Media Corporations are just plain evil

I give you Viacom (via Boing Boing), who tried to sue Google (which owns Youtube) for $1bn+ for copyright infringement. Basically, they wanted Youtube to have lawyers check every single video uploaded before it went live, in case there was anything on there belonging to Viacom.

Viacom's unique interpretation of this statute held that online service providers should review all material before it went live. If they're right, you can kiss every message-board, Twitter-feed, photo-hosting service, and blogging platform goodbye -- even if it was worth someone's time to pay a lawyer $500/hour to look at Twitter and approve tweets before they went live, there just aren't enough lawyers in the universe to scratch the surface of these surfaces. 

YouTube alone gets over 29 hours' worth of video per minute.

Now, it's a bit naughty to put other people's work on Youtube, but they've already been paid, and nobody's making money from uploading their favourite Blackadder joke or pictures of their cats watching snooker.

Viacom itself was behaving rather oddly: while one set of Viacom employees was hunting down Viacom material posted on Youtube, another set of Viacom employees was being paid to upload Viacom material. Then a third set of Viacom employees would send threatening letters to Google about Viacom material posted by the other Viacom employees.

 Filings in the case reveal that Viacom paid dozens of marketing companies to clandestinely upload its videos to YouTube (sometimes "roughing them up" to make them look like pirate-chic leaks). Viacom uploaded so much of its content to YouTube that it actually lost track of which videos were "really" pirated, and which ones it had put there, and sent legal threats to Google over videos it had placed itself.

Youtube seemed to be very keen to act lawfully - sent a list of 100,000 infringing videos, they removed the material within a day. That's good going.

Meanwhile, Viacom's management team were getting rather arrogantly ahead of themselves:

Other filings reveal profanity-laced email exchanges between different Viacom execs debating who will get to run YouTube when Viacom destroys it with lawsuits, and execs who express their desire to sue YouTube because they can't afford to buy the company and can't replicate its success on their own.

The judge has told Viacom to piss off. Their new media reaction:

Viacom has vowed to appeal. 

How corporations work

I'm no defender of Youtube - it's another big media company - but they're involved in a stunning spat with Viacom at the moment. That company sued Youtube for hosting Viacom's material - while also employing up to 18 companies to post Viacom property disguised as fans to make their shows look cooler! It really is time for copyright law reform.

This is what Youtube had to say (via Boing Boing):

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. 

Your critical opinions are valued

I'm going to a gig by Ray LaMontagne tonight, as Christine and her husband James have a spare ticket. Any opinions? I've heard he's good, but never heard anything by him. I'll probably spend the afternoon checking out last.fm and Youtube stuff by him.

A Clip Round the Ear?

Every night our screens are full of jovial coppers, with a voiceover telling us that these guys are the knights defending us against the darkness. This is what you can actually expect if you're a drunk idiot - 4 over-muscled, under-educated bruisers out to give someone a kicking. This is also why the police and government are outlawing taking pictures/video of police officers.

Admirable, hopeless injunctions - an ongoing series

Spotted in the background of a Youtube recording of a teacher reading Chaucer:

                                                 

                                           Get A Life, Get A Library Card.

So true, so doomed. Your contributions welcome.