flamewars, executive-style

Those assholes at Viacom are calling Google assholes. LOLZ at 11.

From the article:

Viacom quotes YouTube employee Maryrose Dunton telling an engineer to "'forget about the email alerts stuff' precisely because 'I hate making it easier for these a-holes' - referring to copyright owners - and 'we’re just trying to cover our asses so we don’t get sued.'"
Viacom complains that YouTube employees "sneered at rights holders as 'copyright bastards' and 'a-holes.'"
Google retorts that Viacom can't complain about this language, and it quotes numerous Viacom execs to make its point. Sample outbursts include, "fuck you, you Google bastards," "bastards at Google are harassing me," and the eloquent "fuck those mother fuckers."
A Viacom VP even complained about the "fucking assholes" at YouTube—because the company "enforced its repeat-infringer policy concerning a Viacom marketing account that had received multiple take-down notices from Viacom's legal department." The lulz, they are here in spades.
Viacom top brass wrote e-mails with more exclamation points than my niece would even consider decent. They also had what Google calls an "obsession" with buying YouTube.
Case in point: "I WANT TO OWN YOUTUBE. I think it's critical, and if it goes to a competitor.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" That was from MTV Networks head Judy McGrath.
Viacom CEO Tom Freston wrote, "If we get UTube… I wanna run it." McGrath responded, "You'll have to kill me to get to it first."

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platedlizard
2010-05-22 10:23 pm UTC (link)

It's a case of the left hand having no fucking clue as to what the right hand was doing.

As I understand it, the marketing teams were trying to make the Viacom videos go viral. Now, people are savy, so if the channel had Viacom's official seal of approval posted for all to see they wouldn't have gotten the attention they wanted. So the marketing team were sending out people to internet cafes to set up dummy account to post videos. Unfortunately (or fortunately for us lovers of lulz) they didn't see fit to inform the lawyers WTF they were doing and which channels were legit. So they got the take-down notices.

And then the VP gets made at Youtube for doing what Viacom's lawyers ask them to do. And I laugh and laugh and laugh.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	theelusiven 2010-05-22 11:07 pm UTC (link)
	That's gorgeous. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	issendai 2010-05-22 11:10 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, that's glorious. DMCA notices: Really not the way to convince consumers your sock accounts are legit. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dragonfangirl 2010-05-23 11:45 pm UTC (link)
	DMCA notices: Really not the way to convince consumers your sock accounts are legit. But it is a good way to give them internet leaked-content cred! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	puipui 2010-05-22 11:14 pm UTC (link)
	Dear Viacom: Astroturfing: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	lilgoala 2010-05-23 02:06 am UTC (link)
	Thanks for the explanation, I was hugely confused. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

platedlizard
2010-05-23 04:27 am UTC (link)

I should point out that those videos are only a small portion of the videos that Viacom is suing over, the majority were, in fact, copyright violations. The main issue of the lawsuit is that Viacom feels that the original developers of Youtube made a killing off of their content (they were paid something like 300 million each when they sold Youtube, not bad at all). Apparently at least one of the founders was doing stuff like uploading swiped content early on to generate views. So Viacom and other companies might have reason to be pissed.

But! In 2005 Viacom tried to buy Youtube. Then, when Google expressed interest in it, they offered to co-own it with Google. It wasn't until after Google out-bid them did they get all lawsuity. Sour grapes taste nasty after all.

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	cmdr_zoom 2010-05-23 05:48 pm UTC (link)
	oh boy do they. As does the whine pressed from them. (Reply to this)(Parent)

tachikoma01
2010-05-28 09:05 pm UTC (link)

Wait, isn't/wasn't Viacom trying to create their 'own' version of Youtube?

Except they didn't plan to allow any of the user-generated content that made youtube so popular in the first place, only their own corporate-approval stamped content?

I think they're winning some kind of aware for "The internets: Not getting it" right now.

... If I got ahold of a used dump truck, painted it yellow with the words 'THE INTERNETS' on it and drove it past the Viacom office, do you think they'd run after it?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	platedlizard 2010-05-28 09:19 pm UTC (link)
	I had not heard that one, the lulz keep coming! I'm not sure how that would work, Youtube is nothing but user-generated content. I mean, there are many companies that post episodes and clips and what not, but they are not like Youtube. YouTube without the 'you' is just a tube. Which I hear you can dump things down and sometimes they get jammed. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mcity 2010-06-02 03:48 pm UTC (link)
	If only they used some sort of truck. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	caito 2010-05-23 05:58 am UTC (link)
	... HUGELY. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	finchbird 2010-05-23 04:11 am UTC (link)
	LOLOLOLOL! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	kitt_in_socks 2010-05-23 05:57 am UTC (link)
	Oh wow, this is incredible. xD (Reply to this)(Parent)

	tez 2010-05-23 07:07 am UTC (link)
	That's amazing. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	risha 2010-05-23 07:21 am UTC (link)
	That's the best thing I've heard all week. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sneer 2010-05-23 08:07 pm UTC (link)
	HA HA OH WOW. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	dragonfangirl 2010-05-23 11:45 pm UTC (link)
	HA HA HA! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	cmdr_zoom 2010-05-24 01:30 am UTC (link)
	While it does accomplish the purpose, shooting oneself in the foot is not the best way to determine if a gun is loaded. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mcity 2010-06-02 03:49 pm UTC (link)
	Can I metaquote? (Reply to this)(Parent)

	felinephoenix 2010-05-26 02:50 am UTC (link)
	This is so beautiful I may have to weep. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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