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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.
If Viacom wins there isn't anything that cannot be bought.
Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve, and Charo, twice...
This story illustrates a whole new sort of corporate stupidity. I propose from now on that such an action should be known as Viacomming, drawn from a new verb. To Viacom. Definition - to stab yourself in both feet by litigating against your own principal shopfront.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
While they do this they're changing people's perception of Google as well ... and not always for the better.
Too bad they cannot just file that blog post (with a bunch of attached items to confirm their statements) as their legal response to the suit.
xkcd is painfully unfunny.
The problem isn't that Youtube doesn't know who uploads stuff, but that they can't tell if the person that is uploading stuff is authorized to do so.
At the very least they'll have copies of the requests from Viacom to restore the videos that Viacom demanded be taken down, and most likely Google required that those requests state exactly why Viacom has the authority to make that video available. They also probably traced the IP addresses, odds on more than a few times somebody slipped up and uploaded videos from an IP traceable to a machine belonging to Viacom or one of it's marketing companies. The marketers have no dog in this fight, if Google's gone to them with apparent proof that they've been uploading Viacom's videos the marketers won't have any qualms about pulling out their authorization from Viacom to cover themselves.
Google hires some pretty good lawyers. I doubt they'd be making such a strong statement in a legal action if they didn't already have what they needed to back it up.
but it is difficult to believe a corporate legal counsel would post something like that if he could not prove it six ways to Sunday. Indeed, while I am not a lawyer, I would think that Google has grounds to counter sue. As a PR person I am embarrassed for my profession.
Further - they cannot afford to do this sort of investigation on every single one of the millions of videos on Youtube.
http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/20/every-minute-just-about-a-days-worth-of-video-is-uploaded-to-youtube/
I imagine that they have only had the resources to investigate a sample of the alleged videos well after the fact.
How many uploads classified as breaches of copyright may be attributable to the copyright holders, issued in an attempt to push through shutdown and enforcement legislation?
Also let us not forget that Google has just announced Google TV thus made some fresh enemies. I used to think Google was just pretending to be the good guys, but I have to admit that as of recent developments they deserve kudos.
Brin baby: I'm sorry I once stated you must be smoking crack, I was wrong.
Never, ever screw with a company that's in the business of collecting information. Heck, that's Google's *ONLY* business.
The crunching sound you hear is viacom stepping on its own dick.
xkcd is painfully unfunny.
and you're painfully retarded. seriously, it hurts even to think about how retarded you are.
like, you're making Trig Palin look very, very smart by comparison.
This is the sort of shit that people who read xkcd find amusing.
Eh, there's a difference between reading it and finding it amusing ... and feeling a need to bring it up in every possible discussion and work it into every conversation, like some kind of obsession. I think what you're talking about applies to the latter and not the former.
Xkcd is pretty good, and for the most part I can appreciate its humor. However, it's not so good that I want to see it in every single Slashdot story. If anything, that's a great way to make me not want to read it. Turning something into another mindless meme is not a great way to promote it. This thread indicates I'm not the only one who feels that way.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Wow. Facts aside, this is the clearest, most straightforward legal/PR writing I've read in years. Makes the point with no dodging and evasion, no complicated jargon, it's short, clear, and on point.
Kids, if you ever wonder why English 101 is mandatory at your college, this is why: so maybe someday you'll be able to write like this.
Who would you rather have controlling a large chunk of the flow of information on the internet, Google, or Viacom?
I can understand the consternation that has sometimes arisen regarding Google, but I think some of it might be because we're not used to transnational corporations acting like anything but rapacious, greedy monsters who hate their own customers and would sell weapons to Al-Qaeda if it meant a 2% bump in quarterly profits.
Google may be far from perfect, but they're also far from your average transnational spawn of Satan.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No, he's right. Compare the first 80 strips to the newer ones, you'll see that it was funny on the start but it isn't anymore (or at least wasn't, I don't read it anymore).
I blame the memes and internet fame.
You jest, but it's a credible theory that Viacom was in fact trying to frame YouTube for the hosting of actual pirated materials, with the eventual goal of shutting them down entirely, thereby (in Viacom's mind) removing a threat to their business model. (YouTube's post doesn't go beyond suggesting that Viacom was merely astroturfing for the free advertisement.)
