A year ago Viacom sued YouTube for copyright infringement and even a year later neither company hasn’t said much. Today, however, 108 pages of court documents were released and YouTube is issuing an 865-word statement.
In the statement, Zahavah Levine, YouTube Chief Counsel, made some great points. One of the claims Viacom announced made the company look like a villain as well.
Levine wrote, “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.”
Another accusation of Levin’s has been verified. He wrote, “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.”