The most severe and at times sadistic copyright lawsuits are the ones where the lives of ordinary internet users like you and I destroyed because they’ve been sued by organizations such as the RIAA for file sharing. Often times the culprits of these crimes are children. I must say, (and though I realize this must be the last thing on the minds of the parents who are burned with $80 000 for every Justin Bieper song their sweet little Susie downloaded) I applaud these kids for their deft work in challenging such a tyrannical and capitalistic system at such a young age.
So to put this in perspective, while outdated copyright law continues to ruin lives, lawsuits surrounding copyright have become simply business as usual for huge corporate powerhouses, such as the very messy one billion dollar debacle between YouTube and Viacom.
Just a couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon this article, which I thought made for some pretty juicy news.
Although the lawsuit ended two years ago, the wrath of YouTube (the web’s bandwidth cannibal of the decade) still lingers as Zahavah Levine, chief counsel for YouTube wrote on the YT blog:
“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.”
So let me get this straight, not only did Google have to fork over an outrageously large sum of money as the result of their litigation with Viacom, but in the meantime Viacom was getting free YT advertising. Ouch!
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