Google Slams Viacom For Secret YouTube Uploads

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "Google, Inc. accused Viacom, Inc. of secretly uploading its videos to YouTube even as the media conglomerate publicly denounced the online video site for copyright infringement, according to court documents made public on Thursday." As "statements from the corporate counsel's office" go, this post on the YouTube blog is pretty hot reading.

Re:Viacom - the verb

[WrongSizeGlass]

I do hereby second this motion. Can we get a floor vote?

RTFA, perhaps? Nah, then you can't just say BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

"As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement."

Re:Can they have it both ways?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. As they point out, even the video of your cousin's wedding is subject to copyright. If I take the video and post it, no problem. If you copy the file off my computer and post it, problem. How is YouTube to know who the copyright holder is?

Re:Two words for Viacom

[bmo]

http://definitions.uslegal.com/u/unclean-hands/ [uslegal.com]

"The clean hands doctrine is a rule of law that someone bringing a lawsuit or motion and asking the court for equitable relief must be innocent of wrongdoing or unfair conduct relating to the subject matter of his/her claim. It is an affirmative defense that the defendant may claim the plaintiff has "unclean hands". However, this defense may not be used to put in issue conduct of the plaintiff unrelated to plaintiff's claim. Therefore, plaintiff's unrelated corrupt actions and general immoral character would be irrelevant. The defendant must show that plaintiff misled the defendant or has done something wrong regarding the matter under consideration. The wrongful conduct may be of a legal or moral nature, as long as it relates to the matter in issue."

Re:RTFA, perhaps? Nah, then you can't just say BS.

[Dalambertian]

From the memorandum:

Viacom employees have made special trips away from the company’s premises (to places like Kinko’s) to upload videos to YouTube from computers not traceable to Viacom. See Schapiro Ex. 47 (158:2022); see also Schapiro Exs. 48, 49.

Re:RTFA, perhaps? Nah, then you can't just say BS.

[NotBornYesterday]

In the supplemantary acticle, Google also alleges that Viacom hired 18 marketing companies to upload clips, and took steps to make the content look pirated. Viacom allegedly even sent employees Kinko's to upload clips, so Youtube couldn't trace the origin back to Viacom. I don't know what evidence they have of this, but if we give them the benefit of the doubt (that's a pretty specific bunch of allegations to simply invent), that would indicate some pretty clear malfeasance on Viacom's part. They were trying to poison the well and not get caught.

Re:Can they have it both ways?

[NotBornYesterday]

Because when you get sued for a bajillion dollars by someone who wants to own you, it pays to go back throught you servers' IP logs and see if you can find exactly where all their copyrighted content actually came from. Gee, will you look at this; a lot of it comes from these 18 marketing firms. Hmm. They all list Viacom as a client. That's odd. And Kinko's? Hmmm. (Subpoenaing user CC information for workstation abc at Kinko's xyz on day/month/yr/time ... comparing to Viacom org chart ... *exact match*!)

Re:If Viacom wins

[metlin]

It's not as cut and dry as you might think. YouTube has done its share of dirty deeds in this whole fiasco [arstechnica.com].

Some choice excerpts include the YouTube cofounders discussing how 80% of the site traffic depended on pirated videos. So, they pretty much did whatever they had to get a massive user base so that they'd get bought out. From the article -

The basic argument here is a simple one. YouTube's founders hoped to build a massive user base as quickly as possible and then sell the site. "Our dirty little secret... is that we actually just want to sell out quickly," said Karim at one point.

Now, arguably, YouTube at that time does not equal Google, and one could argue that things have changed. However, don't be so quick to decide without hearing both sides of the story.

Re:I dont know what is an 'oops' situation if this

[TheRaven64]

As for The Daily Show and Colbert Report, I'm not sure why people would go to YouTube to watch them anyway, since you can already watch them for free on the shows' web sites

For given values of 'you' where 'you' is a person with a US IP address.

Re:If Viacom wins

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it is the usage of a double negative, the sentence places emphasis on bought. It adds strength to his statement and is a literary device [wikipedia.org].

Re:Wow.

[sgbett]

Approx 17 seconds

http://www.ssynth.co.uk/~gay/anagram.html [ssynth.co.uk]

Re:I dont know what is an 'oops' situation if this

[Anonymous Coward]

thedailyshow.com and colbertnation.com work fine from Germany, with moderate advertisements (30 seconds before the full show, mostly for other comedy central shows). Where can't you access those sites?

Re:I dont know what is an 'oops' situation if this

[JoelMeow]

They also work fine in Japan. However, when I was in France on a trip, I got the "this content is not available in your location" message. So some locations are blocked off, but it's not just non-U.S.

Re:Wow.

[mcgrew]

Viacom wants to make money and protect its IP.

The intellectual property doesn't belong to Viacom; the US Constitution says it belongs to everyone, and Viacom merely holds a limited time monopoly on it. It's like a rented house - the renter doesn't own the house, he merely has a limited time monopoly on it.

Viacom wants to protect itself from us using our IP without its permission.

OTOH, Disney does own Mickey Mouse, since that's trademarked (although we own the cartoons). You can own a trademark but merely hold a copyright.

I know it sounds pedantic, but it's a serious distinction that most people misunderstand and that the media companies want you to misunderstand.