The long-running legal fight between Google and Viacom over copyright violations on YouTube heated up on Thursday, after thousands of pages of court documents were unsealed at Viacom's request. Viacom is apparently hoping that copies of e-mails between YouTube's founders dating back to the video service's earliest days prove that YouTube knew it was consciously pirating copyrighted content. But YouTube is fighting back. Chief counsel Zahavah Levine made some strong accusations of her own in a blog post on "The Official YouTube 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. 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.
Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.
Given Viacom's own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong.
A person close to Viacom claimed that virtually all of the roughly 63,000 video clips the company found on the service were unauthorized, with the number posted by employees or agents working for Viacom only in the "hundreds."
(UPDATE: Corrected to reflect the appropriate gender for Zahavah Levine.)
Margaret Atwood is just full of surprises. The Canadian author of "The Handmaid's Tale," "Alias Grace" and "Oryx and Crake" is not only a long-distance book-signing gadget pioneer, she's a hardcore hockey fan. As she recently announced on her blog, Atwood has filmed a cameo appearance in an upcoming Canadian movie called "Score: A Hockey Musical," in which the Man Booker Prize winner will be singing -- presumably about hockey -- with celebrities, including Nelly Furtado.
Of course, Atwood's love for hockey has surfaced before, and the Guardian found an amazing clip from Canadian satire series "Rick Mercer's Monday Report," in which the literary legend gives her hockey goaltending tips. Among the gems: "I don't like to hot dog, but if the puck carrier is really doing a number on it, then mama can get nasty."
We have seen this year's Rick Astley, and his name is Eduard Khil. Khil, aka the Trololo man, has become the latest unlikely viral sensation, ever since a vintage clip of the singer grinningly, gustily belting out a Soviet-era vocalization earworm popped up on YouTube a few weeks back. The song, "I Am Very Glad Because I'm Finally Going Home," features such lyrics as "Ye ye ye ye ye ohohoho!" and if it has somehow eluded you thus far, suffice to say, you've just found your new ringtone.
How weirdly, infectiously popular is the clip? Stephen Colbert has delighted in it on "The Colbert Report," and after winning his Academy Award, Christoph Waltz appeared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" this week in his own hauntingly unnerving rendition. And Waltz is far from alone -- there are dozens of homage versions, look-alikes and remixes out there.
But Khil himself, like the meaning of his song, has remained until now something of a puzzle, a mystery lost perhaps forever underneath a fallen iron curtain. Yesterday, however, he at last came forward to respond to the hoopla. For an interview for Russian television, the 65-year-old, still smiling, still wearing the widest tie this side of Minsk, dryly critiqued his imitators. He declared that Waltz's rendition "almost reaches" and named himself "the main parodist." He also, to his infinite credit, saw the good-spirited fun in it all, noting how "full of feeling" his Khil wannabes are, calling the whole business "benevolent parody." Watching Khil watching the videos inspired by people watching his own video is surely the most pleasurable bit of meta you'll get today; and the payoff, in which Khil reprises his star-making hit, is sure to put a rictus of joy on your face. We cannot WAIT for the "Glee" version.
We always knew that Sleeping Beauty chick was a bitch. A self-described YouTube "nerd" who goes by Pinkwhig has mashed up the "Mean Girls" trailer to clips of classic Disney princesses -- and the result is a clever and remarkably spot-on articulation of the subtext that's always been lurking in those animated fairy tales. And Ariel should definitely consider calling her agent about starring in the Lindsay Lohan biopic.
The Chicago band OK Go, perhaps known more for their ingeniously quirky viral antics than their songs, have unleashed another jaw-dropping visual spectacle with their new video for "This Too Shall Pass." This one involves not treadmills or intricately choreographed dance moves but over three minutes of Rube Goldberg splendor. To celebrate those elegant, fascinating contraptions, we bring you the top ten videos of Rube Goldberg marvels in action.
Little girls – one minute they're begging you to replay that Wiggles song about fruit salad, and the next, they're singing about boys trying to touch their junk. The viral queen of the week is a bespectacled 12-year-old named Avery whose pint-size version of the Ke$ha mega-hit "TiK ToK" has been quietly accelerating on YouTube since she posted it in December. Then yesterday, on Ke$ha's 23rd birthday, the thing took off.
The homage video is a Web classic; someday, entire college courses will be devoted to all the versions of "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)." (Post-feminism in the age of air-punching gyration: Discuss!) But for parents, there is something about the sight of a child cavorting around to a song that celebrates drunkenness, fighting and over-identifying with Diddy that gives one pause.
Suggestive lyrics and little ears are nothing new, and I say that with all the authority of someone who could do the full 17-minute version of "Love to Love You Baby" at 9. Anyone who's grown up any time in the pop era and anywhere outside of Amish country probably has a similar story, and there's a pretty good chance it involves a Prince song. Ergo, just like Avery, my own 10- and 6-year-old daughters can belt out the inappropriate dance hits with the best of them. Just yesterday they stopped me in my tracks at the supermarket by warbling along to "Sexy Bitch." (We keep it pretty real at my supermarket.)
But where once the beyond-your-years pop culture aptitude merely mildly scandalized parents, kids now have the option of entertaining and/or appalling the multitudes. Anyone with a laptop can become a star -- and that's where it gets complicated. Is toothy, unself-conscious Avery's lip-synced "TiK ToK" kind of adorable? Absolutely. Is it also a little disturbing, knowing a) her bedroom antics are out there for the world to see and b) her parents had to consent to this? Yep, that too. By putting herself out there, Avery is open to the geniuses who comment that "Wow you are a fucking annoying ugly brat" and "You know you want my cock."
Based on her other videos, wherein she enthuses about the books she loves and does a full-on homage to farting, Avery seems a pretty grounded, funny kid. She's like a lot of girls, including my own, in her exuberant eccentricity. Her vogueing for the camera bears little resemblance to Ke$ha's grown-up, celebratory skankiness.
And that's why her video is so unnerving, so surprisingly bittersweet. It's not that she's singing about brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack; it's the innocence with which she does it. (Though if you're looking for disturbingly sexualized young video queens you don't have to look far.) While Avery is self-aware enough to do a video hanging out alone in her room titled "Get a Life," she -- like every other little girl busting a move on YouTube -- will soon be a young woman. By then, she'll have already long figured out that she's not just performing for herself here. She'll understand that she is being watched, being scrutinized for her looks, her clothes, her glasses, her allure or her perceived lack thereof. Welcome to the rest of your life as a female, kid.
For now, though, she's still just a little girl, playing in her room and blowing her speakers up. On her YouTube bio, she writes with heartening sagacity that "95% of kids laugh at other kids because they are different. Post this on your channel if you're part of the 5% percent laughing at the other kids because they're all the same." Ke$ha may not be the world's great role model, Avery, but every minute you keep laughing, you are.
Naked in the snow. Pornography or art?
The United Federation of Google?
I Have An Autistic Son
