HDTV/3D TV News
The legal battle between YouTube and Viacom took another turn recently, as embarrassing emails were made public, and accusations between the two companies flew.
The long-running dispute centres on Viacom accusing YouTube of using its material without permission on the website, in a large-scale copyright infringement suit to the tune of $1 billion.
YouTube argues that it is not responsible for the content its users upload, and also defends itself by saying that it removed any clips Viacom brought to its attention as being in violation of copyright.
The latest accusation brought by Google/YouTube is that Viacom was allegedly getting third parties to stealthily upload Viacom content onto the video sharing site, even while the company was complaining and getting other material taken down.
Embarrassing emails have also emerged, sent between YouTube co-founders, which discuss the fact that illegal clips were being put on the site by these very people themselves.
A Telegraph report quotes one piece of correspondence, between co-founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, as saying: “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.”
How will this one end? Your guess is very probably as bad as ours.
Comments (0)
