
Viacom responds on YouTube lawsuit - nanexcool
http://www.viacom.com/news/Pages/ytstatement.aspx
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billybob
From Viacom: _By their own admission, the site contained "truckloads" of
infringing content and founder Steve Chen explained that YouTube needed to
"steal" videos because those videos make "our traffic soar."_

If true, that's pretty damning.

From Viacom: _These facts are undisputed. The statements by Google regarding
Viacom activities are merely red herrings and have no relevance on the legal
facts of this case._

Um, really?

From Google: _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 e-mail addresses. It even sent
employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to
Viacom._

So let's make an analogy. You keep calling the cops to say that I'm stealing
your stuff - and I am! But secretly, you're also hiring people to carry your
stuff to my house and leave it in my yard.

But that has _"no relevance on the legal facts of this case"_? The fact that
you're framing someone shouldn't affect their trial?

That's just crazy.

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jrockway
This reads worse than a -50 comment on Reddit.

Also, fuck you Viacom. Look at the most popular videos on YouTube -- all user-
produced. A haven of copyright infringement, or a haven of not needing you
anymore? I'll bet on the second one.

~~~
Quarrelsome
But you do have to confess that a lot of YouTube is "copyright-theft". The
real question is what effect that "theft" has on the bottom line of the
companies that hold the rights. Is it 1:1, 1:100 or can it/does it result in
additional profit in some cases?

Nobody really knows the answer to this and anyone who states they do is just
guessing.

~~~
jrockway
Fair use, you mean.

I have never seen a full TV episode of a popular show on YouTube. But the file
sharing sites have them, and in HD, and without ads and annotations. Guess
where I get my full TV episodes from. Not Youtube.

~~~
fnid2
I watch full episodes of poker shows. Broken up into 10 minute clips of
course. In the "old days" I watched full clips of the daily show and countless
other shows I can't even remember now. I didn't have a TV and didn't need one
because Youtube had all the shows I wanted to see.

~~~
jrockway
I watched "air crash investigation" a few times. Since I didn't know this show
existed, the existence of the clips was helpful to them in the form of free
advertising.

Of course, I don't have cable or whatever, so I just download the episodes
from real file sharing sites. But you can't blame Youtube for that, that's all
on me.

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yesbabyyes
"Google knew that YouTube’s popularity depended on infringing materials",
yeah, because all interesting content is created by large corporations with a
need to control, amen.

"Google and YouTube had the technology to stop infringement at any time but
deliberately chose not to use it." and how much of Google's horsepower does
Viacom think Google is obliged to use for identifying their content?

"The statements by Google regarding Viacom activities are merely red herrings
and have no relevance on the legal facts of this case." LOL.

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tibbon
Notice how they didn't deny that they uploaded things just to have them
flagged?

Also their release/post is nowhere near as smooth as Google's. You'd think as
an entertainment firm they could make something that was a bit better of a
read.

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conover
I wonder... If there were really "countless internal YouTube communications"
endorsing infringement, wouldn't this case be over already? As in Summary
Judgement over? Doesn't the very fact that this case is still being litigated
indicate the hyperbole of this press release? I don't understand why Viacom is
saying anything at all. Maybe they are trying to reassure their investors. In
any event, I doubt we'll ever know what is really being uncovered in
discovery.

~~~
slackerIII
Ars Technica has a few:

"Chen twice wrote that 80 percent of user traffic depended on pirated videos.
He opposed removing infringing videos on the ground that 'if you remove the
potential copyright infringements... site traffic and virality will drop to
maybe 20 percent of what it is.' Karim proposed they 'just remove the
obviously copyright infringing stuff.' But Chen again insisted that even if
they removed only such obviously infringing clips, site traffic would drop at
least 80 percent. ('if [we] remove all that content[,] we go from 100,000
views a day down to about 20,000 views or maybe even lower')."

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/smoking-
guns...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/smoking-guns-dark-
secrets-spilled-in-youtube-viacom-filings.ars)

~~~
wdewind
I mean this is in 2003 though. 100,000 page views a day is practically
nothing. If he said that in 2006+ it would've been a bit different.

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bobbyi
Are you sure that was just put up today in response to the latest youtube
counsel blog post? It does sound that way, but the statement isn't dated so I
can't tell for sure if that is the "red herring" they are talking about or if
this is an older statement.

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ErrantX
I guess they deserve a +1 for getting the word "rampant" into a press release.

-100 for the rest though - very little of interest; just the usual mud sling return (a lot shakier than the mud thrown at them, though).

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Hexstream
"These facts are _undisputed_. The statements by Google regarding Viacom
activities are merely red herrings and have no relevance on the legal facts of
this case."

Non-sequitur...

