Online video streaming site Veoh has gone bankrupt and will be selling off its assets in a bid to repay creditors, founder Dmitry Shapiro has revealed. Shapiro blamed the bankruptcy on a costly copyright battle with Universal Music Group that started in 2007—Veoh ultimately won, but it now appears to have been a Pyrrhic victory.
“The distraction of the legal battles, and the challenges of the broader macro-economic climate have led to our Chapter 7 bankruptcy,” Shapiro wrote in a blog post. “Unfortunately, great vision, a passionate team, tens of millions of users, millions in revenues and victory in court were not enough.”
Unlike YouTube, which has always focused on short-form video clips, Veoh from the outset was aimed at full-length video programming. Veoh did manage to attract some major interest from investors and the likes of ABC and ESPN but never seems to catch major interest from Internet users…at least, not after it actively decided to remove adult materials uploaded to its service.
Chapter 7 bankruptcy calls for the sale of a debtor’s assets to repay creditors; it’s different from the Chapter 11 bankruptcies recently employed by many large U.S. manufacturers that permit companies to reorganize, restructure their debts, and pay them back over time.
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