's Google's response to the article.