Even with the massive success that YouTube has brought Google, and the billions in revenue that Google’s shareholders have reaped benefits, it hasn’t been without its rough patches in the road, with some of those rough patches being six-foot pot holes.  

To start, many wouldn’t imagine seeing Google sued by England’s Football Association Premier League.  Yet, in 2007, the association threw litigation against the Internet video giant, seeking damages for use of its game film that found its way onto the site.  

It took a few years and a team of lawyers to wage a war of paperwork across the pond, all while more lawsuits loaded up in queue to take a crack at YouTube pending the outcome of this trial.

Unfortunately for Viacom, which owns Comedy Central and MTV, the judge has set precedent in favor of Google, making the long wait in line just a little bit longer.

The judge ruled that punitive damages under the Copyright Act of 1976 don’t exist, and that there are no circumstances by which they can be justified.  

As in many copyright infringement lawsuits as of late, the justice system has now come to the realization that the copyright laws are indeed too vague, since at the time of conception, the Internet wasn’t even a blip in the mind of Al Gore, our former Vice President, who is also known for claiming to invent our wonderful Worldwide Web.

With YouTube’s legal victory, avenues have opened for Google to start planning to fight other cases that have been made.  It also sheds light on the problem with copyright laws in general: copyrighting is stupid.  The fact that an entity that has no impact whatsoever on the creative process or actual production of the material can claim ownership of said material, even though ownership belongs to the individual who created the product (like artist’s selling the rights to their songs for commercials, and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) doesn’t have an argument against it).  

Most of the time, the videos that make their way onto sites like YouTube are fan videos not available anywhere else, by anyone else, including the people who supposedly own the material.  You won’t find videos like “Real Madrid’s Greatest Goals in 2008″ from FIFA (International Football Federation Association, roughly translated), or “Ray Lewis’s All-Time Greatest Tackles from the NFL.”  Fans will piece together footage from all of their favorite games and make tributes to their athlete idols.  

If anything, the organizations should look at this as free advertisement, and an obvious testimony to the dedication (or fanaticism) the fans have for the sport(s) they love.

But if spending millions in legal fees over 3-minute clips on YouTube is the best way they find to demonstrate the greatness of their sport, I would reconsider all of the useless lessons taught during the joke that is the MBA degree.

After bailouts and bankruptcy, the GM brand is one that has been badly damaged.  One won’t know the extent for perhaps several years, and the outcome of the chain of events put into place by their June 1 bankruptcy filing, but the Associated Press reported of a popular method of reinvention.

On top of company restructuring, many companies also opt for renaming their brand.

The most recent example of this is our private military company (PMC) formerly known as Blackwater.  This PMC handled security in Iraq where U.S. forces were stretched too thin.  PMCs are almost exclusively ex-military, with most having special ops training, and are in many ways more capable than the U.S. military at engaging in urban warfare.  Things were going well for years, and business was booming for Blackwater until an accident involving Blackwater soldiers and the killing of several Iraqi civilians.  Upon ‘losing’ their contract (they just had to give business to another PMC and move their operations to other cities), Blackwater received mountains of negative press from media and government officials both at home and abroad.

So Blackwater sank, and Xe was born.

Xe is the same company, with a name impossible to recognize (or pronounce correctly on the first attempt), but it’s largely escaped the negative public eye and have gone onto business.

Looking at that, it makes sense to speculate that GM has some justification for considering the name change.  It blew through billions of taxpayer’s dollars just to file bankruptcy all the same a few months later.  That’s a lot of negativity for the company that once ran the American dream off the assembly lines of eight different brands.  The popular monikers for GM are now Government Motors (given how much of GM is owned by the government), or Greedy Motors (all the money it’s received).  The list goes on, but the message is clear.  The brand’s taken a beating.

But there is one thing that GM and Blackwater do not have in common, and it is perhaps the biggest thing to remember in this debate.

GM has a legacy.  People know what GM represented for years.  It has brand recognition, respect and in some cases, even hope for recovery.  Blackwater, and ValuJet (now AirTran) did not have a legacies.  Phillip Morris (now Altria Group) changed its business model and tobacco association would contradict their goals.

GM is still going to make cars, though fewer cars, but it’s still staying true to what the company is about.

As symbolic as GM has been for years, even with its tarnished and beaten reputation, there is something many need to understand.  Americans are a people of one of the greatest characteristics man can possess, and it is what has long separated the United States from the rest of the world.

Resilience.

In the beginning, America was a country that fought a war that seemed impossible to win for freedom.  Even when the country fractured and warred within itself, from the reformation emerged an even stronger nation.  And several times in the country’s history, the United States has found a way to create prosperity in the depths of depression.

For GM to re-establish itself as it once was, it will take a lot of sacrifice, hard work and time. General Motors will again become America’s brand; a brand that Americans can be proud of.