When faced with copyright violations the music industry went after the end user, and I think we can all agree that even though file sharing is wrong, suing children was not the right solution. YouTube and broadband Internet have brought us streaming video and now the TV Networks are testing the lawsuit waters. While I agree that suing a large corporation is a much easier sell to the public than suing a 12 year old, it still doesn’t seem right.

Now don’t get me wrong, there needs to be a compensation model worked out for digital content, but I just don’t think lawsuits are going to get it done. Unlike P2P file sharing between individuals YouTube is broadcasting content to the public and in this situation both parties are bringing something to the table.

YouTube owns streaming content delivery on the Web. With the Internet emerging as an alternative channel for TV, YouTube is becoming to the Internet what the BBC is to television in the U.K.

Viacom creates and owns the content that helps drive the traffic to YouTube. They need to be compensated when online entities are leveraging it to make a profit.

What makes this more complicated is the fact that YouTube (in my opinion) is helping drive the success and popularity of many of Viacom’s shows. Clips from Comedy Central shows used to provide a large portion of the top daily content on YouTube. Shows like The Colbert Report have repeatedly benefited from the publicity and even more directly the YouTube community it self. The Green Screen Challenge, which saw YouTube users create hundreds of computer generated videos of Colbert battling various things was started because of random videos being posted on YouTube.

In that instance Viacom properly responded and embraced the community rather than sue them and have the video taken down so it’s disappointing to see that they can’t figure out a solution now. Like all new media I think the problem is this doesn’t fit into a traditional bucket. While YouTube provides publicity for copyrighted TV material it’s not really marketing it. Viacom isn’t broadcasting their content on YouTube, their fans and viewers are choosing to share it with the world.

The Internet needs a model that addresses that grey area between advertising and broadcasting. This is why we have ended up with a billion dollar lawsuit, when what we really need is the answer to that billion dollar question.