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A visitor
is seen at the You Tube stand during the annual MIPCOM
television programme
market in Cannes, southeastern France,
October 3, 2011. (Credit:
Reuters/Eric Gaillard)
|
(Reuters) -
Even courtroom adversaries can be partners in the nascent online movie rental
business.
YouTube
announced a movie rental partnership with Paramount Pictures on Wednesday,
despite the online video website's long-running litigation with Paramount
parent company Viacom Inc.
YouTube
said it would offer online rentals of nearly 500 Paramount films, including
"Hugo" and "The Godfather," rounding out its growing
catalog of feature-length movies.
Terms of
the deal were not disclosed and it was not immediately clear why the two
companies, whose parent companies have sparred in court for years, decided to
put their differences aside for this licensing agreement.
Viacom is
currently seeking to overturn its defeat in a landmark $1 billion lawsuit in
which the media conglomerate charged YouTube and parent company Google Inc with
"massive" copyright infringement.
Viacom
alleged in its 2007 suit that many of its programs, including "The Daily
Show with Jon Stewart," "South Park," and "SpongeBob
SquarePants," have been illegally uploaded on YouTube and that YouTube and
Google executives knew about it but did nothing to stop it.
The case
has been closely-watched as a test of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a
1998 federal law making it a crime to produce technology to circumvent
anti-piracy measures, and limiting liability of online service providers for
copyright infringement by users.
YouTube,
the world's most popular online video website, streams 4 billion videos every
day and its users upload more than 60 hours of video to the site every minute.
Although much of the content on YouTube consists of home videos that are free
to watch, YouTube has increasingly added professionally-produced content, some
of it available to rent for a fee.
The
Paramount deal means that YouTube now has movie rental deals with five of the
six major film studios, as well as more than ten independent film studios,
giving it access to a catalog of nearly 9,000 films.
Consumers
can rent the films, generally for 24 hours or 48 hours, for anywhere from $2.99
to $3.99.
The
Paramount movies, which include recent releases and classics, will be available
in the United States and Canada over the next few weeks. Consumers can rent the
movies on the YouTube website, or on Google Play, Google's online storefront
for music, games, movies and other types of media.
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