(left:  mountain sues lake for copyright infringement)

Re: today's New York Times coverage of the $1 billion Viacom lawsuit against Google under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

I can't be the first one to ask these questions, but here goes:

1. why don't the media giants recognize that when I post a scene from A Few Good Men in a blog read primarily by attorneys (a damn good media market) it's free advertising to a new generation of lawyers who were in elementary school when FGM was released in 1992.  This goes in spades for equally good (or better) lawyer movies like The Verdict, screenplay by the brilliant David Mamet with Paul Newman doing some of the best acting in is entire career.  Today's young lawyers were in their bassinets when this one was released in 1982.  And where do they learn about the old movies they may want to see?  From the internet. 
2. haven't these guys read The Long Tail? (see extended entry for a wikipedia primer on long tail or "niche" marketing).
3. don't they know that most young people (say, everyone under 30) believe that content should be free.  That by yanking movie clips or sound bites from YouTube they are alienating huge numbers of potential viewers under 30?  
4. wouldn't Viacom be better off spending $100,000 per month devising a way to use YouTube's media-delivery system to its own benefit rather than paying people that same sum to track down its "pirated" YouTube content and execute it there?    

There's an old saying that "what you resist persists."  The internet, YouTube, google, blogs, mp3 players, ripping, burning and copying are here to stay. 

The means of production (and co-production) is in the hands of the people.

Still, large concentrations of capital remain (and will always remain) in the hands of corporate giants. 

This is not David and Goliath because David just wants to listen to his music, man.  The people who want to "monetize" David's listening (and recording) enjoyment will always find a way to do so.  That's their job.

The people will continue to create and share.  Mix and burn.  Copy and compile.  

Not that I mind Big Media wasting their money trying to stop the tide of progress. 

It's just that I'd rather they use it to make better movies.

For a far more sophisticated viewpoint than my own, take a look at the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium blog on CBS' Use of YouTube for "Cross Platform Distribution" of March Madness, noting: 

Not surprisingly, the blogosphere points to the irony of Viacom's suing YouTube while CBS is finding effective and profitable ways to work with the video sharing site. David A. Utter with WebProNews points out that the first CBS March Madness clip on YouTube prominently displays UPS advertising and indicates the potential for major profit for the network and YouTube as well. Utter says, "Why Viacom misses the potential of YouTube while their former brethren at CBS embrace it would be a question we would like to see Viacom answer if their YouTube/Google lawsuit ever comes to trial."

Short primer on The Long Tail from wikipedia

Where the opportunity cost of inventory storage and distribution is high, only the most popular products are sold. But where the Long Tail works, minority tastes are catered to, and individuals are offered greater choice. In situations where popularity is currently determined by the lowest common denominator, a Long Tail model may lead to improvement in a society's level of culture. Television is a good example of this: TV stations have limited time slots, so the opportunity cost of each time slot is high; stations therefore choose programs that have the broadest appeal. But as the number of TV stations grows or TV programming is distributed through other digital channels, the choice of TV programs grows and the cultural diversity rises.

Some of the most successful Internet businesses have leveraged the Long Tail as part of their businesses. Examples include eBay (auctions), Yahoo! and Google (web search), Amazon (retail) and iTunes Store (music and podcasts) amongst the major companies, along with smaller Internet companies like Audible (audio books) and Netflix (video rental).

Often presented as a phenomenon of interest primarily to mass market retailers and web-based businesses, the Long Tail also has implications for the producers of content, especially those whose products could not - for economic reasons - find a place in pre-Internet information distribution channels controlled by book publishers, record companies, movie studios, and television networks. Looked at from the producers' side, the Long Tail has made possible a flowering of creativity across all fields of human endeavour.

At a meeting held in the fall of 1994, attended by Marc Andreessen, members of Wired Magazine's staff, and others, Internet commercialization pioneer and media historian Ken McCarthy, addressed this phenomenon in detail from the producers' point of view. Explaining that the pre-Internet media industry made its distribution and promotion decisions based on what he called "lifeboat economics" and not on quality or even potential lifetime demand, he laid out a detailed vision of the impact he expected the Internet would have on the structure of the media industry with what has turned out to be a remarkable degree of accuracy, foreshadowing many of the ideas that appeared in Anderson's popular book.