19 March 2010 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

YouTube accuses Viacom of secretly uploading content

YouTube has made a staggering new accusation against media conglomerate Viacom that threatens to undermine its case against the video sharing site, as a court prepares to rule on the 2007 lawsuit suing Google-YouTube for $1 billion in damages.

In its suit, Viacom claimed that YouTube founders permit unauthorised uploads of copyrighted content to the video sharing site to be viewed by thousands of users, including TV shows such as South Park, Spongebob Squarepants and MTV Unplugged.

According to the BBC, YouTube has always maintained that it has followed the laws of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which states that publishers are not responsible for material posted by users, and says that it has always removed unauthorised videos when notified of their presence by the copyright owner.

Indeed, YouTube complied by taking down more than 100,000 clips identified as belonging to the conglomerate in 2007, but Viacom still claims that YouTube's founders deliberately flouted copyright and encouraged unauthorised uploading of their content to boost traffic to the site.

Viacom scored an early victory in the drawn-out case as a federal court ruling ordered Google to release the viewing history of all YouTube users in July 2008. The state of play may all change however, in light of a new accusation by YouTube that Viacom has been deliberately uploading its own content to the site in secret, while publicly complaining about its presence.

In a blog post, YouTube's chief counsel, Zahavah Levine, said: "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."

Both parties have been given until 30 April to file their oppositions to each other's motions, and arguments are expected to be completed by June, when the future of the world's most popular video sharing site could hang in the balance.

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