Guess That Makes YouTube the Trojan Rabbit That’s Made It Past the Gates

Good thing Viacom and CBS Corp. Chairman Sumner Redstone plans to live at least another 50 years; he may actually be around long enough to see the realization of Viacom’s grand Internet strategy and its bet on the marriage of old-line media assets with new distribution technologies. Assuming, of course, the sanctity of copyright is preserved.

Speaking at the Dow Jones and Nielsen Media and Money conference this week, Redstone, whose company is suing YouTube seeking $1 billion in damages for what it terms “massive intentional copyright infringement,” said content still rules the digital domain. “Copyright compels creativity,” he said. “It furnishes the incentive to innovate. If you limit the protection of copyrights, you stifle the expression of new ideas. Think about it. You cannot pay the rent posting videos on YouTube. And most aspiring novelists do not aspire to self-publish. You cannot make it as a musician or filmmaker or writer without the shelter of effective and enforced copyright legislation.

“… If content is king,” Redstone concluded, “then copyright–the legal and moral position that the fruits of intellectual labor should be protected in order to encourage creative expression–is its castle.”

And YouTube is, clearly, the Trojan rabbit that’s already made it past the gates …