The ongoing battle between Viacom and Google over YouTube uploaded content that violates copyright is reaching fever pitch with accusations thrown left and right. According to The Hollywood Reporters, YouTube execs were part of an ongoing plan to steal and cover up the theft of content- particularly Steve Chen:
Steve Chen of YouTube – emailer extraordinaire
* In 2005, the founders are said to have removed some obviously infringing videos to create the appearance that they were being compliant. “That way, the perception is that we are concerned about this type of material and we’re actively monitoring it,” Chen writes. “[But the] actual removal of this content will be in varying degrees. That way…you can find truckloads of…copyrighted content…[if] you [are] actively searching it.”
* YouTube’s founders are said to have uploaded copyrighted content themselves and would joke about it. At times, they would caution each other about these activities, but Chen in particular was aggressive about growing the site at all costs. “Steal it!” he wrote. “[W]e need to attract traffic…[T]he only reason why our traffic surged was due to a video of this type.”
According to the YouTube Blog, a lot of Viacom uploaded content was put on YouTube by Viacom employees under orders to do so:
* For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube…Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. 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. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself… Given Viacom’s own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube — and every Web platform — to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong.
According to Techdirt, Google is likely to win the battle:
* In the end, it will surprise no one that I find Google’s arguments significantly more compelling than Viacom’s. The one point on which Viacom is strongest is the emails from the very early days of YouTube, where the founders and some employees admit that they know there’s a fair amount of infringement on the site, and they debate what to do about it, before taking a fairly liberal approach — though, never an approach that removes their safe harbors (Viacom disagrees on that point). In fact, the weaknesses of Viacom’s argument are driven home in that nowhere was it able to produce a single bit of evidence of YouTube founders/execs being aware of a specific infringing video. All of the quotes are about general infringement. The lack of a smoking gun email to the contrary really weakens Viacom’s case — and is a glaring absence in the motion.
The motions have been filed for a summary judgment for Google, and a partial summary judgment for Viacom. Parties wait a verdict anxiously in this now 3 year old case.
Tags: court case, Google, Viacom, YouTube