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The Man Who Could Kill YouTube
By Matthew Belloni
A single bottle broke the calm, shattering in the late-afternoon sun. Then another...and another. A few men walked into Tom's Liquor and walked out quicker than would be possible if they'd paid. A family followed, tossing groceries into the intersection of Florence and Normandie in the heart of South Central Los Angeles.
Bob Tur, a pilot and photojournalist, hovered above the unfolding chaos in his helicopter, along with his copilot, his camerawoman wife, his lawyer, and a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. Fifteen years later, he still recalls the details of the scene with the precision of a war memory. There was Larry Tarvin, who was pulled from his truck and kicked in the ribs, shoulder, and face. That's when the shots started. Tur's chopper began taking hits as the throng below pummeled another trucker, Reginald Denny, with a cement block, a tire iron, and a fire extinguisher.
Tur knew this was coming, he says, having spent weeks in advance of the Rodney King verdict interviewing gangbangers, church leaders, whomever, asking what would happen if the jury acquitted four white cops. The Crips told Tur they'd try to kill as many white people as possible. So when the call came at 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, Tur, whose fledgling news-video company was pioneering helicopter coverage of breaking events, knew where to go. He arrived on the scene before anyone else and recorded many of the images people now associate with the L.A. riots.
Over the years, he estimates, the Denny tape has generated about $5 million in licensing fees. But Tur has spent almost an equal amount filing lawsuits to protect his content. All of which led to the day last spring when he happened upon an article in The Wall Street Journal about an upstart video-sharing Website whose users were uploading clips of dogs skateboarding and grandmothers belching and, oh yeah, copyrighted news footage. Tur logged on and, after two clicks, watched his Denny video. A few weeks later, like a small bottle tossed before the mob of big entertainment companies like Viacom began their battle for control of digital media, Tur became the first person to sue YouTube for copyright infringement.
Tur wants YouTube shuttered until its parent company, Google, can guarantee his videos and other copyrighted content won't reappear after being taken down. And even if there's a filtering technology out there that really works (despite Google's April announcement of such a technology, Tur is skeptical), he wants a court to say the law doesn't shield YouTube-like services, so he's protected from whatever site becomes the next big thing.
Tur understands why people love YouTube, a democratic clearinghouse of everything from family reunions to detainee abuse, and knows that most videos uploaded are actually owned by their poster. He also recognizes the promotional value and potential revenue stream from a site visited by hundreds of thousands of people each day. But, Tur says, unlike Viacom and other big media companies, his case is about principle, not profit — a claim that would be more suspect if it weren't for his history of fighting similar cases up to precedent-setting courts. He sees his suit as a backlash against Web 2.0 new-media demagoguery — a check on the Shawn Fannings, the Toms from MySpace, and the Chad Hurleys and Steve Chens, who have built empires, he claims, not by creating but by figuring out how to redistribute content online. Which is why Bob Tur just may shape the future of digital media.
"I sued these guys when they had no money, no business plan, and I had nothing to gain but keeping my videos off their site," Tur says over lunch near his Santa Monica office, where he's finishing a new police-chase show for MSNBC. He is trim, boyish, and fidgety, with neatly cropped hair, wire-rim glasses, and a corduroy-jacket-and-jeans combo that's more Hollywood than necessary for a guy who spends most of his days in an editing bay.
click link to read the rest of the article:
The Man Who Could Kill YouTube - Â MSN Lifestyle: Men
By Matthew Belloni
A single bottle broke the calm, shattering in the late-afternoon sun. Then another...and another. A few men walked into Tom's Liquor and walked out quicker than would be possible if they'd paid. A family followed, tossing groceries into the intersection of Florence and Normandie in the heart of South Central Los Angeles.
Bob Tur, a pilot and photojournalist, hovered above the unfolding chaos in his helicopter, along with his copilot, his camerawoman wife, his lawyer, and a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. Fifteen years later, he still recalls the details of the scene with the precision of a war memory. There was Larry Tarvin, who was pulled from his truck and kicked in the ribs, shoulder, and face. That's when the shots started. Tur's chopper began taking hits as the throng below pummeled another trucker, Reginald Denny, with a cement block, a tire iron, and a fire extinguisher.
Tur knew this was coming, he says, having spent weeks in advance of the Rodney King verdict interviewing gangbangers, church leaders, whomever, asking what would happen if the jury acquitted four white cops. The Crips told Tur they'd try to kill as many white people as possible. So when the call came at 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, Tur, whose fledgling news-video company was pioneering helicopter coverage of breaking events, knew where to go. He arrived on the scene before anyone else and recorded many of the images people now associate with the L.A. riots.
Over the years, he estimates, the Denny tape has generated about $5 million in licensing fees. But Tur has spent almost an equal amount filing lawsuits to protect his content. All of which led to the day last spring when he happened upon an article in The Wall Street Journal about an upstart video-sharing Website whose users were uploading clips of dogs skateboarding and grandmothers belching and, oh yeah, copyrighted news footage. Tur logged on and, after two clicks, watched his Denny video. A few weeks later, like a small bottle tossed before the mob of big entertainment companies like Viacom began their battle for control of digital media, Tur became the first person to sue YouTube for copyright infringement.
Tur wants YouTube shuttered until its parent company, Google, can guarantee his videos and other copyrighted content won't reappear after being taken down. And even if there's a filtering technology out there that really works (despite Google's April announcement of such a technology, Tur is skeptical), he wants a court to say the law doesn't shield YouTube-like services, so he's protected from whatever site becomes the next big thing.
Tur understands why people love YouTube, a democratic clearinghouse of everything from family reunions to detainee abuse, and knows that most videos uploaded are actually owned by their poster. He also recognizes the promotional value and potential revenue stream from a site visited by hundreds of thousands of people each day. But, Tur says, unlike Viacom and other big media companies, his case is about principle, not profit — a claim that would be more suspect if it weren't for his history of fighting similar cases up to precedent-setting courts. He sees his suit as a backlash against Web 2.0 new-media demagoguery — a check on the Shawn Fannings, the Toms from MySpace, and the Chad Hurleys and Steve Chens, who have built empires, he claims, not by creating but by figuring out how to redistribute content online. Which is why Bob Tur just may shape the future of digital media.
"I sued these guys when they had no money, no business plan, and I had nothing to gain but keeping my videos off their site," Tur says over lunch near his Santa Monica office, where he's finishing a new police-chase show for MSNBC. He is trim, boyish, and fidgety, with neatly cropped hair, wire-rim glasses, and a corduroy-jacket-and-jeans combo that's more Hollywood than necessary for a guy who spends most of his days in an editing bay.
click link to read the rest of the article:
The Man Who Could Kill YouTube - Â MSN Lifestyle: Men
