Viacom-YouTube Secrets Exposed In Lawsuit

Viacom-YouTube Secrets Exposed In Lawsuit

Pretty amazing (and damaging) report about Viacom (owner of Comedy Central, among other properties) and Google (owner of YouTube) on the Huffington Post. According to YouTube’s Zahavah Levine (quoted in the news story):

For, 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.

Wow. While some of this story has a conspiracy sound to it, I would think the engineers at Google can trace the IP addresses, name the agencies and finger the employees. Of course, if this is just PR from Google, then shame on them. (They’ll be able to send out this sort of stuff only so many times before they lose credibility.)

By Paul Romaine

Paul Romaine is a grant writer and independent curator in New York City.

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