I've heard much about Rupert Murdoch's angst towards Google for quite some time, but for some reason the lawsuit against Google and YouTube had escaped my attention until recently.
What boggles my mind is this important paragraph which is posted on the YouTube Blog post about the lawsuit:
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. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.
I'm not a lawyer, but I get the feeling that actions like those described in that paragraph might even be considered fraudulent in some jurisdictions, especially in light of the following statement, a little further in the blog post:
In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.
This story reminds me of a friend of mine who works in music promotion. His firm was paid by a record distribution company in the US to promote a band, and was given instruction (and permission) to offer free downloads of one song recorded by the band. Pretty soon after he setup the download, the UK region offices served him (and his hosting company) with a cease and desist order.
What lunacy!