YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine posted some interesting things today on YouTube’s official blog about Viacom’s strange, love-hate relationship with the video streaming giant.

I am not a lawyer©, but the allegations made certainly seem like Viacom is using the legal system to bully YouTube merely because Viacom resents its existence. (The post alleges that Viacom vacillates between trying to shut the site down and trying to purchase it. If I can’t have you, no one will!) Levine makes an excellent case for the absurdity of Viacom’s actions against YouTube:

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.

Bolding mine. On first glance, it looks like Viacom never watches Judge Judy. If I’ve learned one thing from TV judges, it’s that the law’s impartial guardians do not like to be misled or lied to, and if you’re acting in a shady fashion, you have less legal ground to stand on. I believe the deliberate obfuscation of where content was uploaded from and by whom would certainly rankle Judge Sheindlin. Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining, Viacom!

Interestingly, it seems that Viacom doesn’t even know which clips are the offending clips and have actually complained in court about videos uploaded by Viacom employees on behalf of Viacom. Awkward.

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.

Levine points out the idiocy quite concisely. Take it away, Counselor:

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.

While the reasons behind such a legal move are certainly complex and impossible to sum up in a few sentences, it would seem that Viacom has a bit of a bone to pick with YouTube and is using litigation to attempt to slow the competition down. Levine caps the post by asserting that they “look forward to defending YouTube, and upholding the balance that Congress struck in the DMCA to protect the rights of copyright holders, the progress of technological innovation, and the public interest in free expression.”

What do you think? Is this like some roundabout form of corporation-level civil entrapment? Should Viacom be able to sue for their own violations, against themselves?

Fun with copyright laws: YouTube says Viacom uploaded own videos, sued is a post from: The Inquisitr

In a small gathering of press this morning, YouTube unveiled YouTube XL- a new service that brings your favorite cat falling off stuff and shoddy folk cover videos straight to your TV!

While online computer-to-tv streaming services and Hulu and Boxee offer content optimized for TV, YouTube videos often didn’t even really do well in monitor full-screen mode. But YouTube XL changes that, optimizing content for viewing even on huge-screen TVs.

Although YouTube XL lacks some features of regular YouTube, (most notably the comments, yay!) YouTube XL supports playlists, HD video and even has an application called Gmote for Android phones. (Where’s the iPhone love at, YouTube?) And unlike Hulu Desktop, which needs a computer to rock and roll, you can use YouTube XL on devices with a browser such as the Wii, XBox and PS3- making the interface friendly for a larger group of users.

Wanna take it for a spin? Go on!

Sweet: YouTube coming to your TV! is a post from: The Inquisitr

Splicd: The Simple YouTube Editor

Splicd lets you decide what’s worth watching on YouTube and splice out the rest before sharing it. Let’s say you want to point out a specific piece of a video without forcing your friends to watch the entire thing. You just go to Splicd, put in the video URL, and tell it what segment you want — i.e. from 0:44 to 0:59 — and it gives you a new URL that will show only that piece of the clip.

We gave it a whirl with the last Microsoft-Seinfeld ad. At four-and-a-half minutes, it was a bit long for some. So we picked one scene — from 1:26 to 1:39 — and spliced it here.

Our vote: Splicd couldn’t be simpler to use; there’s really nothing to it. It could prove to be quite useful for sharing, since often we want to relay just one specific part of a video to someone and end up having to tell them to “watch closely about a minute in!” The only downside to it is that as of now, the service doesn’t offer an embedding option for the spliced clip, so you have to provide a URL to pass it along. If it could find a way to deliver embed codes too, that’d open up a whole new kind of usage for posting specific content on blogs and other Web sites. Nonetheless, it’s well-worth a try.

Mixtube: The Muxtape of YouTube

Mixtube brings the idea of Muxtape, 8tracks, and other similar playlist sharing services to YouTube. The idea behind it makes sense: Most songs can be found on YouTube without any real hassle. You can generally get the original recorded version in the video form as well as any number of alternate live versions from concert performances. Why not use that as a content database for making mixes?

The first thing you see on Mixtube’s front page is a list of popular and recently viewed playlists. You can click through any to hear the tunes, or do a custom search for a specific band or type of list.

Creating your own list is easily enough done, too. You just use Mixtube’s interface to add URLs to the YouTube videos you want, then arrange them in the order you prefer.

The service seems to work fairly smoothly. When you’re inside a playlist, you don’t even realize the song is tied into YouTube unless you scroll down to the bottom of screen. The video plays in a small box there with a caption: “To comply with YouTube TOS (pardon the ugliness)”

Our vote: Not a bad way to listen to songs and create your own lists — and with a pretty extensive collection to choose from, too. There’s also no reason this would have to be limited to music, either. One could just as easily create playlists for any type of YouTube content in the same fashion, which presents some interesting mash-up possibilities.

Seen any other cool new YouTube tools pop up lately? Feel free to leave a comment and share.

Cool New Tools For YouTube is a post from: The Inquisitr