As long as it's possible that Viacom was acting with malice towards YouTube, rather than with dishonest greed for publicity, this will obliterate their credibility in any future infringement lawsuits. Viacom has a motive to fabricate a copyright beef and they have now demonstrated the means and inclination; any claim they make about a future infringement on YouTube is automatically suspicious. IANAL, but it would be nice if, any time Viacom makes a legal claim against a YouTube video, the burden were on them to prove that they did not post it themselves before they can claim to have standing to sue. Is this too much fairness to hope from copyright law?
I think that if even Viacom can't get its act together and figure out which one of its own properties is supposed to be on Youtube, it's illogical to demand that Youtube should figure it out.
To get back to the example of the GP, the technical side of figuring out who uploaded something is entirely feasible. The problem is that that information has little to no bearing on whether that person was authorized by the copyright holder to upload the content in question.
I'm getting the impression that this is indeed nothing more that Viacom going on a legal fishing expedition. I'd love to see them slapped with a counter-suit, but am not holding my breath.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Perhaps Google wants not to have billion-dollar lawsuits fabricated and leveled at them.
Just another proletarian malcontent.
The real argument is that the DMCA safe harbour provisions should cover them. That coverage may be contingent on the practicality argument, and perhaps that is why the argument gets made. However in and of itself, being unable to afford to do something really buys you nothing in and of itself. If you can't afford to do something in a way compliant with the law then you just shouldn't do it. You have to have something more. In this case, it's the DMCA, and that is what the real argument is about.
I'm not sure what Google wants...
Information. They get information on you to deliver targeted ads to you, and they are unlikely to give away this information easily because it is their core product and core source of revenue. Some see this as a bad thing and others don't really mind.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
Xkcd itself made a (slightly oblique) comment on this, when he criticized people who found amusement in quoting line after line, verbatim, from Monty Python. They're great, but it's a weakness in creativity to endlessly repeat the same funny lines. That type of rote mimicry is exactly NOT what made Monty Python great in the first place.
Douglas Adams receives the same treatment.
No, actually it's a *good* thing our legal system won't let you file rants and PR puff pieces as legal responses.
No need for car analogies here because it's typical of what every person involved with sales do. Offer the thing to everybody, but always claim it's not really for sale, it's too precious to sell.
Like when you go to a used car lot and the salesman tells you he cannot hold that car for you unless you close the deal right then and there, because there are so many people ready to take that car at a much higher price.
> Figure it out yourselves or we'll sue you for one billyun dollars!
That is exactly the situation Google would be in were it not for the DMCA Safe Harbor clause (except, of course, there would be no YouTube. And no low-cost Web hosting. And no blogs.)
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
> No, actually it's a *good* thing our legal system won't let you file rants
> and PR puff pieces as legal responses.
Actually it will, but the judge will make you _really_ wish you hadn't.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If these allegations are true, it is the very definition of unclean hands...
And people wonder why we need net neutrality. This should shine a bright light into why it is so needed.
And ironically, I've seen people rote quote that *exact* XKCD, and I'm not sure if they were aware of the irony of what they were doing. - Jimmy
Now of course there is a possibility that Bob from accounting created an account and uploaded baby videos. But such videos wouldn't raise the ire of viacom, nor would they fall under a DMCA request. So that means Bob would have to be uploading Viacom property. As far as I know an employee stealing their employer's property isn't anyone's problem except the employer and the employee. You can't sue someone else for it - well you can, but you'll lose. So everything Google says makes sense, and I can guarantee that a company that makes its living off of tracking users has the logs. You're right, there's not a speck of evidence; there's a goddamned ocean.
Who would you rather have controlling a large chunk of the flow of information on the internet, Google, or Viacom?
Both...and more besides. Even if Google is benign now they are a company and so their directors and owners can change over time. If you have a good diversity of companies 'in control' then there is a greatly reduced possibility for one of them to misbehave because, if they do, people will move away from them. This is about the only thing that we can do to make a company sit up and listen and if we are unable to do this because there are no alternatives then we are in real trouble.
I would rather see the market decentralize.
But freedom in the marketplace lends toward centralization.
This is a fundamental paradox of capitalism: in order for the benefits to manifest, everyone must compete, but no one can ever be allowed to win.