Viacom Secretly Uploaded Video Clips To YouTube

[admin]

Viacom is currently suing YouTube for the unauthorized upload of video clips that it owns copyright on, but according to a YouTube statement, Viacom themselves may have uploaded some of these "unauthorized" clips, in order to promote their own shows.

The statement, posted on the official YouTube blog, includes the following interesting passage:

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.

I had originally thought companies like Viacom are too stuck in their old ways to understand how to take advantage of YouTube, and that's why it, and other companies, were suing. But it appears that Viacom is fully aware of the positives of YouTube, and yet, still want to attack these websites because it wants to have the cake and eat it too. And then eat another one, because that's how greedy they are.

More:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361617,00.asp

[dr_ml422]

They're all crooks and frankly I can't see how some video clips can boost Viacom whether they uploaded them or not. Unless you had to pay for them. I also agree w/the ruling in Italy. It's like anything else. For example if you rent a room or floor in a house and you fall down the owner is liable and you can sue, get $$$ and still stay there living.

Ok, so Viacom was secretly uploading content according to Google, and Google knew this also and didn't say a peep? Until now? They're both hippocrates and greedy.

This is going to be a good one. I must of been a lawyer/prosecuter in another life somewhere.