back to article Viacom vs YouTube spat slathered in F-words

Media giant Viacom and Google-owned video sharing site YouTube dished up some colourful court documents last Friday that showed how little love exists between the sparring pair. Google, for its part, asked the court to overlook the fact that some of its wonks labelled Viacom as "copyright bastards" and "a-holes", in what is …

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  1. theblackhand
    Grenade

    Such a sweet story...

    Once upon a time there were two large media compaines that were enemies.

    And the lawyers made lots of money and lived happily ever after.

    1. Shakje

      So let me get this right...

      1. Get hired as legal aide to big successful video-sharing company

      2. ???????

      3. Profit

      Maybe the real answer to 2 is "post copyright videos"?

  2. Chris Hatfield

    I am very amused.

    It's hilarious to such playground profanity in use, by such high level execs.

    Fact remains, I love Google and I love Viacom (creator of Colbert Report, The Daily Show etc). They need to kiss and make up. Or failing that, they should have their bottoms spanked by the judge. The only winners here are the lawyers.

    I think Youtube (Google) has helped Viacom, a lot. I never realised how talented Jon Stewart was until I saw his performance when he was invited on CNN and/or Fox News and gave them a proper dressing-down.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I haven't heard of Grokster (as mentioned in the google link)

    So I google it, and got a threatening message, so I've emailed them the following:

    Subject: Do not DARE threaten me

    I just googled 'grokster' to see what it was and got this from you:

    YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 78.145.86.141 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.

    Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous.

    I have never downloaded any illegal material, but if this is thew

    way you treat your customers, then I'm not surprised that people

    hold you in such low regard.

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      Threatening message

      Where from? Google? I just tried (.co.uk and .com) and the first link was a boring looking legal thing, and the second was Wiki. I looked on Wiki as I only wanted an overview. No threatening messages.

      .

      I suppose this raises a highly interesting paradox. If you received this message from Google: Is it an offence to *search* for "grokster", or for that matter "naked schoolgirl" etc? Is it an offence to simply *look* for links, as opposed to actually engage in downloading and storing such material? If so, is it not, therefore, a much larger problem to index, maintain, and subsequently provide those links?

      Though, to be honest, I have my doubts that you got that message from Google. The wording doesn't sound like them. So I shall revert to what is often said here: Pictures^WScreenshot or it didn't happen! :-)

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        sorry

        I meant after I googled, I saw http://www.grokster.com/ and clicked it.

        The message is there:

        ___________________________________________________________

        YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 78.145.86.141 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.

        Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous.

        ___________________________________________________________

        So, just by innocently visiting a website from a google link, they reply with

        that, which would scare some innocent people

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    Anyway, they started it!

    No we didn't, they did!!

  5. The Unexpected Bill
    FAIL

    Why don't these companies get it?

    I just don't understand why these entertainment companies don't get it.

    Now yes, I do realize that there are no shortage of more-or-less illegally uploaded video clips out there. Don't get me wrong--I don't claim that Youtube or Google is 100% in the right on this. I am sure that a lot of the users who have uploaded the material in question didn't really intend to infringe anyone's rights--they did it because the material might be hard to find, really worth seeing or some other relatively good reason. (There I go again, always assuming the best. I also know that this is not 100% correct.)

    I can't help but think that if the two sides weren't so busy swearing at one another, that Viacom could find a way to work with this, and learn from the experiences of the music industry here. I'd hope that there was some intelligent person at Viacom that could say "you know, swearing and suing our way through this is no way to do it". There has got to be a way to make all parties happy here.

    The music industry has come around to the point of taking a few tentative steps out of their shell. How long will it take for the television and movie companies to do the same?

    The question I /really/ want to ask, however, is this: when is someone going to pick up the muckrake and start giving copyright law the reform it so desperately needs? (It's actually the most seriously broken for those of us into vintage computing and the preservation of such, but that has little to do with this problem.)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Viacom managed by stupid f*cks

      If the execs at Viacom had even a modicum of intelligence and basic know-how they'd do what a lot of major studios have done: get a cut. Even Disney is in on it. But no, not Viacom. Makes one wonder when the owners are going to step in and do some housecleaning.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I can't wait for the film adaptation of this

    although they'd have to get Quentin Tarantino to direct, and somehow shoehorn Samuel L Jackson in to deliver the line "fuck those mother fuckers".

  7. h 6
    Coat

    Well

    Fuck.

  8. James O'Brien
    Joke

    Hey I want in on this

    Fuck you fucking asshole freetard filesharing Google.

    God damn Viacom and their fucking copyright bullshit. Fuck them.

    Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

    Now. . does this post live upto the spirit of the explitives being hurls back and forth? :)

    1. Disco-Legend-Zeke

      So Google is What...

      ...about 12 years old?

      That would make the dialogue age appropriate.

  9. Dazed and Confused

    at each others throats

    If the lawyers want to live happily ever after, they need to keep the companies at each others throats the whole time so the meter just keeps on ticking.

    k-ching....

  10. James Woods

    i love it

    made my day.

    "you google bastards"

  11. Trevor Pott o_O Gold badge

    On and on and on...

    Two facts:

    1) Google is clearly guilty

    2) Viacom, (along with every other major out there) are complete twatdangles for not making their content available in a DRM-free (or at least DRM-completely unobtrusive, allowing-your-media-to-work-on-any-device-full-stop) relatively inexpensive and convenient fashion.

