Tweet
While Viacom seems to have been up to some secretive uploading of copyrighted videos to YouTube, court documents reveal that YouTube's founders were well aware of infringements occurring on the then new video website, and may have even relied on it so they can sell the site as soon as possible, which did occur in a quick year and half after the site was launched.
In the emails, the co-founders believed that up to 80% of all traffic were for pirated videos, and some argued against removing them as it would affect traffic too much. It shows that the people in charge were well aware of the piracy problem, but chose not to do anything about it in case it harms the websites.
It also appeared that the owners were keen to quickly build up traffic so they can sell the website as soon as possible. One of the co-founders, Jawed Karim wrote in an email that "Our dirty little secret... is that we actually just want to sell out quickly," and another co-founder, Steve Chen, wrote "concentrat[ing] all of our efforts in building up our numbers as aggressively as we can through whatever tactics, however evil."
The DMCA appears to be clear on the issue, in that operators are only protected if they are unaware of the piracy problem and that they're not profiting from it.
However, the YouTube of 2006 is much different from the YouTube of 2010, one that has much more original content and things like full episodes of TV shows and even full movies are much rarer. And of course, YouTube changed owners in 2006, but Viacom contends that Google was well aware of the problems at the time it purchased YouTube.
More:
In the emails, the co-founders believed that up to 80% of all traffic were for pirated videos, and some argued against removing them as it would affect traffic too much. It shows that the people in charge were well aware of the piracy problem, but chose not to do anything about it in case it harms the websites.
It also appeared that the owners were keen to quickly build up traffic so they can sell the website as soon as possible. One of the co-founders, Jawed Karim wrote in an email that "Our dirty little secret... is that we actually just want to sell out quickly," and another co-founder, Steve Chen, wrote "concentrat[ing] all of our efforts in building up our numbers as aggressively as we can through whatever tactics, however evil."
The DMCA appears to be clear on the issue, in that operators are only protected if they are unaware of the piracy problem and that they're not profiting from it.
However, the YouTube of 2006 is much different from the YouTube of 2010, one that has much more original content and things like full episodes of TV shows and even full movies are much rarer. And of course, YouTube changed owners in 2006, but Viacom contends that Google was well aware of the problems at the time it purchased YouTube.
More:
