Only if copyright holders voluntarily upload their content in a complete crazy manor. Otherwise the argument doesn't work since uh the copyright holder can easily identify which uploads were infringing.
> The only interesting thing here is that Google - all the way up to Sergei Brin - knew they were in the wrong. They knew it was piracy and yet chose to roll with it, because money. And the emails prove it.
Lawsuit is public record, feel free to link to those emails.
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Also from reading the lawsuit, Google removed the content in question.
To quote the case.
> [1] This case concerns the alleged infringement of a closed universe of videos posted on YouTube at various times between 2005 and 2008. As this Court explained, “only the current clips-in-suit are at issue in this litigation.” SPA54. All those clips were removed from YouTube years ago. SPA45 n.7. Viacom originally claimed that hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos infringed its copyrights, but ultimately identified approximately 63,000 clips-in-suit. JAXIII:3135(¶¶6-7). It turned out, however, that Viacom’s own employees and agents had actually uploaded many of those clips. JAIX:2213-14(¶¶150-152); JAXIII:3135-36(¶¶8-11); JAXXII:5745-46(¶¶1.63); JAXXIII:5973-75. Even when it realized that fact (after years of litigation), Viacom and its lawyers still were unable to identify all the clips-in-suit that Viacom was responsible for posting. JAXXII:5717-20(¶127), 5544-46(¶11). Many clips-in-suit, moreover, are identical to or indistinguishable from promotional clips that Viacom now acknowledges uploading.
The non-court filings are way more accusatory but should really stick the court filings for matters of fact.
> [2] 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.
> [2] 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.
[1]: pg 15 https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4135344/143/viacom-inte...
[2]: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/broadcast-yourself/
Did it occur to you why they did that? Perhaps to make them appear legit on a service that was well known for piracy in the first place? The big difference here is that megaupload was not as popular as youtube among normies. So they didn't bother to leak there. Or maybe they did, and we just don't know yet. Dotcom could still come up with the same defense in the coming trials and it would be hilarious. Especially since there is research that show that piracy can boost media. So if Viacom didn't do it, someone else certainly did. The double standard is very real.
No need to for speculation. Viacom can explain their own behavior which they never do and just admit it happened and they also later informed YouTube about it the next day.
> The double standard is very real.
Maybe go read the lawsuits. Reading poorly summarized (or not even summarized) content of it is really not going to show the differences.
No one is speculating here. Read the discussion again. The argument was literally "if youtube execs had emails showing that they were actively encouraging and participating in the posting of copyrighted material on the site they would have been prosecuted as well"
That is blatantly false. No need to sugarcoat this.
You're conflating emails from Google Videos with YouTube ... Those are separate products and at one point even competitors. That would be like using emails sent amongst Trump staffers to prosecute Joe Biden for treason.
Keep in mind, that quote is in relation to why Viacom "roughed up" their videos. Which you literally asked for speculation on in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41266386 .