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Report: YouTube employees uploaded unauthorized content

October 7, 2009 Cnet's Greg Sandoval reports that lawyers from Viacom, which is suing YouTube for posting its copyrighted material without permission, have found evidence that YouTube managers were among those posting unauthorized copyrighted clips to the site. Cnet, quoting unnamed sources, also says that internal emails show that YouTube employees knew that users were posting unauthorized clips and chose to allow the clips to remain on the site.

The allegations are not part of the court record so far, Cnet said they surfaced during an exchange of information between the two parties in the suit. YouTube dismissed the reports in a comment to CNet.

Meanwhile, the New York Times, in a story today, shows how much things have changed between YouTube and the studios in the last few years with a report about how YouTube is getting more vigilant about identifying clips from various studios. About 1/3 of copyrighted clips on the site are uploaded by users, the Times reports. Rather than have those clips removed from the site as they did in past years, studios are claiming them as their own and allowing YouTube to sell ads around the clips and split the revenues.

YouTube is expected to announce deals today with Harmonic, Telestream and Digital Rapids to make it easier for studios to add content to YouTube and make studio content added to the site almost immediately identifiable, the Times reports.

Posted by Jennifer Netherby on October 7, 2009 | Comments (0)