Google accuses Viacom of trying to start copyright trouble

[Dragon Angel]

The Register Article

YouTube accuses Viacom of secretly uploading videos
$1bn legal row gets touchy-feely

By Kelly Fiveash • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 19th March 2010 13:04 GMT

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Google has accused Viacom of secretly uploading videos to YouTube in an effort to support its copyright infringement claims against Mountain View.

In March 2007 the US media giant filed a $1bn lawsuit against Google, alleging the video-sharing site was responsible for Viacom-owned clips posted to YouTube.

Now, in the latest soap opera-like twist, YouTube chief counsel Zahavah Levine has claimed that Viacom hired firms to upload its videos to the Google-owned site to help bolster its copyright violation allegations.

"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," wrote Levine in a scathing blog post that cites the unsealing of related court documents.

"It deliberately 'roughed up' the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses.

"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," she claimed.

Levine argued that the safe harbour exemptions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protects YouTube from copyright liability, because - where a user has uploaded a video clip unlawfully - it complies with take notices dished out by rights holders.

In the same missive she said that Viacom was suffering from a serious dose of sour grapes, by claiming the media outfit had tried to buy YouTube, which was acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65bn.

Viacom hit back with a terse statement on its own website saying that the court documents, published yesterday, supported the company's allegations against YouTube.

"The motion, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, provides the evidence and legal basis for Viacom's arguments that YouTube intentionally operated as a haven for massive copyright infringement," it said.

The case continues. ®

Now, I am no intellectual property lawyer, but what exactly are the legal implications of someone pirating their own material?

I've always known that Viacom were all total assholes, but this... Well, I guess corporate poisoning like this is to be expected from these kinds of people.

[Archaic`]

Not an intellectual property lawyer either, but I do research into online piracy motivations. If I understand how it all works here....by distributing their own works in a way that makes it seem that they're not the persons doing the distributing, and by leaving up select videos posted by actual external individuals to their organisation, they have de facto given authorisation for their works to be distributed in this manner. In short, their marketing activities have ended up basically giving free reign to anyone to upload a video clip of the shows in question (every show that Viacom caused a clip to be uploaded for, and every show that had a clip uploaded by an unrelated party that they intentionally left up) completely legally.

The question then becomes, can they revoke that authorisation. I expect they can, and they can probably do it on an individual party basis as well, but I'd imagine also that they could only do that if they cease their current marketing activities, or else it'd remain the case that there is a presumed authorisation until a specific revocation is made against that user and video. Even if they did revoke it, they wouldn't be able to go after parties legally for the time that it was up, so long as they comply with requests to take it down following the revocation.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Have Viacom been drinking unfiltered stupid recently? How did they expect this bullshit to fly? It's bad enough these DMCA notices are a hassle and have been abused by the NFL, but now a proper media company does this fucking stupid act, it makes the whole copyright issue even more contentious.

[d'Artagnan]

From YouTube's official blog: http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010 ... rself.html

The article claims the Viacom used various means to 'rough up' the videos to make them appear stolen. Evidently, even Vicacom's own employees didn't know which videos were theirs and which were actually uploaded by fans, leading to the hilarity of staffers angrily filing DMCA notices only to ask for their revocation.

[Darth Holbytlan]

Not an intellectual property lawyer either, but I do research into online piracy motivations. If I understand how it all works here....by distributing their own works in a way that makes it seem that they're not the persons doing the distributing, and by leaving up select videos posted by actual external individuals to their organisation, they have de facto given authorisation for their works to be distributed in this manner. In short, their marketing activities have ended up basically giving free reign to anyone to upload a video clip of the shows in question (every show that Viacom caused a clip to be uploaded for, and every show that had a clip uploaded by an unrelated party that they intentionally left up) completely legally.

I don't think you understand how this works. The items they uploaded themselves, or through proxies, are, ispo facto, posted with permission. They cannot be copyright violations, although they can certainly pull them down at any time. This has no implications for others posting the same clips, since the copyright holders have a perfect right to authorize some uses while disallowing others.

They also have no requirement to police the abuse of their copyright, and have mostly free reign to take down or ignore unauthorized items. An argument that they had given up those rights sounds like one based on acquiescence—that they had given the impression that they authorized the use by failing to act against it. The problem is that to claim acquiescence, you have to know that they knew about your particular uses, but did nothing to stop you or even make you aware of their objections. You can't claim to be acting with authorization if you didn't know at the time that their failure to act was based upon knowledge of your actions, instead of mere ignorance. And since they are under no requirement to license their copyright in a fair manner, them letting someone else get away with this does nothing to protect your behavior.

The question then becomes, can they revoke that authorisation. I expect they can, and they can probably do it on an individual party basis as well, but I'd imagine also that they could only do that if they cease their current marketing activities, or else it'd remain the case that there is a presumed authorisation until a specific revocation is made against that user and video. Even if they did revoke it, they wouldn't be able to go after parties legally for the time that it was up, so long as they comply with requests to take it down following the revocation.

I think anyone who tries to use this reasoning to defend their posting of copyrighted videos will be in for a major shock. Of course, anyone in such a position or contemplating it should talk to a real lawyer, not listen to some Internet-trained "expert" (read: layman) such as myself.

[defanatic]

Out of curiousity, does anyone see Viacom as the good guys?

[The Yosemite Bear]

Reminds me of Marvel vs. the publishers of City of Heroes. Marvel actually logged on and created their own IPs on COH, and then sued because they were able to do so....

[Tanasinn]

Out of curiousity, does anyone see Viacom as the good guys?

Why, anyone they've paid to hold that opinion, of course.

[ThomasP]

Copyright law is so broken and media companies are so greedy in light of the Internet opening up new avenues (read: marginalizing all of these companies) that none of this is surprising.

It's only going to get worse as broadband and wifi become more widespread, and all of these media companies are going out of their way to burn up any good will they might have had with the public. Copyright law or no law, your average person won't give two flying fucks if these companies go out of business or not.

I'm reading a book right now that's making a case against current intellectual property laws, and they sum it up nicely: if the big copyright-holding media companies didn't exist today, nobody would be demanding they be created.