Google courts media with Widevine buy

Google is stepping up its efforts to persuade media companies to provide content to its video services with the purchase of Widevine Technologies, a privately held company which protects streaming of digital entertainment.

The deal came as Viacom, the owner of Paramount Pictures, MTV Networks and Comedy Central, revived a $1bn lawsuit against YouTube with an appeal against a June verdict that the Google video site had not infringed Viacom’s copyright.

The verdict, hinging on who should carry the burden of policing such infringements, “would radically transform the functioning of the copyright system and severely impair, if not completely destroy, the value of many copyrighted creations”, Viacom argued.

Google said it would “strongly defend” the decision of the district court, which it said had “correctly ruled” that online services such as YouTube were protected if they removed unauthorised content when notified by copyright holders.

Buying Widevine, whose technology has been blessed by several media companies as an acceptable form of encryption, could help the internet company as it attempts to win over more content producers to YouTube and the nascent Google TV business.

Widevine, based in Seattle, provides digital rights management systems designed to protect the digital streaming of content for customers including NBC.com, Netflix, AT&T and Best Buy – but not Viacom.

A move into digital rights management, a method of controlling access to copyrighted material, is a departure for Google, which has traditionally been associated with the free distribution of content online. Widevine’s largest competitor is Microsoft’s DRM business.

Google has been courting media owners to build support for its streaming services. This week it revealed moves to make copyrighted content easier to find through its search engine, while suppressing pirated content material in its results.

Google has agreed terms with music companies to launch its own music streaming service, and has faced challenges in convincing television networks to provide enhanced versions of their channels to its TV-meets-the-web product, Google TV, which it unveiled in the US earlier this year.

Google did not disclose how much it was paying for Widevine, which has raised almost $45m in venture capital and institutional funding over its 11-year history from investors that include Constellation Ventures.

Samsung and John Malone’s Liberty Global and were among the investors to back Widevine’s latest $15m funding round in December 2009. The company was founded in 1999 by Brian Baker.