Hi all.
Now before you read the rest of this post, a few warnings (in fact it should probably be more like a disclaimer so i don't get sued for wasting your time, but whatever). This post is going to be long, exhaustive, and very b&tchy. If you happen to have a heart condition, or your eyes suffer from RSI, please leave immediately. Also, i make no claim as to being unbiased in this rant, though I have done my best to source my claims with valid links.
Now onto the potentially interesting bits. For those of you who are unaware of the Viacom vs. Google shenanigan (josh said i can't use naughty words) not only do you *really* need to read the news more, but this post is for you. For those of you already familiar with this shenanigan, you can read the rest and perhaps find out more about it, or leave because your sciatica may flare up from sitting and reading this long.
During February last year, the managerial team at Viacom (who own a
LOT of stuff) decided that they should have a blitz on
takedown notices. This blitz included approximately
100,000 takedown notices to youtube demanding removal of material that Viacom deemed and infringement of their copyright (as a point of interest, these takedowns included a handful of
false positives). Apparently Viacom will be last to aknowlege benefits of having their material spready via youtube
[1][2][3][4][5].
So anyway, a few months down the track Viacom decide they want a piece of this pie (perhaps rightly so, but I'm biased) and thus
launch their own free media website. Viacom concurrently decide that Google (who owns youtube) should be policing youtube content themselves to save Viacom the trouble of sending takedowns
[1][2], despite the fact that the DMCA
places the responsibility squarely on Viacom for doing so.
Shortly afterward, the apparently overworked bean counters at Viacom are struck by the realization that this new free media website is likely to cost them some of their
$12 billion revenue. "But why?" they ask themselves, we're pissed at youtube, why not
sue them an 11th of our yearly revenue, otherwise known as $1 billion, that would sure save us some cash....
So anyway,
bickering between the two companies continues in the court of public opinion eventuating in Viacom
agreeing to better review its takedowns prior to sending them. During this period Viacom's CEO makes some (void sarcasm() {)very popular (})
speeches regarding the way that copyright should be handled by corporate America (
sidenote). I also feel it is worth pointing out that whilst Viacom are happily suing Google for
$1 billion for being in breach of Viacom's copyright online, apparently
the writers of the content aren't entitled to any of the apparent profit garnered from online content.
Earlier this year, Viacom decided it also
wanted punitive damages from Google for the copyright breaches. Fortunately U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton was good enough to
educate Viacom's litigators in copyright law. It's also worth pointing out that applying punitive damages in this case would have cost an amount akin to the GDP of many-a midsized nation, or what
this article refers to as "funny money territory" (I prefer "funny money territory", but I can't be running around infringing copyright like that now can i?).
Continuing the lawsuit, Viacom claim that
Google/YouTube were active participants in the transmission of copyrighted content, and thus cannot have the
safe harbor provisions of the DMCA applied to them. Meanwhile,
Viacom and Universal agree that virtually everyone but themselves should be responsible for propping up their obsolete business model.
Last month, in a stunning display of hypocrisy, Viacom sent a takedown to youtube, demanding
removal of a viral video started by artists working for one of Viacom's child companies to promote a new movie. Shortly afterward,
another was started, by Viacom, this time on
limewire. As a side note, Viacom was told shortly afterward that it would be
better off if it lost the lawsuit.
Earlier this month, Viacom made an attempt to
get hold of YouTube source, only to be shot down in court, with Judge Stanton upholding that YouTube source was a Google trade secret, and could not be revealed without risking loss of business. Perhaps we might add massive conflict of interest to that comment, given Viacom is currently trying to make good on their promise of a free media website. But this time, they came back kicking, and have demanded Google turn over
logs of every video ever watched on YouTube, which would include the usernames and IP addresses of those concerned[1]. Fortunately, Google was granted the right to
anonymize the data before handing it over to Viacom prior to the exchange taking place. In an interesting twist of fate, Viacom were in fact most interested in what Google employees were watching...information that Google was not intending to hand over under the prior arrangement. On a side note, as the lawsuit continues, Viacom
continue to send bogus takedowns to YouTube, in breach of prior arrangement.
Now to hit the ball from the other side of the court. Can someone please explain to me why, as a company that apparently has user privacy at the core of its concerns here, Google happens to be retaining
12 terabytes of YouTube logs complete with IP addresses and user IDs? Now I know everyone gets upset when you rant about Google, either from the offensive side ("Oh, you're being naive.") or from the defensive side ("Duh, Google is out to get us!") but really, when you read that last sentence, do you really feel comfortable watching videos at YouTube anymore? What on earth could a company who seems to portray the ideal that the sun shines out of its servers be doing with 12 terabytes of server logs that might serve the greater good? I realize it
is naive of me to expect them not to, but even so, does Google's defense here not sound in the least bit hypocritical to anyone?
As a final note, you can see the reactions of YouTubers to this lawsuit
here,
here and
here.
Allow me to finally apologize if anyone has been offended in any way by this article, and to request that any information misrepresented in this article be pointed out to me in a reply.
Thanks for reading, Ehtyar.
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. I apologize if my post seems a bit rushed, but to be honest it was 
Anyway, now that I have some time I'll try to give you a better explanation.
.
