YouTube Defense: Viacom "Secretly Uploaded" Content, And They Tried To Buy Us
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If it were the legal people uploading content to plant evidence, that's another matter, but I don't think have one department out of sorts with your legal position necessarily undermines the case (tenuous as it was to begin with).
By analogy, think of a software company which has one dept. that steals its tools, does that preclude the company from defending its own IP? Morally, maybe, but I don't think you waive your legal rights by breaking the law by default.
IANAL but I've never heard such of such a principle.
Come to think of it, it sounds a lot like the Monsanto case. Since they won, I guess Viacom can win here, too. Common sense is absent at these levels.
To reiterate, I don't think the original claim has any merit, but I'm wondering whether this parallel action to the claimed grievance legally sinks their case.
Put it in front of a jury and Viacom would probably get blown out of the water, but the rhetoric makes it sound like this one action renders the whole thing legally frivolous (which I'm not convinced of).
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 don't know if this will be Viacom's position, but it's one that Google should be prepared for.
In short, an entity can not seek an equitable remedy if they themselves have acted in bad faith.
brilliant!
Or, "We were uploading content to quantify viewers and calculate losses due to copyright infringement."
Regardless, tons of users were uploading viacom content and youtube and then google profited off it, so their case is just as valid -- if it is valid at all.
It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. ... It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom.
It seems they've got their bases covered, that any upload vector might plausibly be from Viacom themselves. But how could they conclusively prove that this is what happened?
It's difficult to argue that YouTube clips kill the value of your product, when your promotions department clearly believes the opposite is true.
It might also be of legal relevance, if Viacom were complaining specifically about the clips it uploaded itself and moreso if they tried to use the presence of those clips to pressure a favorable business deal.
The fact that they found it valuable to have their content on youtube undermines their arguments that youtube is causing them grievous harm.
Viacom's stated alternative is for Youtube to divine the intent of the copyright holder. Arguing that the alternative to DMCA is absurdity and divining the intent of Viacom would have been impossible will tend to undercut this alternative.
When this lawsuit ends, Hulu will likely switch to a pay model for many shows.
Two things.
1) Viacom removed its shows from Hulu earlier this month. [1]
2) Hulu is going under paywall, announced few months ago. [2]
[1] http://paidcontent.org/article/419-viacom-taking-its-laughs-...
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/hulus-paywall-on-the-way-afte...