YouTube To Offer Paramount Movie Rentals: Watch 'The Godfather,' 'Hugo,' More Online

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO (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.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Mark Potter)

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Comments

[OtakuReborn]

02:33 PM on 04/04/2012

Why in god's name is this region locked? This is exactly why the entertainment industry is "dying." It's got nothing to do with piracy, they just like to artificially limit who can get their products.

[Basselope]

12:13 PM on 04/04/2012

It continues to amaze me how little even YouTube understands YouTube. Maybe they forgot that they tried a "shows" tab and it failed.

People don't visit YouTube to watch 3 hour videos.. they show up watch a few 3-5 minute videos and move on. The higher quality 3-5 minute videos you have, the longer the person may stay on the site.

[Quai DOrsay]

12:25 PM on 04/04/2012

I 100% agree with you..

Makes me wonder if they check their own stats and traffic. IF someone want to watch a full 2 hour movie, or want to rent it, youtube wouldn't be the place for Gawdsake. People on youtube wants things for free

[Amberboo61997]

06:05 PM on 04/04/2012

I ,too, agree.
This is so correct. Why would anyone really want to go on YouTube to watch movies. We already have Netflix. Youtube is a place to watch funny stuff, events, and everything else. Why would I want to watch a frickin movie on there? They're asking for more than they can handle.