On Day 66 I challenged my own thinking about how much we should trust Google. You might remember their mantra is, “do no evil.” Today I came across an article explaining why Viacom is suing Google. The claim is that Google knowingly presented content owned by Viacom on YouTube to enhance its own numbers. Google counter claims that Viacom uploaded its own video and even distorted some to look like it was done by regular users. Viacom said it had identified thousands of abuses including clips from shows such as South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants, and MTV Unplugged. YouTube argued that it is covered by law through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which states that publishers are not responsible for material posted by users. YouTube insisted, it took down more than 100,000 clips at Viacom’s request. It should be noted that at one time Viacom considered buying YouTube but Google bought the site for $1.65bn.Viacom also claims that YouTube founders deliberately encouraged it’s employees to violate laws to increase traffic to the site. Check this out… here is an email exchange between the founders of YouTube that was presented in court.
“Jawed (Karim), please stop putting stolen videos on the site. We’re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we’re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn’t put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it,” said the e-mail.
Another e-mail from Mr Chen to staff in the early days of the start-up’s life said the company “should concentrate all our efforts in building up our numbers as aggressively as we can through whatever tactics, however evil”.
What do you think is going on here? Is one party more evil than the other?
