YouTube Was Evil, and Google Knew It

pcause writes "Silicon Alley Insider has the most damning evidence released in the Viacom/YouTube suit. It seems clear from these snippets that YouTube knew it was pirating content, and did it to grow fast and sell for a lot of money. It also seems clear that Google knew the site contained pirated content and bought it and continued the pirating."

Comments

Don't be evil

[shutdown -p now]

One interesting quote (by Patrick Walker of Google) was this:

Top 10 reasons why we shouldn't stop screening for copyright violations: 1. It crosses the threshold of Don't be Evil to facilitate distribution of other people's intellectual property, and possibly even allowing monetization of it by somebody who doesn't own the copyright.

A handy assessment of copyright and IP from an ethical (as opposed to legal) point of view. Next time the topic on how Google "really" feels about copyrights comes up, you know the answer.

Re:Double Standards, or Above the Law? -

[shutdown -p now]

I find it unlikely that Google considers this evil.

I suggest you RTFA. There is a quotation there, of one of Google's executives, which specifically says that infringing on someone's copyright, or knowingly aiding in such an infringement, is a violation of the "don't be evil" policy.

So, yes, the title of the story is spot on.

alternate side of the story

[drDugan]

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/03/broadcast-yourself.html

"Pirating" is such a slanted, unhelpful framing of using and sharing digital material without permission.

Re:Piracy?

[shutdown -p now]

From Wikipedia article on copyright infringement:

"Even prior to the 1709 enactment of the Statute of Anne, generally recognized as the first copyright law, the Stationers' Company of London in 1557 received a Royal Charter giving the company a monopoly on publication and tasking it with enforcing the charter. Those who violated the charter were labeled pirates as early as 1603."

And, yes, there is a reference there. Go look it up yourself.

Re:So...

[GasparGMSwordsman]

The article is probably the worst one out there covering this topic. They took the subject compeletly out of context. Here is a better article that includes the context:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/18/viacom-may-be-misrepresenting-youtube-founders-call-to-steal-it/

Here is the source of the quote. It is a thread of several emails, but only from one side:

SUBJECT: Re:http://www.filecabi.net/

Jul 29, 2005 1:05 AM, Steve Chen wrote:

steal it!

Jul 29, 2005 1 :25 AM, Chad Hurley wrote:

hmm, steal the movies?

Jul 29, 2005 1 :33 AM, Steve Chen wrote:

haha ya.

or something.

just something to watch out for. check out their alexa ranking.
-s

Jul 29, 2005 7:45 AM, Chad Hurley wrote:

hmm, i know they are getting a lot of traffic... but it's because they are a stupidvideos.com-type of site. they might make enough money to pay hosing bills, but sites like this and big-boys.com will never go public. I would really like to build something more valuable and more useful. actually build something that people will talk about and changes the way people use video on the internet.

Jul 29 2005 6:51 AM, Steve Chen wrote:

right, i understand those goals but, at the same time, we have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. how much traffic will we get from the personal videos? remember, the only reason why our traffic surged was due to a video of this type. i'm not really disagreeing with you but i also think we shouldn't be so high & mighty and think we're better than these guys. viral videos will tend to be THOSE type of videos.
-s

Jul 29 2005 6:56 AM, Steve Chen Wrote:

another thing. still a fundamental difference between us and most of those other sites. we do have a community and it's ALL user generated content.

-s

To me, when taken in context that sounds like a pretty reasonable half of a conversation. He does not advocate copyright infringement. He also states that they should not get all high and mighty against file sharers. He then sums up saying that they have a community who makes its own content which other sites do not.

All seems pretty reasonable to me.

Most damning?

[BoberFett]

Really? Is this the most damning evidence? On a scale of 1 being least damning and 10 being most damning where does this fall when also considering that Viacom was uploading videos to YouTube in an effort to make YouTube look like it was infringing?

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/18/youtube-viacom-would-demand-removal-of-videos-it-covertly-uploa/

Fuck the media conglomerates. I hope they all rot.

Re:So...

[palegray.net]

This is much, much worse than what you're describing. Please read through all the materials provided in the article (it'll take a while). These are records of intimate knowledge of, flagrant disregard for, and active encouragement of copyright violations on a massive scale, including documented specific instances where employees are aware that copyrighted materials were being posted and not only did absolutely nothing, they were laughing about it.