    One of these is breaking the law, the other isn't. In my opinion, Viacom's actions should be illegal, but in the US they aren't. The copyright and patents system int eh US of A, (and around much of the rest of the world) is bady broken. It's time to overhaul it all for the modern world. A system where by content producers get paid, consumers pay a reasonable amount, (maybe even a flat fee) for as much content as they could want, and copyright is a fixed term, not tied to the life of the creator.

    There may well not be a future for large corporate rights holding companies in my utopic vision of intellectual property but...

    ...nothing of value would be lost.

    Spoken, by the way, as someone who earns at least part of his livelihood from producing content.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Re: on etc.

      But Google is clearly not guilty under the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA.

      Their users on the other hand...

      1. Trevor Pott o_O Gold badge

        @AC

        Safe Harbour provisions are supposed to be about protecting sites against accidental infringement. This gets significantly gluier when the people running the site not only are aware that regular infringement occurs, but that it is a part of their business model. Because of bungling by Google, this case may end up setting precedent which severely limits safe harbour provisions.

  12. The Fuzzy Wotnot
    WTF?

    Adults, we're nothing more than children with slightly bigger toys to play with!

    We need that Super-Nanny woman, the one with the Nietzschen fetish thing going on, storm in there and give everyone a clip 'round the ear-hole and send them to all sit on their naughty steps until they grow up a bit!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Stop The Black And White Thinking

    Despite all propaganda to the contrary, it's clear by now that most media companies understand that things are moving online, and are working pragmatically on the transition.

    The biggest obstacle to a working system right now are actually the rather entrenched belief systems of many people in IT.

    They have grown up believing in a "digital revolution" and are unable to let go of that illusion and face the reality of having to adapt their business models to include copyright protection.

    But this is they way it always has been with new media technologies: look at the history of the telegraph, radio, TV, etc.;- they all went through an initial period of anarchy and revolutionary rethoric until the dust settled and the old business models re-established themselves in a modified form.

    Let's get to work and stop the paranoid scapegoating, shall we?

    1. Trevor Pott o_O Gold badge

      @AC

      The "old business models" screwed everyone but the "Big Content" rightsholding companies. The content creators got screwed, the public got screwed, and even the taxman got screwed.

      As both content creator and consumer; I don't want the "old business models" reinventing themselves. How could you possibly paint that as a good thing?

  14. heyrick Silver badge

    In support of YouTube video

    I have become interested in, and *paid* for tracks by some artists after watching their videos on YouTube. I would buy more, but...

    1. YouTube is NOT region specific. This is a GOOD thing. For some of the artists I am interested in right now are barely known in Europe, and if they are their CDs are labelled "Import" and given a price that is four or five times the retail price of the article. FFS, if I could get my head around the squiggly writing, mail order with international shipping would be cheaper. [assuming it makes it past the French border...]

    2. I can pay for and download from amazon.fr. But amazon.fr's list is small. For one singer, out of everything she's done, they currently list TWO items, both "currently unavailable". Poor show.

    3. I cannot look on amazon.co.uk or amazon.com. Been there, tried that. I get told "I live in the wrong location" so they don't want my money to supply me with an MP3. This is ridiculous as if I EasyJet to a friend in the UK, they'll take my exact same plastic and send me the track, which I can copy on to my MP3 player, fly back, and listen to at home... In France... Geographical restrictions are stupid. And I'm only talking music. It gets a bigger more idiotic nightmare when you consider DVD region coding, the practice of releasing films at different times in different areas or, best yet, different "extras" (or maybe no extras at all) in different areas.

    .

    So, in a way I am a freetard. I have downloaded a number of tracks from YouTube. If it came to it, I would delete a quarter of them. The remaining 75%? I'd be willing to pay the usual 69-99 centimes per track for each of them. So rather than fuck Google or fuck Viacom or fuck whoeverelse, why don't they (all of them, together) attempt to sort this fucking nonsense out so those of us that "just want the fucking music" at least HAVE the option to purchase it legally?

  15. This post has been deleted by its author

  16. J 3
    Dead Vulture

    Off topic, but...

    "This way for the respective fucking expletives, if your delicate constitution can take it."

    I hate this new thing on El Reg, where the links are not distinct from the regular text in any way whatsoever -- both are black, and not underlined (or is it just my Firefox on Linux installs?). If it was intended to be like that, who had such a "terrific" idea? OK, it could be worse, like the whole text but the links underlined, but still...

  17. J 3
    Black Helicopters

    The links!

    Hey, the links just went back to "normal" (blue links, red after visited) after I sent my comment. You guys trying to mess up with my head? Paranoid, who?

  18. Digital Freedom
    FAIL

    Viacom should retract legal case to save face

    Viacom scored an own goal uploading their videos "anonymously" to get YouTube into trouble,

    This should be thrown out of court instantly since Viacom have willingly perverted the course of justice.

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      Problem is...

      Can it be absolutely *proven* that Viacom did this? Given the level of childishness in the documents (my God, I've seen better arguments on alt.flame!) I would not put it past Viacom to "anonymously" upload their own content, and I'm not sure I'd put it past YouTube to say they did so. Who is right? Cold hard evidence is necessary.

      Though, to be honest, I'd slap them both for contempt for lowering it to this level. Don't we pay lawyers oodles to take our effing and blinding and rabid mouth-foaming accusations and turn them into a sane coherent document? You know like "die! die! die! evil scum spawn of satan! burn in hell and your entire family too!" becomes "The prosecution alleges that...". Somebody is epically failing in their job if the public view of both Viacom and Google/Youtube is, er, this.

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