Viacom: more than a lawsuit

With the shock waves still reverberating from Viacom's billion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit against Google/Youtube, one wonders when and where further copyright lawsuits might arise. On this side of the Atlantic, it seems possible that Dailymotion and Metacafe could be in the sights of the big content owners. Even though both are backed by big name VCs (Tel Aviv-based Metacafe has funding from Accel and Benchmark, while Paris-based Dailymotion is backed by Atlas and Partech International) they both appear to host a significant amount of copyrighted content.

Another area in which the Viacom lawsuit is having an impact is in the burgeoning sector for detecting the sources of digital content. Om Malik, the technology writer and founder of Giga Omni Media, has declared a bull market for video fingerprinting.

In Europe, Advestigo SA and iPharro Media GmBH have developed software that can find copyrighted content by identifying and matching video "fingerprints". Since both technologies require comparison with a library of copyrighted material, a key indicator of success in this area will be who forms the most partnerships. Could a consortium of media producers try to acquire one of these companies and then enforce this technology standard on anything that wants to show their content?

And surveying this space prompted an intriguing hypothetical question. People are generally wary of venture capitalists who have competing companies in their portfolio, but what if an investor backed both a video sharing site and a digital asset management company? In theory, these two companies should complement each other. However, the reality is that a video sharing site gets more traffic (and more revenue) if the copyright detection does not work well. Has anyone come across situations where seemingly complementary companies in hot new areas produce a subtle conflict of interest?