Google: ‚Viacom hat heimlich eigene Videos auf YouTube hochgeladen‘

Viacom hat Google für Copyrightverletzungen auf YouTube verklagt. Sollte das Folgende stimmen, wäre das wirklich ein starkes Stück. Zitat aus dem YouTube-Blog:

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. 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.

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.

Das zeigt zwei Dinge:

1. Obwohl die Manager von Viacom die Werbefunktion von kurzen YouTube-Filmchen erkannt haben – und auch selbst dafür gesorgt haben, dass dieser Werbekanal bedient wird -, wollen sie trotzdem wegen deren Präsenz klagen. (Genau. WTF?)
2. Doppelmoral.